PREFACE.↩

The Work now offered to the Public contains the sum of such observations as the author had it in his power to make during a residence of some length in the North of Germany. He visited that country principally with the view of acquiring its language, and of gaining some knowledge of its literature. It was, however, suggested to him, by some of his friends, that he might be usefully employed in collecting information on the present state of the country. The governments of Northern Germany are so numerous, and individually of so little importance, that it would be more laborious than useful to describe them all. At the same time, they all resemble one another so much in their origin, [I-vi] their progress, and their present form and spirit, that an accurate account of one might be adopted as an account of the whole. Hannover was selected for the principal object of inquiry, because it was considered as interesting in itself; and though closely connected with Britain for more than a century, it happens singularly enough that less is known here regarding it than almost any other part of Germany. The observations, however, relating to the state of laws, government, agriculture, commerce, manufactories, and education in Hannover, may be applied, with few exceptions, to the other countries of the North of Germany. He has added such a portion of his travels as he thought would be interesting to the reader. Some historical notices are occasionally inserted; and many remarks are made on the effects of the public institutions which are described, on the German language and literature; and on the character and amusements of such classes of people as he had an opportunity of observing.

The author is too well aware of his own deficiencies to offer any other portion of [I-vii] his three years’ travels to the public than that which seems likely to be rendered acceptable from the importance which the present state of Germany gives to any observations relative to it. France and Italy, which he also visited, have been so often and so well described as to render any thing that he could say of them little more than a repetition of what has been said before. But the extraordinary developement of political feeling, and fermentation of ideas now taking place in Germany, allow him to hope that his observations on the present condition of its inhabitants may be, without presumption, presented to the public, although not clothed in the first style of elegance and learning. That nation, as if suddenly awakened from a long slumber, seems eager to overtake those communities which have started before it in the career of social improvement. In the excess of its zeal it appears to lose sight of the best means of obtaining the advantages for which it is struggling, and sometimes to exasperate the opposition it is unavoidably exposed to by using unnecessary violence. To [I-viii] enable us to judge what chance the Germans have of succeeding in their efforts to ameliorate their political condition, and to know if what they seek be better than what they possess, it is necessary to know those minute circumstances in the structure of their society which are continually operating on their character, and which tend to modify the more important constitutional laws.

Germany was formerly known to the rest of Europe as a great nursery of soldiers; but it is now distinguished, in an extraordinary degree, for its literary and political enthusiasm. The descendants of those philosophers whose principal ambition was to seek terms of fulsome adulation to express their submission and devotedness to their sovereigns, criticise, with bold and honest freedom, the measures of their present rulers; and are recognized by the German public as the censors and judges of men in power, and as the organs of national sentiment. The princes, formerly accustomed to look on their subjects as property to be sold at their pleasure, now find themselves controlled by [I-ix] public opinion; and, even in their worst measures, they profess a deference for its authority. These extensive and rapid changes, which are, in all probability, the precursors of other changes still more important, confer an interest on every subject connected with Germany, and anxiously fix the attention of political philosophers on its progress and future destiny.

The author has adverted to some defects in the system of government which exists in Germany; he has endeavoured to acquire an accurate notion of the composition of the ancient parliaments or states, of the nature of the new constitutions demanded, and of that which has actually been given to Hannover. Details of this kind, however, are inadequate to explain the irritation which now exists in different parts of Germany. Promises made and broken; hopes of improvement excited only to be beat down as sedition when their fulfilment was demanded; growing prosperity nipped in the bud by a change of masters and of measures; nations numbered, and transferred like cattle from one political dealer to another; are, indeed, [I-x] powerful motives for discontent, but they are local only; while discontent and a desire of change appear to disturb the repose of all Europe.

In countries in every stage of improvement, from our own mighty and well-cultivated island, where a free press has enlightened the people, and where machinery has rendered the unaided labour of the hand nearly valueless; to others at the bottom of the scale, where neither spinning-jennies nor steam-engines are known, and where industry is confined to tilling the ground, there is the same species of comparative poverty and increasing dissatisfaction. These evils may be greater in one country than another,—but they everywhere exist, and everywhere disturb the peace of society. So general a disease can arise from no local cause, or temporary circumstances: it cannot be occasioned by preaching demagogues, or enthusiastic assassins. These may be brought forth, like Hunt and Sandt, by the wants or the irritation of the moment, but they are only the excrescences, if he may so speak, of a feeling which [I-xi] appears permanent and nearly universal. This feeling, which seems to be co-extensive in every country, with the diffusion of knowledge among the governed part of the society, seems principally to arise from the total unfitness of those ancient institutions, which are so pertinaciously supported, to the wants, capacities, and intelligence of the present generation. We might pardon the presumption of men who should endeavour to legislate for a distant country, which they only knew by report. But what terms can express the absurdity of legislating for an unborn world, of the whole circumstances of which we are necessarily ignorant? Everywhere we see statesmen torturing human nature, in order to adapt it to their antiquated regulations. The opposition which ensues—the efforts which are made to resist and to subdue resistance—the expensive apparatus which is thus everywhere necessary to support governments, must, more than any local circumstances, be considered as the causes of the general discontent and misery.

Though these may be partly occasioned [I-xii] by population outrunning subsistence, of which doctrine, however, legislators appear till within these few years to have been perfectly ignorant, they are by no means wholly accounted for by it. According to it we might expect with an increase of population great absolute poverty. We see, on the contrary, however, absolute wealth and only comparative poverty; or the capital of Europe has increased faster than its population. So that, if the means of subsistence or the capital, now possessed by every European society, be compared with the absolute amount of its population, it will be found greater than at any former period. Hence it seems probable that there is something fundamentally wrong in the very principles of European legislation, which may be learned by diligent investigation.

When the United States are compared with Spain, Holland with Italy, some circumstances, common to them all, may be discovered, which impede prosperity in some, and destroy it in others. Hannover may be considered as in a middle state, or as one of those nearly stationary countries, [I-xiii] in which so much is consumed that nothing remains as a nucleus for continual increase, and where things are so much regulated, that change and improvement are alike prevented. In this point it seems calculated to serve as a lesson to those politicians who have a passion for petty legislation. Social regulations the most minute and most numerous, and a perfect obedience on the part of the people, distinguish that country. The government went on in its own course, perfectly undisturbed, till the country was occupied by the French. The credit of good intentions must be given to it, for its professions of a fatherly care for its subjects have been unbounded. Its power has been nearly unlimited. The actual condition of its subjects, their progress in the arts, the events of their history, tell clearly what the government has effected.

Hannover, which has otherwise few charms for the traveller, is not uninteresting to the political philosopher. It possesses none of the wonders of nature, nor of the magical creations of art; it has no splendid buildings, and no majestic ruins of [I-xiv] ancient glory. With many fine rivers, and a considerable territory, containing valuable minerals, it has never been a commercial or manufactural nation, and has never shone on the political hemisphere like Holland, Genoa, and Venice. Prosperous countries arrest our attention to inquire into the causes of their welfare, and Hannover has a claim to our notice, because it has never been prosperous. The fields of the sluggard are as instructive as those of the industrious man, and, from a nation that has never risen to eminence, the causes may be learnt of the eminence of others.

Hannover is well supplied with schools for elementary education, and they are here described at some length. Göttingen may serve, in some measure, as a specimen of German universities. An account of it is given, with such remarks as serve to explain the importance of the German students, and the means by which they are made a distinct body from the rest of the society. At a time when an education-committee, in our country, seems disposed to subject education to the control [I-xv] of the legislature, it may be of some importance to remark, that the whole education of Germany is directed and controlled by the governments of that country. And excellent as it may be considered, it has not been so efficacious in nourishing either active or speculative talents as education in our country, where it has hitherto nearly escaped the all-regulating ambition of the magistrate.

Whatever relates to criminal jurisprudence is at present deservedly much attended to in our country. Such information as could be obtained is, therefore, given regarding that of Hannover. A list of the punishments inflicted in one year was procured, and some of the prisons were visited. Facts relative to the effects of punishment seem yet to be wanted to enable us to decide with precision on the principles which are the foundation of criminal law. One which is here presented may be worthy of repetition.—Adultery has long been punished as a crime both in France and Germany, and chastity is more frequently violated in those countries than in Britain. Forgery, and every other kind [I-xvi] of theft, is more severely punished in Britain than in France, and yet every man who has visited the latter country must be convinced, from the manner in which silver spoons and forks are used in the meanest auberge or restaurateur’s, as well as from the official statement of crimes committed in that country, which has been published, that theft and forgery are more rare in France than in England. This fact deserves the serious consideration of every advocate of severe criminal laws.

The author is sensible that he has left many points untouched, and has treated others very imperfectly. Since his return he has found reason to regret, as many other travellers much superior to him have also done, that he had not laid in a greater stock of preparatory knowledge before he left his country. Some of the deficiencies must, however, be attributed to the difficulty of obtaining information. The Germans have an abundance of works full of statistical calculations, but they have very few which critically examine the constitution of their country, or which explain the effects of their most important [I-xvii] laws. To mention the cause of an omission, however, does not always excuse it, and the critic will still find many opportunities to exercise his forbearance.

The author has never been much accustomed to composition, and when he began this Work he had been for a considerable time more in the habit of using a foreign language than his native tongue. He is now aware that this circumstance has produced many inaccuracies of style, of which, however, he was insensible till it was too late to remedy them. He hopes they are not so great as to render the text obscure, and he trusts that faults which amount only to inelegance of expression may be pardoned in a man whose pretensions to authorship are of a humble kind.

It seems as if we had long been celebrated for corrupting the orthography of other nations. Leghorn for Livorno, and Munich for München, are examples, and travellers very often take the liberty of correcting such errors as fall in their way. Dr Clarke has written Tronyem for Drontheim, and, in compliance with the orthography of the Germans, Hannover is here [I-xviii] written with two nn s. When the Germans write Hanover, the stroke over the n signifies that it ought to be doubled, and, imitating this manner of writing it, without paying attention to the stroke, has probably been the cause why we have written it with one n only. The German orthography is also followed in writing such words as bauer instead of boor,—Reichs-Thaler instead of Rix-Dollar, and others. Boor, which we have borrowed from the Dutch, implies something stupid and contemptible, which characteristics ought not to be applied to the peasantry of Germany. Bauer accurately expresses their occupation; they are the labourers or architects of the ground. Reichs-Thaler is a coin different in value from a Spanish dollar, and circulated under the guarantee of the empire, or reich. Rix-dollar is only a corruption of the same words. Some titles of office and of dignities are also preserved in the original, because the usual translation either gives a very imperfect or a very false idea of the office signified. Thus amtman, (for example,) which is usually translated by the French word bailie, [I-xix] has led some authors to speak of a respectable magistrate as the officer of a spunging-house. There are innumerable honorary titles to which we have nothing corresponding. Hofrath (translated court-councillor) confers a certain rank on the persons to whom it is given. This, and other similar titles, are sometimes used without being translated.

With these few preliminary remarks, the author commits the work to the judgment of the public. Although his inquiries into the social regulations and manners of another nation have been a source of enjoyment to him, he cannot promise himself that this will not be his only reward. It will, however, be a double gratification to him if his labours, in their present form, shall give either amusement or information to his readers.

Edinburgh, December 27, 1819.

[I-xx]

Errata↩

[I-1]

TRAVELS IN GERMANY.

CHAPTER I.
dresden—leipsic.↩

Comparative cleanness of the Saxons and the Bohemians.—Situation of Dresden.—Royal library.—English newspapers.—Amusements.—Singing boys.—Festivals and medals in honour of Luther.—Of students.—Of the inhabitants of Leipsic.—A funeral.—Traits of character.—A custom—Curious Christian names.—Population.—Government of Saxony.—Leave Dresden.—Salutations of peasants.—Meissen.—A deserter.—Oschatz.—Architecture of German towns.—Christmas eve.—A mode of salutation.—Extensive cultivation of music.—Arrive at Leipsic.

After having travelled on foot, and generally alone, through part of France, Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and the south of Germany, in the years 1815, 1816, 1817, I arrived at Dresden in the early part of the month of September 1817. It was only during my residence in this town that I acquired a sufficient knowledge of the German language to enable me partially to comprehend German literature, and to converse with Germans. At this period, therefore, my remarks on Germany commence.

[I-2]

The first house I entered in Saxony, after coming from Bohemia, gave me a favourable idea of the Saxons. The floor was sanded; the tables, though made of fir, and edged with copper, like those which are most frequently in use, were kept washed, and looked white; the pewter pots were shining and clean, and a neat-dressed woman was sitting and sewing. All this was extremely different from any thing I had seen in passing from Vienna to Presburg, to Olmütz, Prague, and to Saxony. Through the whole of this route, the floors appeared rarely swept. It was nearly impossible to tell of what wood the tables were made without scraping them; and Bohemian landlords, who are proverbial in their own country for fatness and insolence, were equally dirty and disgusting. Much of Bohemia is a naturally fertile and fine country, but the people are yet so little acquainted with comforts, that they have hardly any other beds for themselves than straw; and the traveller, even in the large towns, is rarely provided with any other than straw strewed in the public room. This may possibly arise from a great quantity of foot travellers, Jew merchants, and mechanics, who are not rich enough to pay for beds, and the innkeepers, accustomed to them only, provide none. All travellers seem subject to the same inconveniences, those who come in carriages and those who come on foot, both men and women. [I-3] Oftentimes have I slept in these inns when the room has been full of the kind of persons mentioned. The motley group, while a three-cornered lamp, similar to those seen in old pictures, was suspended in the middle from the ceiling, reminded me sometimes of companies of pilgrims, and sometimes of hordes of banditti.

The situation of Dresden is singularly pleasing. It is built on the Elbe, which, from its windings, disappears both above and below the town; and it flows so smoothly as to resemble a lake more than a river. On the north side there is a ridge of sand hills, which have all been planted, within these few years, with pines, or some shrubs, and in many places with vines. These improvements were, in general, effected by the late Earl of Findlater, who bought some property here, or by the late minister, Count Marcolini. On the south side of the town there is also another ridge of gentle hills, which, extending both above and below it to the Elbe, and there apparently joining the opposite sand hills, shut up Dresden in a long oval vale. The mountains of Bohemia are seen at a distance; a great variety of walks, public gardens, beautiful scenery, and a well-cultivated neighbourhood, leave nothing in point of situation to be desired. The two parts of the town, situated on the opposite sides of the Elbe, are united by a long bridge, over which the people all pass on one [I-4] side, and repass on the other. There are very few good buildings in Dresden; the house appropriated to the meeting of the States, in the Pirna Street, or Parliament house, a little palace in the great garden, some distance out of the town, which was uninhabited, and falling to ruins, the Catholic Chapel, and the Japanese Palace, which is now the public library, were all that gave me any pleasure, or seemed worthy of notice. The gallery of paintings, the academy of arts, the treasury, or place where the jewels are kept, with the other curiosities, are too well known to permit me to say anything new of them, and I shall therefore content myself with merely noticing such little customs as I observed peculiar to the people.

A public library, which is open every day except Sundays and holidays, is hardly a peculiarity, for such libraries exist in most of the capitals of Germany, but it deserves mentioning, as a very useful thing. Any books it contains are given on being asked for; and there is a small well warmed room to sit in to read. A recommendation to the librarian, or a respectable citizen answering for a stranger, procures him the further advantage of taking books home with him. All the respectable inhabitants have the same privilege; few of them, therefore, frequented the library, but the number of their servants who came daily for books shewed that they were in the habit [I-5] of reading. The sovereigns have, by other means, such as establishing schools of all kinds, provided for the education of the people; and if they are not learned, ingenious, skilful, and energetic, it is not for want of the means of school instruction. Dresden, however, abounds with learned and clever men, with societies of poets and poetesses, among whom the ancient German custom of recitation is a favourite amusement, and with artists of all descriptions, who, without being greatly distinguished, pass their lives in the pursuits of science, or in the enjoyments of a cultivated taste.

The progress of the people in political knowledge, and the interest they take in political matters, is in some measure shown by there being in the town two different places where both French and English newspapers, with most of the German political and scientific journals of the day, are found. One of these is a club. It unites conveniences for playing billiards and other games, with books and newspapers, and to visit it a stranger must be introduced, but this is easily accomplished, through the English envoy, or some acquaintance. The other is a speculation, a complete cabinet literaire, such as are found in Paris and in other cities of France, to which people subscribe for a sitting, for a month, or for a year. The former of these places was much frequented, the latter hardly enough to pay the expences. The [I-6] Times, the Morning Chronicle, and the Courier, might be read here, and were a good deal read by the inhabitants; and as the Edinburgh Review was to be had at the royal library, an Englishman could keep in Dresden on a level with the course of events, both literary and political, in his own country. English and French newspapers, and periodical works, are now found in most of the large cities of Germany, and are much read by the Germans, which shows how much the communication between the nations of Europe is improved, how much the people of one country now feel interested in the political events of every other, and that there is some approximation making, by a rapid interchange of knowledge and sentiment, and opinion, to abolish all that is hateful and odious in national distinctions. The philosopher rejoices at this, but it takes much from the interest of travels; and the inhabitants of Europe can now be better known to each other through the rapid medium of the post and newspapers, than through the more expensive, and perhaps less interesting, means of travellers.

The inhabitants of Dresden are very fond of amusements, and much of their time is passed in walking to public gardens, in listening to music while they sip their coffee, in playing billiards, chess, and cards, and in conversation. The men all smoke, and the women all knit, in public places; [I-7] and the latter are so accustomed to the fumes of tobacco, that they seem to think them not an inconvenience. They often remained in crowded rooms, from which the smoke obliged me to retire. A pipe or a segar forms part of a German; and a most elegant-dressed young man, while he is making his best bow to his mistress, puts the burning tobacco under her nose, and lets her inhale at once flattery and smoke.

A great amusement of the citizens was shooting at the popinjay. A large pole, like the Maypoles of England, stands in the neighbourhood of most of the places of public entertainment. It is fixed in a sort of box, like the mast of a small vessel, so that it can be let down till it is horizontal, and elevated without much trouble. At the top a thing is placed resembling the Austrian eagle, but resplendent with feathers and gold. Those marksmen are considered the most skilful who shoot the head off. A cross-bow, but fashioned like a musket, is employed to shoot with; and it is loaded with a small iron bolt, by a person hired for the purpose of loading it, who is, in general, the owner of the cross-bows. The citizens continue to smoke their pipes, ask is it my turn, talk over their shots, and when the turn comes to any one, he lays the ready-loaded cross-bow on a bar of wood, about forty yards distant from the pole, and tries to hit the wooden bird. He [I-8] gives himself no other trouble; a boy looks after the bolts as they fall, and brings them back. It is an amusement that demands no labour and no thought; it allows of the continued enjoyment of smoking, and furnishes materials for interminable talk. This is a specimen of the manner in which the Germans shun active exertions. An amusement that requires some more exertion is nine-pins, which is also very common; but this admits of continued smoking, and demands no other labour but bowling. Dancing is the only amusement of the people that requires bodily exertion; and from their manner of dancing, which is rather slow, even this does not require much. Waltzing probably requires more.

One of the things that most early and most constantly attracted my curiosity in Dresden, was the custom of young lads singing psalms on Sundays and feast days about the town. Pious men have bequeathed funds to give a number of boys, who are, at the same time, choristers at the different churches, a cocked hat, a black scarf, and a suit of clothes, on condition of their entertaining the inhabitants with sacred music. Bands of ten or a dozen, with one for a leader, each dressed in black, with a cocked hat and a scarf, march slowly about the town, and, stopping at every second or third house, sing a psalm. I am myself too much averse to actions done from improper, [I-9] or I may call them false motives, not to find this custom rather ridiculous. The proper motive why men should sing or pray, is a correspondent state of mind, but this was singing for hire,—in fact, a sort of mockery of worship. With this small abatement, of pleasure from not liking the reason of the thing, I found this singing very agreeable. The shrill, clear voices of the youngsters, sounding, in a clear frosty morning, through the streets, though they could not be compared with the perfect music of the Royal Catholic Chapel, had something in them of simplicity that pleased my untutored ears nearly so well as the multiplied tones and warblings of the whole royal orchestra.

During my residence in Dresden, the return of the hundredth year of the Reformation was celebrated. The festival lasted three days. The churches were all hung, according to the taste of the clergymen, with flowers made into wreaths, festoons, and crowns. Orange trees were borrowed from the royal nurseries, and various shrubs and leafy ornaments were placed in the-churches, so as to give them a very gay and pleasing appearance. Religious worship, with appropriate psalms and hymns, took place on each of the days while the churches were thus ornamented, but the crowd was always so great, it was nearly impossible to get in. I unfortunately heard nothing, for even the very porches [I-10] were full. At the end of three days, a great number of the singers, accompanied by persons carrying torches, and pictures of Luther, with banners, on which various mottos were inscribed, and followed by a great multitude, paraded through the streets of the town, and came at length to the Old Market, a large clear space, surrounded by houses. Here all the multitude could assemble; and here, while the singers formed a circle, and continued singing, all the torches were thrown together, and made a splendid bonfire. The crowd, the houses, the singers, were all distinctly seen by the glare, and there appeared to be nothing wanted but that the whole multitude should have sung so well as these young men, to have made it a most imposing spectacle. In this point it failed. Nothing can equal or compensate the enthusiasm,—the heart swelling effects of a multitude of voices; and if this ceremony were intended to fix any thing eternally on the people, they should themselves have been previously instructed to join in it. But it was supposed the people could not sing so well as the choristers, and the mighty effect of their voices was sacrificed to a little scientific music. By the last glare of the bonfire the last psalm was sung, and the people all retired quietly to their homes. There were no great preparations on the part of the police, and yet there was no quarrel nor disturbance.

[I-11]

The same epoch was celebrated by similar festivals all over Germany, which argues, among the generality of the people, no indifference for religion. Medals also, and pictures of Luther, with the other reformers, were exposed for sale, and great numbers of them were bought and worn. Some of the medals were of silver for the rich, and of baser metals for the poor, so that all might be supplied. Luther and the reformers can only be considered as men who propagated in the world a number of moral and useful truths. So have the Bacons, the Newtons, and Lockes; and, while we celebrate the birth-day of Mr Pitt and Mr Fox, when it is perhaps impossible to ascertain any one benefit they conferred on society, we suffer those who have instructed us, and rescued us from error, to pass unhonoured; and Luther is probably only commemorated from his being a sort of leader to a large body of men whose interest it is that his tenets should be perpetuated and obeyed.

At the latter end of October, when this festival was celebrating, festivals of other kinds were common in Germany. On the eighteenth of this month, the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic, the students of the different universities of the whole of Saxony, in all about one thousand, assembled at the Wartburg, which had once long been the refuge of Luther, and there they burnt, in solemn procession, several emblems of some things they [I-12] disliked, such as the tail worn by the Hessian soldiers, the false breasts of the Prussians, an Austrian corporal’s stick, the article of the congress of Vienna, which decreed the partition of Saxony, and some books, among which was the History of the Germans, by Kotzebue. They heard speeches from some of their leaders, are said to have made vows to die for the freedom of Germany, and to have burnt the hats which they had waved as they made these vows, that they might never again serve any ignoble purpose. They were accompanied by a great many spectators, who participated in their enthusiasm; and thus a very general spirit was excited for what is supposed to be the freedom of Germany. At Dresden this event was the subject of much conversation, and there were few persons who did not express great joy at the conduct of the students, and great hope of future benefits from them. Much controversy arose. Some professors were censured for the part they took in this procession; and the whole excited a vast deal of interest throughout Germany.

The inhabitants of Leipsic commemorated the same day in a different manner. They marched to the field of battle in great numbers, and there, forming a ring, kneeled down, and celebrated with prayers the victory that had delivered Germany, though it divided their country. Whatever the monarch of Saxony might [I-13] be, the people were strongly opposed to Buonaparte and the French; they were animated by true German principles; and, unless nations are to be considered as the property of sovereigns, it was they, and not their monarch, who ought to have been thought of at the congress of Vienna; and they ought in justice, so well as in mercy, to have been spared that pain many of them expressed at the partition of their country.

Another procession, which deserves to be mentioned, was the funeral of a young lady. It was attended and followed like a funeral in England; a great number of people were, however, present, and amongst them, all the servants of the family. She was the daughter of a respectable innkeeper, and had enough of celebrity, and was enough respected, to bring a crowd together. The hearse was little more than wheels, and an appropriate place for the coffin to rest on, over which a handsome pall was thrown. The burying-ground was out of the town, near the Elbe, and the soil so sandy, that the grave was boarded up to keep it from filling before the corpse was deposited. Nothing worthy of mentioning happened till the moment of interment, when the lid of the coffin, which had never been screwed down, was lifted off, and the body, the colours just beginning to fade, was shewn to the surrounding spectators. She was in the stage,

[I-14]

“Before decay’s effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.”

And

“Hers was the loveliness of death,
That parts not quite with parting breath;”

and neatly dressed and ornamented with flowers, she looked but as in a sweet undreaming bridal sleep. Every body had before wept, but at this moment tears gushed from the eyes of all the spectators; the women and girls who were present all sobbed as if she had been their dearest relative; the servants all wept bitterly, and there was no spectator who was not affected. These expressions of grief and agony continued till the coffin was fastened, and the earth covered it for ever. Many of the younger part of the females present exclaimed, Oh, why am I not also dead? why can I not be buried? I have frequently heard young women utter similar expressions when they were melancholy, which, with them, was not unfrequently the case. In the spring of life, when their hearts should be open to unknown but hoped enjoyments, and to all the charms of nature, they frequently talked of the grave, and said there was nothing they wished for so much as death. They oftentimes sang a well known German song, called the Song of the Grave, Das Lied des Grabes, descriptive of the peace to be found there, and rarely without sighing as they repeated the last lines, [I-15] “That was the only door through which the unhappy went to rest.”

This trait of sympathy may, however, be set off by the following: I one day entered a room belonging to a tailor I employed, where one of his children was lying, in the arms of a most unseemly death. Its limbs were ulcerated, it was half naked, flies buzzed about it, its throat was convulsed, and it looked shocking and disgusting. Yet its mother received me with smiles, and followed me out of the room with common unmeaning smiles, spoke to me of the weather and some other trifles, and when I pointed to the child, said, Yes, it was dying, in the same manner, and with the same tones, she had spoken to me of the weather. The father continued at his work, and seemed to have little other feeling but pleasure the child was to be taken away. This indifference is disgusting, but it is probably better than the overwrought sensibility which admits for a time of no consolation for irremediable, and yet common calamities. A person of my acquaintance, who had written works on botany and mathematics, and was considered rather a clever man, spoke to me one day of his marriage, and lamented it only because a wife cost him money, and he regretted his single state only as a cheaper one. The connection with women is so easy to be had, and so easy put off in this country, that no person appears to regard it as the great source of all the [I-16] better affections, and of an attachment to home. Marriage is spoken of as a matter to be decided solely by its money advantages.

The following little incident may also be mentioned as illustrative of character. Near Dresden, and below the bridge, there was one of those floating mills lying on the Elbe, which are common on many of the rivers of Germany and France. They generally consist of one large flat boat, or of two boats fastened together, and on them a house is built, which contains the machinery for grinding. They are moored in the rivers, and the current gives motion to the water wheel, the axis of which is in the boats. This one on the Elbe was carried away from its station by a large boat loaded with stones running foul of it. Every person near ran to give assistance; some brought ropes, and some boats, and while nothing was neglected that could assist in stopping it, there was no noise, and very little unnecessary bustle. The only exclamations noticed were, that the owner sometimes said, It is bad for me. There was a great deal of difficulty in stopping so large a machine; the people on board threw out huge stones and anchors, but they were not heavy enough to hold it against the power of the stream; at length, when it had floated nearly a mile, a rope was conveyed to it from the shore, and it was stopped. This was certainly an event calculated to excite curiosity, and would, in many [I-17] places, have produced much bustle and confusion. The Germans prevent these by thinking and regularity, and, while they possibly do more than some of their noisy screaming neighbours, they are sometimes thought stupid and dull from their possessing the virtue of self-command.

Brides in Germany carry with them to the house of their husband, what is called “der Brautschmuck,” which consists in clothes, fine linen, and jewels, proportionate to the wealth of the parents. On one of the princesses of Saxony being married to the son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, all the linen clothes and ornaments, even to a chemise and a ring, which she was to take with her, were spread, before she went away, in the chambers of the palace for public inspection. The crowd to see the adornments of the royal bride was excessive, the centinels could scarcely keep the people back, and no conversation was heard amongst the women for several days but on the fineness of the linen, and on the beauty of the dresses and ornaments.

In Dresden, so well as in other parts of Germany, Christian names are common, which frequently recall those days of English fanaticism, when Praise God, and Hold-fast-the-Faith, were the baptismal names of our ancestors. The Germans are undoubtedly too much accustomed to these to remark them as peculiar, but a stranger smiles [I-18] as he reads Gott-lob, Gott-fried, Gott-furcht, Gott-lieb, and many other such combinations, expressing love God, fear God, praise God, God peace, &c. &c.

It might be considered as unpardonable if I were to take my leave of Dresden without mentioning, that on a hill on the south side of the town, about three quarters of a mile distant from it, is the place where General Moreau was standing when he was wounded, and that on this spot a small monument has been erected to his memory. It is merely a square block of granite, on which some instruments and ornaments of war, sculptured in stone, are placed, and it bears, if my memory is correct, the simple inscription, To the Memory of General Moreau. Zum Andenken General Moreaus. A few trees are planted round it, and the spot commands a very good view of the town.

In consequence of the Earl of Findlater having given the property, which I have before mentioned he had improved, to a German, who is known in Dresden by the name of Secretary, which title he derived from his services to the Earl, it is now converted into a place of public entertainment; and, from its commanding a most beautiful view of the Elbe, it is a very fashionable one, and is much frequented. It still bears the name of Findlater, and I notice the circumstance, to remark the curious coincidence of a British nobleman giving his name to a German tavern.

[I-19]

The following is a brief account of the present extent of Saxony, its form of government, and other little statistical notices, chiefly taken from the work of Dr George Hassel.

Its extent is 1352 square miles; it contains 1,232,644 inhabitants. It has preserved most of its manufacturing districts, and the richest of its mines, but it now produces very little corn, and contains no salt. It is divided into the following circles: 1. Of Meissen, containing 300 square miles, 297,945 inhabitants. 2. Of Leipsic, 276 square miles, 206,917 inhabitants. 3. Of Erzegeberge, 410 square miles, 459,264 inhabitants. 4. Of Voigtland, 132 square miles, and 88,639 inhabitants. A small part of Merseburg and Naumburg, 14 square miles, and 10,000 inhabitants. A part of Upper Lusatia, 220 square miles, and 169,879 inhabitants. The monarch is Catholic, the greater number of the inhabitants are Protestants, following the confession of Augsburgh, but other religions are fully tolerated. Jews, however, are tolerated only in Dresden and Leipsic, and have not the rights of citizenship. The difference between the ständes, or different classes of society, is strongly marked, and they consist in great nobility, in small nobility, in learned men, in citizens, and in peasants, who are yet in Upper Lusatia in a state of servitude.

The revenues are derived from domains, under [I-20] which term are comprehended several estates—from regalia, such as mines, forests, tolls, the post, &c., and from several taxes, the principal of which, however, is a land-tax. The amount of the whole does not now exceed from eight to ten millions of florins, or L. 1,000,000 Sterling. The debt amounts to 50,000,000 florins, or between L. 5,000,000 and L. 6,000,000 Sterling. The taxes are unequally levied, the greater and small nobility being almost totally exempted. The army may amount to 18,000 men.

The monarch is bound by law not to alter the religion of the people. He must call on the states for their advice when he wants to levy new taxes, or to make new laws. The domains and regalia are not all in the hands of the monarch, many still belong to the great nobility. Some of these, as the House of Shönburg, have the right to tax their vassals, paying a third of the tax to the crown, and this house also possesses the power of remitting all punishments less than death. With these exceptions, and if followed up they comprise a large portion of the power of the state, this monarch has, however, all the remainder of it in his own hands. The different provinces, or circles, have different constitutions and privileges, which yet actually exist, though they are abolished in name. The great division is in united and not united provinces. Out of the ständes or different classes [I-21] of the united provinces, the general assembly of the states for the kingdom is collected. The persons composing the states are distinguished into those who directly, and those who indirectly, form them. The first are divided into four circles, those of Meissen, of Leipsic, of Erzegeberge, and of the Voigtland.

The different classes living in these circles, who directly form the states, have a personal right to appear at the assembly of the states, while those who indirectly form them, the prebends of Meissen, and the university of Leipsic, have this right by virtue of their office. All the ständes of these provinces and circles, with the clerical establishments, are now united into a General Assembly of States for the whole of Saxony. The king has the power of calling them together when and where he will; generally he calls them together every sixth year. This assembly is divided into three classes; the first is composed of the clergy, and the great nobility; the second of the small nobility, Rittershaft; and the third of deputies from cities. The second class, or Rittershaft, are possessors of noble properties, and they are only permitted to attend personally when their forefathers have been enrolled in the College of Heralds for eight generations. Among that part of this class of the nobility who do not boast of eight ancestors, there are other distinctions. [I-22] Some hold their property independent of the jurisdiction of the local magistrate, and subject only to the jurisdiction of the Hofgericht; this property is called Schriftsässigen Güter, —the property of the others is subject to the jurisdiction of the local magistrates; this is Amtsässigen Güter. The former, the possessors of Schriftsässigen Güter, may appear personally; the latter, the possessors of Amtsässigen Güter, must elect deputies from the class which boasts eight known generations of ancestors. Among the holders of those noble properties, which are independent of local jurisdiction, Schriftsässigen Güter, there is yet a distinction into old and new. The latter may appear personally at the assembly, but they receive no diet money. This second class of the states, the Rittershaft, appoints, from out of the whole body, a small and a large committee, whose resolutions may be set aside or confirmed by the whole, but who, in general, manage the whole business for the class. These two committees, and the rest of the small nobility, are called the three colleges of the assembled smaller nobility. The deputies of the cities, who are the third class, have, in like manner, their small and large committees.

The first class makes representations for itself, and deliberates for itself on the royal propositions, so far as they concern their own interest only. The nobles of this class form a power almost independent of the monarch. The clergy and the university of [I-23] Leipsic, who form part of the first class, are dependant on the crown. The other classes, in like manner, deliberate apart, and when each of them has come to a decision, they confer together, and make a resolution in common. These resolutions, with the king’s consent, become laws, though they do not affect the first class, and are published under the name of the Land Tags-abschied. So far as I have been able to comprehend the constitution of this assembly, it appears little capable of transacting business; and, though it was sitting when I was at Dresden, I heard of nothing amongst the people but expressions of impatience that it might soon separate, as it cost the country a considerable sum, most of the members being paid. It is the ancient parliament of the land, and has become a burthen, because it has never been reformed.

There are two distinct codes of laws in Saxony. The first is composed of various provincial laws, and much of it is taken from the famous Sachsen-spiegel. The second is the code of Augustus of Saxony. Recourse is also had to the Roman and the Canon law to explain the others, and each particular province has laws that are proper to it alone; the laws are uncertain, the processes long and costly, and it remains with the advocates to let them go to a conclusion when they please.

The different departments of the executive government are administered by different ministers, as [I-24] in other European countries. For the administration of justice, there are the following tribunals: The Court of Appeals is the highest court, and, in cases of dispute relative to the property of the crown, this decides even on the rights of the sovereign. It is composed of one president, one vice-president, six noble counsellors, and twelve counsellors not noble, who are the judges. The Oberhofgericht at Leipsic is a court for particular persons, generally, I believe, for nobles. The Schoppenstuhl, which is composed of some of the members of the faculty of jurisprudence at Leipsic, and the whole of that faculty, form separate courts of appeal. The Berg Schoppenstuhl at Freyberg is the court for the miners, and all that relates to them, and at Bautzen is a court for Upper Lusatia. In each province there is a sort of local government, to whom the police and smaller jurisdictions are committed.

Saxony boasts one university, at Leipsic, royal schools at Meissen, Wurzen, and Grimma, with several lyceums, town schools, and village schools. There is an academy of arts at Dresden, and regular schools at Freyberg, for the instruction of miners. The whole of the education is under the direction of the chief consistorium; but the manner in which it is extended amongst the people will be better explained in the chapter on Education.

The spirit of every government, directed by one [I-25] or a few persons, and not by the great mass of the society, must always depend on the dispositions of the ruling individual; and the aged sovereign of Saxony has been, through a long life, a mild and a quiet king. Hence, with his government few people are discontented, and, in fact, every body whom I spoke with praised and pitied him very much.

The same circumstance has a great effect on the manners and morals of a whole people. And the decencies, the regularity, of the present court, even if they should be somewhat hypocritical, while they contrast finely with the libertinism of a former period, are tending to restore to the Saxons that regard for decency of which the voluptuous court of Augustus must have partially deprived them. The brutality of this man, which seems to have been all that could outrage morality in the unrestrained indulgence of strong passions, is often dignified by the name of brilliant fetes; and the giants’ hall is pointed out in the palace at Dresden, as the place where they were chiefly given, and the cup is still preserved at Moritzburg, a hunting castle at a little distance from Dresden, out of which he drank large quantities of wine to the health of his beautiful countess, and to the destruction of his own. Surely to denominate the lusts of this man brilliant is a misnomer; it, is, indeed, an untruth which [I-26] men are obliged to tell, in order to justify to themselves the weakness of reverencing and honouring such persons. The value of truth never appears so great as when it is applied to the deeds of men, and we shall have put on the three league boots of moral improvement, when we have learnt to give the actions of monarchs their right names. The brilliant fetes, as they are called, of Augustus of Saxony, ought to be named bacchanalian carousals, that would have disgraced a vulgar trooper, and that destroy the vigour both of body and mind.

I mixed so much with the inhabitants of Dresden as my imperfect knowledge of the language of the country, and other circumstances, allowed. The kindness and gentleness of the people pleased me. The city contains many amusements, and has many charms. At the moment I left it, on the morning of the 23d of December, it snowed, and the weather was cold, and thick; nothing was to be seen, either behind as a remembrance, or before to cheer me as a hope; the gloom added to my regret. I was scarcely out of the town before every object but the trees by the road side were hid from my view, and I felt perfectly alone. Regret was in some measure augmented by the approaching festivities, from which I was running away, when people were collecting in the town from all the neighbourhood to celebrate them. All my acquaintance exclaimed, [I-27] What, going before the festival? where will you celebrate it, then? A stranger, I replied, could have no festivals; they demand a union of friends and relations, of the endearments of love and of home, and the wanderer, the sojourner of a moment, may have a thousand wild and tumultuous pleasures in the endless variety he sees; his every day may be a day of enjoyment, but while he wanders, he can have no festivals with friends. Christmas is here, as in other countries, a family festival, occasioned by a religious ceremony; relations and friends meet and are happy in each other’s company, the time is passed in merriment and gladness, and the joy is attributed to religion. Such feelings, and such, perhaps, mistaken expressions for them, are common to all people. There are other feelings, different at different periods of life, which it is curious to see spread themselves over a stranger. The elderly people ask him if his parents are yet living, the middle aged if he is married, and the young, what his beloved thinks of his absence. But the most general questions, so general, indeed, as the appetites and desires which dictate them, are always of the prices of commodities, of the cheapness or dearness of food and clothes.

Despondency seldom lasts long when any thing is to be performed, and the good wishes of my acquaintance, as I remembered them, served to lighten my regret. My reveries were soon disturbed, [I-28] and my reflections driven into another channel, by the multiplied greetings I received from the peasants, men and women, chiefly women, however, who were carrying in baskets on their backs, or wheeling in barrows, the produce of their little gardens or labours, to market. With each of these I exchanged a courteous good morning, and the momentary disposition of the person saluting me might be guessed from the salutation. Some were light of heart. They had possibly received good Christmas gifts, or had good ones to give. They did not feel their loads, and their greeting was rapid and cheerfully given,—danced out as it were; others seemed to feel their load too heavy, and so much occupied by it as hardly to have time to say good morning; others had not yet shaken off the drowsiness of night, and, half asleep, grumbled out their salutation; others, and these were the greatest number, seemed to think of nothing but how softly they could say good morning, in order to convince you of that kindness which is so general a disposition of the German women. If the reader have lolled all his life in a silk-lined coach, or always lived in the parlours or saloons of polished society,—if he have never been solitary in the world—he will be unable to appreciate the pleasure derived from this passing salutation of peasant women. To me it gave animation, and seemed, when combined with the good wishes for fine weather [I-29] and pleasant journey, which yet sounded in my ears, to be paramount to an influence on the seasons. Though they could not make the snow cease to fall, the heavens bright, or the wind less piercing, yet they gave an elasticity of thought which made the snow and the cold disregarded, and I mused, with great pleasure, over a variety of circumstances, as I splashed along in the dirt, without taking “heed to my steps.” As I walked farther from the town, I ceased to meet any more women. It was yet dark, and I was left to my own reflections. They were not unpleasant. I had been told in Dresden I was always finding out the advantages of whatever happened; that I was a Candid. The thought did not displease me, and, to justify my conduct, I sought now for the advantages of candidism. It makes men content with the evils which they cannot remedy, while it encourages no supine submission to them. I thought I did not walk so well as formerly, and began to reflect I was growing old, and candidism made me find the advantages of age. Hitherto thought had been pleasing to me; I had a stock of materials for constant reflection, and there was no reason to believe, that, as vigour of limb decayed, vigour of thought might not remain. Former days recurred to me; I compared them with what I then enjoyed,—with what I might still hope to enjoy, and it appeared to me that youth had not been for me [I-30] the happiest period of existence. It is perhaps a mistake to suppose that it generally is. When it is past, life no longer boils and bubbles; it no longer sparkles nor ferments,—but it no longer sours, nor leaves, when the fermentation is over, a filthy scum. It is a disposition similar to candidism in all men, though perhaps disavowed, which makes them find out the advantages of things as they are, and which suggests to the bishop a load of benefits to the rest of mankind in the dominion of the church, and to the statesman in arbitrary rule.

After some time the sky became clear, and I could see the surrounding country. A ridge of sand-hills was on my right, and the Elbe on my left. Small parallel walls are built along the sides of the hills, to prevent the earth from being washed down, and to which the vines are at the same time trained. In the spaces between the walls they are tied to little stakes planted in the ground. At this season they were all cut close, and laid down under the ground, or covered with straw. Those against the houses were all carefully tied up in matting. At a distance of eight miles from Dresden, these hills extend down to the Elbe, and as there appears a continuation of them on the opposite side of the river, it looks as if the river had here forced its way between them. At this point also, the granite rocks which form the masses of these hills, whose surfaces are covered with sand, shew themselves [I-31] to the very top. It is said that some of the granite hills of Germany, particularly the Harz, are in a constant state of decomposition and destruction, and, probably, most of the high peaks of the world are gradually crumbling away. At least, I amused myself with thinking so, though I shall not defend my speculations against either the Huttonians or the Wernerians. They may not contain quite so much truth as theirs, but they were probably equally useful, for they afforded me a moment’s amusement, and the amount of the utility of all geological speculations is the amusement they afford to otherwise unemployed men.

Meissen was the first town I reached, and it lay on the opposite side of the Elbe. The bridge over the river here has rather a curious appearance, from having been built or repaired at three different times, and from uniting three different manners of turning arches. Some are turned after the common manner; there are wooden arches; and there are some, which are the most ancient, turned after the Gothic manner. Some parts of the bridge are of stone; some of brick; and some of wood. Meissen is the place where the Dresden china is manufactured, but it is not permitted to see the process without a particular permission from the superior inspector, which I did not seek. There is an exhibition-room, which everybody is allowed to enter. The old castle stands on a high projecting rock, that domineers [I-32] over the river and the town, and it encloses the cathedral within its walls. This is frequently the case, and it is a type of the moral union of church and state. Protection and favour are given for the obedience which the church inculcates. I dined at Meissen, and, on entering an inn, a barber offered his services. I declined them; they were accepted, however, by several persons, and he scattered his soap-suds about, shaving them in the same room where several people were dining.

The dialect of Meissen is celebrated as one of the purest of Germany, but, unfortunately, the purity does not extend to the people. On pursuing my journey, I had a peasant for a companion, who had been at Meissen, and was carrying home a finely painted red, yellow, and green distaff, and a spinning-wheel, as Christmas-presents for his wife. I hardly understood his language, it was so different from the German to which I had been accustomed, and therefore our conversation was very limited. He had some visits to pay in his way home, and we soon parted.

Soon afterwards I came to a close carriage, with the fore-wheel broke. It had been supported, and, while another wheel was putting on, which had occupied two hours, none of the persons in it had descended. A most elegant woman was standing up in it, and looking out of the window; she laughed and joked with [I-33] her companions within, whom I could not see. To her I paid my compliments of condolence, which she seemed very little to need. She was rather merry than sad. Two servants, who had been riding outside, had got down, but apparently only to light their pipes with greater ease. One of them was doing nothing but smoking, and the other, while he held fast hold of his pipe with one hand, was assisting the wheelwright to put on a new wheel with the other. German patience is a virtue, for it diminishes unavoidable evils.

A man I overtook told me, in very few words, that he was a deserter from the army; that he was tired of being a soldier at twopence-farthing per day, and that he was returning to his friends, who lived in what was at present the territories of Prussia; and there he hoped to escape Saxon punishment. I hardly knew how to reconcile the fear he expressed of being taken with his confession to a stranger, unless he had found, from experience, that every person not immediately interested in stopping him helped him to escape. His appearance had not suffered by his not having ate any thing that day; it was healthy, and might have been envied him by a glutton. He had looked at the lady in the broken carriage, which he had also seen, with the eyes of a man;—he called her a charming woman, eine charmante frau.

In the course of the day I saw several waggons [I-34] carrying colonial produce and English manufactured goods to Bohemia and Poland, and some loaded with hops, that had come all the way from Prague, and were going to Hamburgh. I asked why they were not sent by the Elbe? They were afraid of its freezing. This was possible, but there is something wrong in the management of this commerce, when, with the Elbe and the waters united with it, extending from beyond Prague to Hamburgh, so costly a conveyance as land-carriage is employed, for so cumbrous an article as hops.

I reached a small town called Oschatz, to sleep, and found a comfortable inn and a good bed. Some roast goose with apple-sauce, a very common dish in Germany, was given me for supper, and, after my day’s walk, which was thirty-four miles, I went early to bed. The greater number of the small towns of Germany I had hitherto seen, but more particularly those of Bohemia, had all a large square in them, of which the town-house is the most conspicuous part. Throughout that Catholic country, some saint or pillar of clouds, with a gilt cross, or a column composed of three smaller ones twisted together as a type of the Trinity, is the great ornament of the middle. Oschatz had the square and the town-house, but the gilded cross and twisted pillar were wanted. The gable-ends of many of the houses were placed towards the street, and their fronts were often built up, in very [I-35] fantastic shapes, so as to conceal the roofs. The town-house was a good specimen. The upper part of the front, instead of forming an angle like the gable end of the roof, diminished in steps, on each of which was placed some little ornament, such as a weathercock, or a little image. On the upper point was also a figure, and the whole end full of windows, resembled nothing but the little German toy-houses, which have been made in imitation of such old-fashioned buildings.

I know not if it has been remarked that the pediments of Grecian architecture were intended originally, like the ornaments of German houses, to conceal the roof. The columns that supported them were used instead of a wall, and, in a warm climate, formed the only entrances and only doors of the temples. The porticoes of Grecian architecture, its pediments and columns, were useful, but modern imitation puts up pediments where there are no roofs to conceal, and uses columns where there are also doors and walls. In matters purely of taste, there is little danger in indiscriminately imitating good models, because no other effect is to be produced than to give pleasure to minds which have been probably formed by the very models which are imitated; but in building there is always a purpose to be answered, and, when we know this, there is a positive standard by which to try the merits of the execution. Every thing in architecture ought to [I-36] have its use. Most of the ornaments of modern buildings are, however, perfectly useless, and, as they are nothing but imitations of what were originally useful, they may be safely pronounced to generally sin against good taste. The roofs of all the old houses in Germany are immoderately high; some of them are, indeed, higher from the top of the walls to the top of the roof, than the walls are from the ground; but these were originally so built from a necessity, for a strong covering against the snow. The less flat the roof was, so much the better for this purpose, and this occasioned it to be carried to a most unseemly height.

In the morning of the 24th coffee was brought me early, and I left Oschatz at six o’clock. The weather was clear; it was moonlight, and freezing very hard. A carriage, or a gelegenheit, as those carriages are called which take the chances of the road, had left the inn a little before me. I soon overtook it, and never again saw it. Another left a village called Leppa, six miles on the road, at the same time that I passed it, and this, without performing so long a day’s journey as I did, reached Leipsic but a very few minutes before me. These sort of carriages do not change their horses on their route, and an ordinary foot traveller may always, therefore, beat a gelegenheit. Many female peasants were going into Oschatz, as into Dresden [I-37] when I left it, and with all these I exchanged the usual good-morning.

I reached the little town of Wurzen to dinner. Here, as at Meissen, there is a castle which embraces with its walls the principal church.

It was Christmas eve,— heilige Abend, —and there was a fair at Wurzen, as there is at all other German towns at this time of the year, that every body may supply themselves with those things which they wish to give their friends. The square was filled with stalls and booths, and with people who had come from all the surrounding villages to buy their Christmas presents. On one side of the butchers’ stall there was a place where fine leather gloves, and black leather breeches, the common wear of the peasantry, were sold, and on the other a booth in which caps and ribbons were displayed. Another contained iron, copper, and tin household utensils, and close to it were dolls and ornaments for children. There was all around a great display of fine pipes, and of earthenware, and the old women sat on the stones, huddled in their cloaks, selling their butter and cheese, in the neighbourhood of the dram-shop and the gingerbread-booth. It was a mixture of all wares, but the weather was too cold to admit the people to have any other enjoyment than drinking spirits.

The little river Mulde has to be crossed by a ferry on leaving Wurzen, and several people who [I-38] were going over waited with great indulgence while the ferryman went into the house and lighted his pipe, and warmed himself thoroughly; in short, they had patience for nearly a quarter of an hour; and, while standing in the cold was very unplesant to me, it did not bring forth one word of complaint or of impatience from any of them. Bodily exertion is here repressed by opinion, which is not formed from any conviction that either evil or pain is caused by exertion, but from labour being united with poverty, and idleness with nobility and wealth. The common people keep one another in countenance in wasting their time. “Be not so industrious,”—“you are labouring too hard,” are salutations to the man breaking stones on the road, who leaves off his work and rests on his hammer, while he exchanges some words with every passing foot-traveller.

My walk was not absolutely solitary, for I met or overtook several people, but these latter were all going so slow, that I was afraid, if I walked with them, of arriving late at Leipsic. The snow was lying on the ground without completely hiding it; the roofs of the houses were also whitened by it. The sky was dark; the weather hazy; nothing at a distance could be distinctly seen; there was nobody labouring in the fields; a few women were carrying baskets from one village to another. There was nothing to see or to do but to while away the time by some of those dreams of airy nothing, [I-39] which seem bounteously given to amuse us when we are destitute of employment, and to alleviate our sorrow when we are visited by calamity. Imagination and memory are always ready to depict the future or recall the past,—to combine, separate, magnify, or diminish, all we see, or have ever seen, or heard, or read. Poets may well praise their harps, for thinking or dreaming is a most glorious amusement.

At length I overtook a youth, very shabbily dressed, smoking out of a fine new pipe. I concluded the pipe was a Christmas present; but such people have no secrets, and, from a paucity of knowledge, they always talk of themselves. I was soon informed both of his history and the history of his pipe. He was a turner, and turners in Germany are the great manufacturers of the stems and bowls of the pipes most commonly in use, and he had laboured assiduously, in his spare hours, to make a new one for himself. He was then going to Leipsic, to carry a lamp he had made for one of the children of a sister who was there married, in return for the festival boots and stockings his sister had given him. The world is full of calamity, or, at least, men are full of complaints; and this youth lamented his sufferings very bitterly. His father was reduced, by his property having been twice burnt, from employing six workmen, and sending his wife regularly to Leipsic fair to sell pipes, to [I-40] depend entirely on chance sale, and on his own and his son’s labours. The great evil, however, of which he complained, was the want of enjoyment, as he designated his inability any longer to participate in all the amusements and dissipations of richer companions. Unfortunately, all men give these alone the name of enjoyments, and many of our better pleasures are stigmatized as labour. He could go very seldom to the music-club, and was sometimes obliged to work on feast-days. For what trifling gratifications is wealth desired by all classes of people!

From knowing the great partiality of the Germans to music, and how extensively it is cultivated by them, I was not surprised to hear this ragged lad talk of music-clubs in villages, nor to hear him regret that he was no longer able to frequent them. Music is to the Germans what moral and political reasoning is to us;—the great thing to which all the talents of the people are directed; and it is as natural that Handel, and Haydn, and Mozart, and Beethoven, the greatest of modern composers, should have been Germans, as that Hume, and Smith, and Paley, and Bentham, and Malthus, the greatest reasoners and political writers of the age, should have been Britons.

On my way I was frequently followed by children who were passing from village to village, though they were too shy to speak, and stopped, almost frightened, [I-41] whenever I spoke to them; yet they were so fond of something like society, that they constantly ran to keep close to me. Two or three gentlemen’s houses lay near the road, but, in general, the country, where cultivated, was not adorned. The season was unfavourable for seeing it, and it was not, therefore, right to judge of it. We reached Leipsic at five o’clock, and I had probably walked thirty-six miles. The great market-place at Leipsic, like that of Wurzen, was full of booths, where all things proper for Christmas-gifts were to be bought.

CHAPTER II.
leipsic—berlin↩

Displeasing politeness.—Grotesque market-place.—Churches.—A picture.—Ceremony of communion.—Funeral of a student.—A beggar.—Leipsic fairs.—A peculiar privilege.—A difference of manners.—A dirty custom.—Leave Leipsic.—A rencontre.—Cause for German indolence.—Want of roads.—Wittenberg, the seat of the Reformation.—A companion.—Trauenbritzen.—Belitz.—Weakness of German children.—Royal roads.—Potsdam.—Statues in gardens.—Arrive at Berlin.

It is customary in Germany for the innkeepers to keep a book in which the names and conditions of their guests, where they come from, and where they are going to, must be written. Exclusive of passports being inspected at the police, this book, or extracts from it, must be regularly sent there; and the landlords are therefore particular in requesting every stranger to fill up its columns with all the proper information. At Leipsic, the waiter, on coming to me for this purpose, was extremely slow to believe that I was an Englishman. He would rather believe me to be a Pole, an Hungarian, or a Swede. For this I was [I-43] not sorry, for I know of no appearance which subjects a man to more unreasonable demands than that of an Englishman. At length he was persuaded, and he thought he was doing me a service while he mortified me by placing me, at the table d’hote, at dinner time, by the side of an English gentleman, who had come, some little time before, from Liverpool, with the intention of learning the German language at Leipsic, and who had yet learnt nothing, either of the language or of the people, but how to ask for segars, and how to smoke them, both of which things he did tolerably well.

From reading the work of Mad. de Stael on Germany, I expected to see there strange old towns, but nothing had hitherto realised the expectation. The market-place at Leipsic did it fully. Goethe described the houses of this city well when he called them “extraordinary shining buildings, with a front to two streets, inclosing courts, and containing every class of citizens, within heaven-high buildings, that resemble large castles, and are equal to half a city.” Roofs, which alone contained six stories of windows, with small steeples on their tops; circular houses, diminishing at every story, resembling the pictures of the tower of Babel; two or three towers, placed by the sides of houses, as if a staircase separate from the building had been provided for it; some fronts which [I-44] had been modernized, and disfigured by a multitude of pillars and pilasters above pillars and pilasters; and the ancient gaol-like, but fantastical town-house,—made the market-place of Leipsic one of the most grotesque-looking spots I ever saw.

As it was Christmas-day, every place, even the bankers, was shut; the churches were crowded; and nothing was to be sold but spirits and medicines. At church, the music and singing seemed the most attractive part of the performance, and so soon as these were done, many of the congregation went away. The men generally stood, and the women sat. Amongst the uncovered heads of the former some emblems of German genius might be traced. The hair of the old men was smoothed down on the fronts and sides, as if it were ironed, while that of the young ones, combed up with their fingers à la François, was standing out in a circle, like a well-trundled mop. The former resembled the old plodding German; the latter was the type of the present German, flying off from most of the restraints of reason and of common sense.

Pictures are still allowed in the Lutheran churches, though no longer worshipped or prayed to, and one that I observed here, in St Paul’s church, deserves to be mentioned, as having one feature of common sense more than is usually seen in religious pictures. Many of their absurdities are [I-45] truly ludicrous, and among them may be enumerated that the mother of the Saviour is always painted young. When she looks on her son on the cross, and when Jesus tells her, “Woman, behold thy son,” she is even then often represented as a blooming young woman. In this picture, and it was the only time I ever noticed the circumstance, she was represented as an elderly matron. The painter had not worked a second miracle, and bestowed with his pencil perpetual youth.

The manner in which the sacrament was administered was different from the manner of administering it in the church of England. A clergyman stood at each side of the altar; the persons intending to communicate were placed in a row on one side, and when the previous prayers had been recited, they walked, one after another, first to one clergyman, who had the consecrated wafers, and who repeated some words while he gave a wafer to the communicant. He received it standing, but bowing, and then passing behind the altar, came in front of the other clergyman, from whom he received the cup, and he then retired. The organ played and the choristers sang during the whole of the ceremony.

The university of Leipsic is at present chiefly famous for it medical studies, but the most celebrated man then there I understood to be a Professor [I-46] Platner, [1] who, though now old, had been formerly much distinguished as a moral philosopher, and as a very decided opponent of Kant. To a person without party feelings, it is difficult to decide which possesses least sense, the aphorisms of Platner or the categories of his opponent. This university was formerly much more famous than at present, and, under the guidance of the celebrated German poet Gellert, who was professor of belles lettres, it almost rivalled Göttingen. Its fame is much diminished. Gellert is buried here, and there is a monument erected in the church of St John to his memory.

I wished to have learned something more of the university, but it was holiday time, and there were no lectures then giving. As there was nothing particular to be seen in the town, had it not been that I had some business with a banker, I should have immediately pursued my journey, but I was obliged to wait till the morning of the 27th, and in the meantime to amuse myself as I could. In Dresden I had more money than I liked to carry with me, and I there wanted the banker to give me a bill on Hannover for the amount, but there was no communication between the two towns, and I was obliged to take a bill on Leipsic, and exchange that [I-47] for one on Hannover. It was to procure this I was obliged to wait.

After dining, walking about the town, and looking at the lottery-house, as a decent little building near the market-place is called; at the old castle; at the statue of the present king of Saxony, standing on the former glacis; and after admiring the beautiful walk which has been made on the former walls of the town, I sought out one of the best coffee-houses, and found a large quantity of men assembled playing at billiards, drafts, and a game called locatelli, resembling, in some of its parts, our backgammon; but, to my surprise, there were no women present. In all such places I had seen before, some were in general present.

Chance afterwards made me a spectator of the funeral of a student, which was followed by nearly all the equipages of Leipsic. It was something extraordinary even for the inhabitants, and the severe cold did not prevent the people from looking out of their windows, while they leaned on the little cushions, which are placed on most German window-frames, for the more comfortable gratification of curiosity. Owners of carriages allow their servants to let them on such occasions as this, and the students, wishing to do honour to their departed comrade, had hired a vast number. The body, covered with a pall, was carried on men’s shoulders; a company of soldiers,—the deceased [I-48] had also been in the army,—and a band of music playing slow and solemn tunes, preceded the corpse. The carriages and a great crowd of people followed it. I did also, but was not fortunate to get sufficiently near the grave to hear all the eulogium that was pronounced. It was delivered by one of the students with great solemnity, and reminded me of the eulogiums which are spoken in France over the graves of distinguished men. All that I learned was, that the dead man had served his country both with his pen and his sword, and that he would long be remembered by his brother students as an example of industry in his studies, and of urbanity and politeness in his conduct. His whole history was also given, but this was done in so low a tone of voice, that I could hear very little of it. He was of the middling ranks, not rich, and the present respect was paid only to his merit. Hymns were sung over the grave, music played; there was more than one speaker, and the student was, in all things, honoured as if he had been some respected chief. This is a specimen of the brotherhood and enthusiasm which prevails amongst the students of Germany;—no son of study in any other country could possibly expect such a convoy to his grave as accompanied this young man.

Most of the tomb-stones had crowns of laurel or flowers hung on them, and garlands decorated them, as is usual in German burial-grounds. [I-49] Small shrubs and flowers were planted on the graves; some were carefully watered and cherished, and others were decaying or decayed, like the affections which planted them. A widower may attend his daughters to the grave of their mother, and a husband his wife to the tomb of their child, but it is chiefly women who thus honour the dead, and who always, at least, display most gracefully all our better affections.

In the evening, although it was Christmas-day, I went to the theatre, to hear some declamation, and to see one of those representations of pictures or statues, which are now become common in Germany. A sufficient number of performers, dressed in proper costume, place themselves at the end of the stage, in the attitudes in which the figures of any picture are placed. The stage is lighted in such a manner, on this occasion, as to throw on the performers that quantity of light and shade which the picture requires, or indeed possesses. Curtains or scenes proper for the perspective of the picture are used, so that a very accurate copy is represented in a short time. This mode is even adopted to realize the ideas of a painter. He imagines any subject, and he brings it at once to the test of proof by letting it be represented as a picture by living beings. The pictures pleased me; the declamation was not good. In Germany persons recite or declaim favourite pieces of poetry very frequently in public. On this occasion, the [I-50] applause was immoderate, and I pitied a very good actress, and a very fine woman, a Miss Böhler, who was called forth to be thanked, because she was likely to mistake the vociferations of the students, who formed a large part of the spectators, for the impartial judgment of a discerning public.

It is not very amusing to walk about the almost deserted streets of a town, and, as the Germans consecrate three days to Christmas holidays, the 26th was also a festival, which kept me at the inn. As I was writing, a man entered my room, and begged something for the poor of Leipsic. The names of the donors, and the donations, were all inscribed in a book he brought with him, and he seemed to think it ought to induce me to give, that my name would then be written in the same book with the names of kings and princes. Gifts from their Majesties of Prussia and Denmark were recorded, and the name of the last person who had given any thing was that of a Polish prince. I was deaf to the charm. The man was displeased, and he put away his book with something like an expression of contempt for a person who refused to buy, on such cheap terms, the honour of letting his name be recorded in company with the names of monarchs. This manner of begging is practised in most of the large towns.

There are four fairs, small and large, held at Leipsic in the year, and, as I could not see one, [I-51] nor get any valuable information as to the quantity of goods annually sold, I reasoned on them. Nothing but custom, and some original privileges, can have made Leipsic the seat of the commerce of the north of Germany, and of the fairs, particularly book fairs, for which it is famous. It has no advantages of situation like Magdeburgh, Dresden, or Berlin. The two former towns lying on the Elbe, and, therefore, having a water communication from Bohemia to the North Sea, and the latter connected with the North Sea, the Baltic, and Bohemia, by means of canals that join the Oder and the Elbe, have some local advantages much superior to those of Leipsic. Neither does it possess any superiority in literature. Where roads are bad, and communication difficult, and where land-carriage is impeded and uncertain, it is necessary men should be sure of finding a market for their goods before they send them away, and equally necessary that they who want to buy, should be sure to find what they want at some particular spot. Fairs were convenient for both parties, and certain privileges, such as “that all merchandize passing within sixty miles of Leipsic, was obliged to be carried through that town, that the merchants there might have the first offer of it;” [2] and a central situation, when [I-52] water carriage was little used, made Leipsic be selected. Warehouses once built, and capital collected there, it continued to be the resort of merchants when the conveniences of its situation were surpassed by those of other places. In Britain, where a facility of communication allows an immediate and rapid circulation of commodities, fairs, except those of mere amusement, are no longer numerous, and, wherever they are numerous, as in Germany, they are proofs of a backward state of commerce. As the means of communication are facilitated, fairs must diminish, and this is probably the cause why Leipsic is not now so prosperous as formerly, and why several people with large capitals are withdrawing themselves to other places.

In the evening I was disappointed at seeing, in the theatre, a sort of melo-dramatic version of the Tancred of Voltaire, in which there was nothing good but some splendid scenery; it gained the author, however, who was called for, very great applause. The spectators were prodigal of their thanks. Two performers were also called forth, probably from a wish to hear the neat ready-made speeches with which the honour conferred is most humbly acknowledged.

There is a great difference in the manners of the inhabitants of Leipsic and Dresden. Here no women are admitted into the pit; there this [I-53] part of the theatre was chiefly occupied by them; there it was impossible to speak to any person who was not perfectly acquainted with most of the theatrical pieces and performers; here I addressed myself to two or three persons, without getting the little articles of information I wanted. There the occasional presence of the royal family prevented any thing like noise; here the pit had some resemblance to the same place in an English theatre; stamping with the feet, and striking with sticks, with other marks of impatience, were frequent. The mercantile pursuits of the inhabitants of one town, and the almost want of any other pursuit but amusement in the inhabitants of the other, gives a marked difference to their characters which the most casual observer may see. Those are more bustling, more busy, more energetic,; these more polite, more soft, and better informed in all the elegant parts of the literature of their country.

I observed also a marked difference in the conversation of the people at the table d’hote. They were mostly mercantile travellers, or merchants of the town, and we sat down, a large party, of at least sixty people. The conversation related chiefly to their amusements, and their engagements for other amusements, but mixed with this were matters of commerce, and some remarks on politics. In Dresden the conversation was more literary. With one or two young men I had some [I-54] conversation about the German language; and when they knew I was going to Hannover, they said, in their Frankfort dialect, they should like to go also, for there people spoke the German language better than in any other part of Germany. The inn was a splendid one, and among the company I remarked some who sat in boxes at the theatre, and used an opera-glass, and drove their own carriage, yet they practised the dirty custom of picking their teeth with the table forks; one of them even used one to scratch his head. The former is a general custom, but it is done with some sort of shame, for the people who do it turn their heads on one side, and conceal their mouths with their other hand.

I left Leipsic on the following morning, December 27, at half past six o’clock. It had now frozen very hard for three days, and it then blew very cold from the north-west. The sky was all covered with a dense hazy sort of clouds, except on the western side, where a streak of silvery light lay on the horizon; it gradually became, as the day advanced, of a fiery red colour, and when the sun rose, it was lost in the general brightness. I had been told the road was good, but I soon found that I was indebted to nothing but the frost for clean walking. It was a mere track, and froze so hard in ridges and lumps, that it was like uneven stones. Close to the town, all the tracks that led to the [I-55] neighbouring villages were equally well trodden with the principal track, and I very soon took a wrong one. I was obliged to call some people up, at a cottage, to shew me my way, which they did very civilly. As I got farther from the town, the bye-roads were no longer so good as the principal road, and all difficulty vanished. An easier way of travelling than walking soon suggested itself. At the side of the road ditches had been cut, which were then filled with ice, and on this I slid along gaily some miles.

I had nearly reached Duben, about twenty-two miles from Leipsic, and had seen no person on the road, when I met a man and woman, who both seemed so fond of talking, that one would never let the other speak without interruption. After the usual salutation of good-day, they immediately told me they were clothmakers, and were going to Leipsic fair. This sort of communicativeness is an apology for curiosity. It gives a right to demand, in return, some information of the person to whom it is addressed. My loquacious acquaintance were not slow in using this right, and I was obliged to tell them exactly who and what I was, where I came from, and where I was going to. They then both complained of the badness of the times; the woman exclaimed; the man reasoned; one said the raw material was dear, the other that cloth was cheap; and both agreed it was impossible to live. [I-56] The man asked, was trade bad in England? Yes. He then took hold of the button of my great-coat, with all the familiarity of an old acquaintance, observing, at the same time, it was a very handsome Saxon brown, and whispered in my ear, as if he were afraid his wife might hear him, that all the evil was owing to machinery. I was of a different opinion, and, unwilling to lose an opportunity of opposing a prejudice,—for who does not think his own opinions true, and the opinions of other persons prejudices?—I began, in bad German, a description of a machine, and the effects of machinery; but though they were ready to talk, they were not ready to listen; and, allowing me to say but very few words, they asked me, had I found the road from Leipsic good? The woman said she was tired, and was fearful she should not be able to reach it. I pitied her, and we wished each other a safe journey, and parted.

The bitterest enemies, if they were to meet each other in a desert, and had not seen any other human being for some hours or days, would probably be enemies no more. There is a weaker feeling of this kind which makes strangers address each other on an unfrequented road. They ask some question which they could very well answer themselves, in order to begin a conversation, and they talk of any trifles rather than pass by a person without being friendly with him. I have often done this myself, [I-57] particularly when bad weather, or a more unfrequented road than usual has made me see in every person a sort of companion. My clothmaking gossips had scarcely left me, when a tired man, who seemed to need rest, yet was afraid to take it, detained me a few moments to ask me half a dozen questions, and to tell me he was a Pole by birth, a barber or servant by profession, and that he was going to Leipsic to seek a situation. I told him how far he had yet to walk, encouraged him by telling him the roads were good, but counselled him not to walk to Leipsic that day. Foot travellers get many good wishes for safe journeys, which the people who ride in coaches never hear; and these wishes seem efficacious, for they give pleasure, and possibly make the journey good, by causing resignation to unavoidable evils.

I eat and rested at Duben, and had left it but little more than half an hour, when it began to snow. The road lay through a forest, and as it was little more than a track, I repented leaving Duben. As I marched slowly and carefully forward, deliberating if I should not turn back, I was overtaken by a woman, whose example, while she served me in some measure as a guide, shamed me out of my fears. We walked together, and I heard her history also, what family she had, what her employments were, and what she gained. She also lamented the hardness of the times, and particularly, [I-58] that she had received no Christmas gifts from her husband. She soon left me to continue my journey alone.

Till I reached Duben, I had found the country open, and generally under the plough. It was now nothing but forests; and I resolved, in order not to lose my road, to take up my quarters at the first public-house I met with. The landlord, however, who, I understood from a man I met there, merely lived with the woman, who was the owner of the house, and had not put himself to the expence of buying the sanction of the priest, received me very uncivilly; and as I, at the same time, and by the same means, learnt there was another public-house which was much better, and not very far off, I set out to seek it, and got there safe before it was dark. My informant arrived shortly afterwards; he had met with a return carriage going to Berlin, and he had taken a seat in it, and wished to persuade me to accompany him. But I was clothed for walking, not for sitting still in a carriage on a snowy night. The roads were rugged and difficult to find, and I resolved to stay where I was.

In the course of the day I met a great many carriages and waggons going to Leipsic, and all the travellers, wrapped up in two or three great-coats, with their faces buried in caps and handkerchiefs, remained sitting in a sort of stupid indifference, [I-59] just preserving animation enough to keep their tobacco burning, and their pipes from falling out of their mouths. Not one of them attempted to walk, though they might all have walked faster than their carriages, and might have kept themselves comfortably warm; but bodily exertion of all kinds is most certainly avoided by the richer classes of the Germans. This indolence may be partly accounted for thus: Their sleeping-rooms are generally heated, and the feather-beds, which are used as covers, always kept me—though, whenever it was practicable, I stripped myself to my shirt—in a constant state of profuse perspiration. The Germans, in addition to covering themselves with these beds, very generally sleep in night-dresses of flannel. In fact, they take nothing off but their upper garments, which are not unfrequently exchanged for some sort of jacket or gown. The beds and the rooms together make a sort of sweating bath, more enfeebling, probably, than a frequent use of warm bathing. The effects on myself were always refreshing, but weakening; they did away stiffness and fatigue, but sleep did not give me strength; and it is probable that the effects are the same on the Germans, and even much more powerful. The body is kept in a state of languid health, but all that freshness and vigour of limb which belongs to youth and a hardy people are destroyed. The Germans have no need of exertion, which we find so necessary, [I-60] to promote perspiration, and therefore they have no wish for it, and do not take it. The character of men is the result of all they feel; and this state of the bodies of the Germans is undoubtedly a cause for some part of their character—for the placidness, stillness, and want of energy, which distinguish them from the other nations of Europe. It does not hinder them from thinking, writing, and compiling, day after day, week after week; in fact, it permits them to do all these more than any other people can, for they can do them constantly, and with little fear of injury to their health; but it deprives them of the need and of the wish for active exertion.

There were several other travellers collected in this inn besides myself, who were generally merchants or traders going to Leipsic. Some of them were Prussians, and resident at Berlin, who did not therefore listen with any patience to our landlord’s many complaints. Men complain much too often without reason, and those sufferings which an accurate observer may trace to have been caused by themselves, they attribute to the last remarkable event,—the appearance of a comet, the momentary passage of an army, or a change in the government. This country had been Saxon, and was part of that which the sovereign of Prussia took to himself; and our landlord, therefore, attributed all his sufferings to the change in his sovereign. Certainly [I-61] his taxes being doubled was a just cause of complaint. He had served his country, he said, meaning Saxony, as a soldier, and his reward now was, that when his son was sixteen years of age, he would be taken for the Prussian armies. He could neither breed nor buy a good horse with security, for if the government wanted horses, it would take his. In short, he paid double the price for protection which he had formerly paid, and was now oppressed rather than protected. His complaints did not please our Berlin companions, and they soon turned the conversation on the marches and victories and glories of the Prussian armies. I then ceased to attend to it, or participate in it, and began nursing a child for my amusement. Its smiles and prattlings were more pleasing to me than all the thrice told, and trebly augmented, feats of Blucher.

German beds are generally small, without curtains, and several of them may therefore be conveniently placed in the same room; and not unfrequently there is, in small inns, but one apartment, as in this house, for several guests. On more than one occasion I have seen decent female travellers sleep in the same room with gentlemen, and from they never remarking that the practice was curious or offensive, it may be inferred that it is general. When I came into the house, the maid was dirty, and her clothes much neglected; I observed [I-62] she was afterwards smartly dressed, and clean washed; her cheeks were glowing, and her eyes sparkling with animation and ardour. It was then ten o’clock,—I asked the reason of the change,—and was informed she was then going to a dance. I saw her again at four o’clock in the morning; she told me she had walked half a league, had danced till two o’clock, had then walked home, and had not been in bed. I regretted then and since I could not waltz, and that I did not know of the dance a little earlier, or I should certainly have asked permission to accompany her, to see if the joys of the German peasantry were not like those of other people.

In the course of the evening I saw a letter addressed to the landlord, inviting him to attend the baptism of a child, which I understood was born out of marriage. It excited my curiosity, and it was given me. The direction was, “To the well-esteemed and well-reputed Mr——my highly prized cousin, at Köplitz.” The letter began, “Well-esteemed and highly reputed Sir,—As it has pleased God to give us joy by sending us a son,” &c. It invited him to be godfather, and to participate in the feast which was to be given after the religious ceremony was over. And it ended by the lady subscribing herself, for it was sent by the mother only. “The very humble servant of her most honourable cousin.” Such a ceremonious mode of addressing people must be common, [I-63] because the letter was partly printed. They are kept ready, and are filled up when wanted.

Much may be inferred from this little circumstance. Isolated instances of morals may deceive the traveller, but the opinions which are avowed with regard to them never can. When a married man with a family is invited to be the godfather of a child without any acknowledged father, when he accepts such an invitation, and speaks of having done so as a matter of common courtesy, and no extraordinary thing, it may with certainty be inferred, that to have an illegitimate child is no matter of reproach. With such opinions, it is not at all surprising that men and women should live together without the sanction of the priest. An instance was mentioned a few pages back. When such is the conduct of the middling and lower classes of society, it is a certain sign that it has long formed a part of the manners of the whole. In this part of the country, there were no great towns to corrupt the morals of the people, and such as they are, so they must have been, from the natural inertia of the peasants, for ages. Their manners only change with centuries.

The morning of the 28th was moonlight and clear, and I left the inn at five o’clock. The road was a mere track, through forests and in sand; and it was not very long before I became doubtful if I were going right, and applied at some [I-64] cottages, where the people were just up, for directions. The woman gave me them very correctly and minutely, and, so far as they extended, I found my way very well. Women generally do this office of kindness better than men. The latter tell you to go straight forward, but the former always describe the road, the turnings you must take, and the marks you must attend to. This may be occasioned by their possessing a greater sensibility to little wants; by their more correct observation; or, by that less amiable propensity attributed to the sex, of loving to hear themselves talk. It is more likely, however, that their own difficulties have taught them the wants of others. They are accustomed to go from village to village, and from town to town, carrying loads, and till they have become thoroughly acquainted with the whole of the country, they must often have occasion to ask their way, and hence they learn accurately to inform other persons. Before reaching a little town called Kemberg, five miles from where I slept, I had again lost my way. It had snowed a little during the night, but not enough to hide the road, had one ever been properly made. An old man, who was sitting by his stove, mending his breeches, sent his son to put me in the right track. It was rather solitary to be thus wandering alone through forests and something like deserts; but the clouds, as they were blown swiftly past the moon, appeared almost [I-65] company, and I was pleased it was the commencement rather than the close of day. At Kemberg I found a paved road, which lasted to Wittenberg, where I arrived at eight o’clock.

This town now belongs to Prussia: it formerly belonged to Saxony, and its fortifications have been repaired and strengthened as a frontier town to the former country. Its situation on the Elbe gives it advantages in this point of view, and ought to give it great trading advantages, but these are not known, or not profited by. Situated in a country that wants only industry to make it fertile, with both iron and coal in its neighbourhood, and with the high road from Berlin to Leipsic passing through it; it contains only 5000 inhabitants, and has no commerce whatever. It is fast sinking into ruin, and nothing about it looked neat or in repair, but the nicely formed mathematical angles of the new fortifications by which the ruins are protected.

This town was the first seat, and the very high place of the Reformation. At its once famous university Luther began his celebrated career. Here he was professor, and from the pulpits and desks of Wittenberg he thundered his masculine and powerful eloquence against the corruptions of Rome. The university is now forsaken and suppressed. The tombs of Luther, of Melancthon, and of their friend Frederick the Wise, are still in the castle-church, [I-66] but this venerable cradle of one of the best children of improving knowledge is passing fast into oblivion. All that was sacred, so well as all that was grand, has decayed, and man should cease to venerate what time and nature have not spared; while his life is fresh, and his reason strong,—while his sense of enjoyment is unfaded, he should be happy in these gifts; he should regard them as holy, and they should be the themes of his admiration. It may, perhaps, be absurd to venerate buildings that, however they might once have been sacred as the abodes of piety, learning, and genius, are now mouldering to decay. Yet it would have done honour to the Germans, while they are so enthusiastic in reviving every memorial of their ancient glory, if they had resented, as a slight to their national reputation, the recent destruction of the university where Luther and Melancthon had been teachers. I arrived too early at Wittenberg to see their tombs without waiting longer than was pleasant to me, and therefore I did not remain. My walk was nearly solitary the whole day, but not cheerless. At a village I found boys sliding; I slid with them. The village dogs barked at me as they all do at strangers, and as if I were animated by the proverb, that with wolves a man must howl, I made a noise at them in return, and amused myself pelting them with stones, and chasing them. It is thus possibly that a solitary traveller may best amuse [I-67] himself, and may save himself from being unemployed, and almost from being alone.

In travelling, one does not always know where best to stop, nor do tired legs and worn-out spirits always come at the same point of time with the most comfortable inn. In this desolate country it was some time after I was tired and hungry before I reached either a public-house or a village. At length I got to a place called Kropstadt, but found no other refreshment there but bread and cheese, and sour beer. This bad fare, and a ragged landlady, from whose torn finery I concluded she had made several campaigns, and a stifling dirty room, were not temptations to make me linger over my repast, and I had soon finished, ready to accompany a soldier and his wife, who I found journeying on foot the way I was going. He was a Prussian, who had just received his dismission from his regiment, which was at Mayence. He had there married his wife, and was now conducting her into East Prussia, where he had himself been born. For him to marry, it was necessary for him to have the permission both of his parents and of the government. It began to blow strong, and to snow, and though we walked within a few yards of each other, till we reached Trauenbritzen, we were too much engaged with umbrellas to allow of much conversation. I inquired here after the best inn, and the soldier, who said he knew the place well, [I-68] pointed one out to me, which I soon found could have little claim to the title, and which seemed to be recommended to him by the fine sign of Marshal Blucher. The extent of my day’s walk was probably somewhat more than thirty miles. The greater part of the country was of a sandy soil, and covered with forests of pines. There were few villages, and not much cultivation. This, with bad weather, it snowing occasionally, and the snow covering the ground, gave me an idea that the country was more desolate than possibly it is. The road, however, till within a short distance of Trauenbritzen, where a new one was made, that is to be extended to Leipsic, was in general nothing but a track through openings in the forest, and where carriages and travellers not unfrequently lose their way. Such is the state of communication in some of the most enlightened parts of Germany. Bad as this is, it has been improved very much within thirty years.

The public-house, for it did not deserve the name of an inn, was full of people, who were collected to pass their Sunday evening in revelry and drinking. They were all traders or peasants, and smoked and talked loud, and constantly. One had brought his book to read, which he continued to do, except when he thought his superior wisdom enabled him to give information to the rest of the company; one of them said pithy [I-69] things in a poetical tone of voice and manner. He had been a great speculator, though, as his neighbour informed me, all his schemes had failed. Yet he still believed he had schemes that could improve the world. When any other of the company complained, he told him, in an oracular manner, “Have patience, brother, and you will find in a little time all will go well. “Another appeared anxious to shew how stupid he was. He had been at school for three years, and had also had a private instructor, but he had not learnt to write, and could barely read. He attributed his ignorance to his teachers, and seemed to think teachers ought to be punished if scholars wanted brains and industry. Government, he said,—for from an unhappy frame of mind, the most ignorant of all beings think themselves fit for legislators, particularly to make restrictive laws,—ought to make some regulations for instructors. He appeared to think they ought to be compelled to make stupid people like him men of genius and talent. Thus it is, also, in many other cases, ignorance and imbecility attribute their wants and their failings to a want of laws, and imagine that political regulations can give knowledge, and wisdom, and wealth. They constantly demand this or that restrictive law, till the whole race of mankind are chained down to what ignorance, and imbecility, and avarice, have prescribed. The comfort of my inn did not compensate [I-70] the privations of the day, and I went early to bed, tired from my walk, and unrefreshed from what I had enjoyed.

It snowed very much in the night, and in the morning a violent snow storm came on soon after I had set out on my journey. The snow froze as it fell, or drifted up in great heaps, and the icicles hung about my whiskers; fortunately the wind was behind me, which enabled me to protect my face and ears with my umbrella. Nothing was to be seen but the tops of the trees by the road side, and but for them, I might have wandered in some ditch or wild. After walking three hours, one of those trifling accidents happened, which, when not repaired in time, sometimes lead to serious misfortunes; the seam of my shoe burst, but as I remembered the old story of the nail and the shoe, and the horse and the rider, I prudently remained at Belitz till it was repaired. The people of the house pleased me; the man brought me slippers, an accommodation not always to be had, even when asked for. The eldest daughter was a very handsome brunette, but, though not above twenty years of age, had lost her teeth. The other children had black eyes and hair, which was rather extraordinary for the country, and they appeared very intelligent and gentle. German children are generally soft and gentle, even to weakness. They seldom appear robust, [I-71] which may be owing to the general enfeebled nature of the parents, and to late marriages. If the evil influence of the latter cause were not more to be attributed to the system of libertinism pursued prior to marriage, than to the mere lateness, it would form one of the strongest objections I know to that moral restraint which is recommended by Mr Malthus. For a debilitated, an effeminate, and an imbecile race of men would be but a poor remedy for the evils of poverty, and a redundant population.

Towards noon the weather became better, but the wind had shifted, and blew in my face. I made a screen of my umbrella, and, thus protected, marched on. Whether it is that the Prussians are less friendly than the Saxons, or whether the cold was too great to allow them to speak, cannot be decided, but several people would hardly return my salutation. At length I overtook a man with a long white bag, which was filled at both ends, and thrown over his shoulder. A broad face, red cheeks, wide mouth, a short snub nose, and a sort of scattered white whiskers, gave him the air of good-natured simplicity. A large hat covered his brow,—a long blue coat reached almost to the ground,—trowsers and boots—made up his dress. He wore both a cross and a medal, having made several campaigns, and, like many of the peasants, had won all the honours of a soldier. We talked [I-72] about the size of his father’s farm, how he held his property, and such things, and we arrived at Potsdam together. There were many fine buildings here, but none which pleased me so well at the moment as a comfortable inn, where beef-steaks for supper and a good bed were provided me.

This day’s walk did not exceed twenty-six miles, and the country appeared mostly uncultivated, with a very large proportion of forests. There were very few villages, and these were small, the houses were built of mud, and generally thatched.

The road was good throughout, the royal chaussee being here completed; and it is certainly a very fine one. It is paved in the middle, though the pavement is broad enough only for one carriage, while the road would allow of four passing a-breast. It is planted with trees on each side. It is not only useful, but magnificent;—perhaps too magnificent. The roads which branch off from it, though they lead only to a small collection of mud huts, are equally spacious with the main road, like that royal taste which builds a magnificent portico to a stable. Royal roads are less constructed with regard to their general utility than to their magnificence, and their utility to the monarch; and the roads of Great Britain, taken as a whole, are not only more numerous, but each road, merely because it is planned by individuals who are to reap a profit from it, is better calculated [I-73] for public utility than any one of the magnificent royal roads of other countries.

Out of Britain most people conceive it to be one of the duties of government,—one which individuals cannot exercise,—to make roads. Remembering this, led me to speculate, as the snow fell, as to the real extent to which governments—considered, as some individuals different from, and separate from the mass of society, regulating the whole—are necessary for its good. I remembered, that what was considered formerly as one of their most important duties, the creation of a proper currency, had recently been performed in a much more commodious manner by individuals, as bankers, and that paper circulation had only become inconvenient through governments interfering with it; that, probably, all the now hateful duties of a police might be better performed by the individuals of the society taking on themselves, as every man now partially does, the duty of learning what his neighbour’s conduct is, and speaking of it freely and openly, and treating him according to his behaviour. It is very evident that every thing regulated by the opinion of the whole society, not directed by the previously formed opinions of some few men, must be always regulated, in the best possible manner, agreeable to the wisdom and knowledge of the whole society. What is directed by a few men, can only be regulated by [I-74] the wisdom and knowledge they possess, and it must be better every society should be regulated by all its wisdom and knowledge, rather than by a part of these estimable qualities. I can hardly tell with what narrow bounds this speculation led me to circumscribe the duties of governments, nor how much the reverence which I, in common with every man, had been taught to pay them, dwindled in my imagination. I will not answer for the utility of such a speculation further than that it was a great pleasure to me on a cold snowy morning, when I was travelling alone in a strange country.

Potsdam is a well built town. Most of the streets are at right angles, and, though the houses are not regularly built with regard to one another, most of them were nicely painted, clean, splendid with gilt and decorations, and all looked well. There was a sort of meretricious splendour about sign-boards and gilded letters to tell you where coffee and tea were to be bought, or brandy and beer to be sold, that reminded me of England, and that differed from the modest inscriptions of the Saxons. It is very expensive to see all the shows of Potsdam, such as the picture gallery, the insides of the palaces, the tomb of the great Frederick, and others. They are, therefore, generally visited in parties, and as there happened, at that time of year, to be no persons visiting them, I was debarred [I-75] from seeing them, without expending more Thalers than I thought them worth pence. I merely looked, therefore, at the gardens, and the outsides of the palaces. Truly, the lodgings which are here provided for one family, might almost serve a nation. There are not less than eight spacious palaces in Potsdam, or in its vicinity, belonging to the sovereign. I doubt if the profusion of the sovereigns of France, whatever their splendour might do, equalled the profusion of the sovereigns of Prussia.

The extensive gardens of these palaces are ornamented with a great number of statues and busts, all of which were then shapeless from the snow. Many of them were mutilated, and most of them were covered with moss. The climate of Greece and Rome, from which countries we have borrowed the practice of placing statues in gardens, was much more suitable to it than the cold and wet climate of the north. And when the Greeks and the Romans did not live entirely out of doors, they lived much more in public places, in their gardens, and amongst their statues, than we do, or can. We live in our houses, and it is them, therefore, which we ought to render convenient and to adorn. Statues in our garden accord neither with our climates, with our habits of life, nor with the best mode of making our gardens. The great expence of so many carved pieces of marble, is a mere absurd imitation [I-76] of an ancient custom; it is unsanctioned by reason, and it is equally condemned by good taste and sage economy.

The most meritorious thing at Potsdam—always excepting the immense house which is there, so large as the celebrated rope-making house at Portsmouth, intended to protect men during rainy weather, while they are taught to stand upright, to thrust their breasts out and hold their bellies in, to march and countermarch with regularity and precision—is the canal which passes here, and which connects the Spree with the Havel, and thus affords a water communication from the Elbe to Berlin. But even this, like most royal works, the lover of utility would censure, as being much more magnificent than it ought to be, made more to gratify the vanity of the monarch than to improve the condition of the people. There is much water about Potsdam, and to see it in its beauty, the summer and a party are necessary. Both were wanting, and I left it, therefore, notwithstanding it snowed and blew a storm, to walk to Berlin. The wind was behind me, my umbrella protected me, and blew me, running, along. I went merrily forward, and got sweet greetings and smiles from some fine women, to whom I wished a better journey than they were likely to have in open carriages, exposed to the snow. It is a pity women do not always know the power which bright eyes [I-77] and cheerful smiles have on men, or they might lead them to acquire many a gentle accomplishment, to do many a gentle deed, that would promote the happiness of both. When I now turn back on my peregrinations, I know nothing that leaves a stronger feeling of regret than the recollection of many of those sweet faces, that smiled on me for a moment, and have never been seen any more. This is one of the most painful of all the feelings of the traveller. He catches a momentary view of beings he thinks time would make him love, and then he loses them for ever. They seem to him like the angels of the world, and he is only consoled for their loss by reflecting, that it is that itself which makes him so regard them, and that, possibly, he would have ceased to adore had he known them better.

I reached Berlin at four o’clock, and took up my quarters at the Golden Angel. For some part of my walk I had an elderly woman, carrying a large loaded basket, for a companion; she was to carry it, in all, ten miles. She complained very bitterly of the sovereign, who she called a complete Buonaparte. She had been the mother of twelve children, and seven of these had been soldiers. Surely her labour was hard enough, yet she said she could not get enough to feed her well, and keep her warm. When absolute idleness wallows in riches, and industry has nothing, there is surely something wrong in the social regulations.

CHAPTER III.
Prussia.↩

Berlin.—Buildings.—Animation.—University.—Curious natural collection.—Journals.—Changes in government.—Provincial states.—Privileges of nobles.—Control of education.—Administration of justice.—Orders of knighthood.—Leave Berlin.—Village alehouse.—Pedlar-gambling.—A nobleman’s toll-bar.—A character.—Burg.—A statue.—Magdeburg.—How accosted.—Change in society.—Former destruction of the city.—Trade.—Marriage feast.

The Havel and the Spree rather spread themselves into innumerable lakes and ponds, than flow through the sandy flat country about Berlin. Noble woods, or parks, extend to the very gates of this city, which stands in a flat country, in the midst of forests, deserts, and swamps. In proportion as its situation is bad, its splendour is great. When I passed, on the morning after my arrival, over a little bridge leading from the palace to the arsenal square, Platz am Zeughaus, I was surprised at the magnificence of the buildings. There wanted nothing but a Seine and the lofty trees of the Champs Elysees, and the Tuillerie gardens, to make this, in point of the surrounding buildings, equal to the beautiful view from the [I-79] bridge of Louis XV. at Paris. Many of the cities of Europe may contain, on the whole, more fine buildings than Berlin, but there are few which contain so many all collected on a spot. The palace, Schloss, the house in which the sovereign resides; the arsenal, which is a very handsome building; the library, the university, the Catholic church, the opera house, several very fine private houses, and a very handsome street, Unter den Linden, which is planted with rows of trees, and at the end of which stands the famous Brandenburg gate, may be all seen at once from this spot, or by merely turning the head. The house in which the king resides is not a very showy building, but the palace proper, Schloss, is very large, consisting, indeed, of three distinct buildings. The most modern is the most elegant. It is built in the Italian style, and one of its entrances is a triumphal arch; the next in point of age, joining and forming one side of the first, is a mixture of styles of building; and the third is a dismal Gothic castle. The whole of this is kept for state, and is inhabited merely by officers of the court and servants. How many stately mansions have I now seen, that serve no other purpose but for birds to roost in, or to employ persons to keep them in repair! How many beautiful gardens, that wanted nothing but human beings to enjoy them! Few succeeding monarchs will dwell in the house of their predecessors. They build palaces for [I-80] themselves, which fall, in their turn, into ruin. What an expence of human labour, to heap stones on stones, and how may its misdirection be deplored, when the wastes of the earth are yet untilled, and when the intellect of the great multitude is utterly neglected.

There are no monarchs of Europe, who, in proportion to the extent and wealth of their dominions, have built so much and so splendidly as the monarchs of Prussia. Berlin is throughout well built, though marks may be discovered of houses patched up to make a shew, and the new town appeared not to have grown from the wants of the people, but to be habitations ready provided for them. It looked as if it were half uninhabited. One of the best streets is that which extends from the Brandenburg gate to the square of the arsenal. It is planted with trees, is wider than the Boulevards of Paris, and is the fashionable promenade. This celebrated gate is built after the Propyleum at Athens, though it is much larger. It consists of twelve large columns and eighteen small ones. On the top is a triumphal car, carrying Victory, who, again, carries a lance, with the iron cross of Prussia. This figure was taken to Paris, but brought back when the armies of France could no longer claim her as their own. It makes a very splendid entrance to this military city. Immediately outside of it is the Thier garten, a park containing [I-81] nice walks, and many places for buying refreshment, and where there is music and dancing on Sundays and holidays. On New-year’s-day this park was crowded. A great portion of the company came in sledges, the horses of which were decorated with small bells, and fine feathers. The drivers constantly cracked their whips, and, driving along with great velocity, they gave life to this winter scene.

The Gen d’Arm Platz is a handsome square. The theatre that was burnt in 1817 stood here; enough of its walls remained to testify it had been a very handsome building. There are also in this square two churches, equal in beauty, and resembling one another in their porticoes and steeples. The porticoes are like Grecian temples, and built in the form of a square, three sides of which are formed of flights of steps, columns, capitals, cornices, and pediments, with a multitude of figures. These temples support the steeples. To the fourth side the church is attached. The porticoes are almost large enough to conceal the real churches, which cannot be praised for architecture. I hesitated to mount one of these elegant flights of steps, thinking it could lead only to a sanctuary. I did, however, and found, that like all unemployed buildings in large towns, it was little better than a common receptacle for dirt. The other was appropriated as an office to that part of the police [I-82] which looks after vagrants and beggars. Gorgeous temples for such uses are in the worst possible taste. They cause a painful feeling, similar to that which arises when a woman who looks like a beauty speaks, and convinces us she is a fool or an idiot. Such immense labour, to attain so trifling an end, is like the dexterity of throwing grains of millet-seed through a needle’s eye; and the ingenious contrivers of such costly buildings ought to be rewarded with quarries of stone to build more.

William’s Square, Wilhelms Platz, is adorned with the statues of some of the most famous of Frederick’s generals; and the many other squares and fine buildings of Berlin make it much to be regretted that the capricious taste of a few individuals should have been enabled to build so fine a city in so bad a situation.

I had remarked at Leipsic more bustle and business than I was accustomed to see in German towns, and in Berlin the stir was still greater. More inhabitants would necessarily make more bustle, but, independent of number, each individual seemed more occupied, and to move with greater activity than the Germans generally do. The coldness of the weather did not allow of standing still, but this would have kept indolent people in their houses rather than have sent them swarming into the streets. The ground was [I-83] covered with snow, and it froze very hard, yet the walks and streets were crowded.

There was a pert commanding air among the better dressed males, and the females were generally shewy and gaily dressed, but I could not deny to both, particularly the latter, a greater degree of personal beauty than belongs to their southern countrywomen.

A person is placed by the police in each inn as a valet-de-place, and to be at the same time a spy; he is obliged to give an account of all strangers on their arrival, and to carry their passports to the police for inspection. He is licensed by it, and no other can be employed. When any person wishes to remain three days or longer in Berlin, his passport must be deposited in the police-office, and he receives a particular permission to remain the time he requests. It was quite uncertain how long I should stay, and I did not therefore choose either to ask for a ticket of residence, or have my passport signed, as intending to depart. The valet-de-place thought this wrong, and intruded himself on me more than once, to tell me what I ought to do, and to warn me of the consequences of neglect. I turned him out of the room, and heard no more of him. All such people are regular spies, and, considering their situation, it is like hiring your servant to betray you. No political reasons can compensate [I-84] the distrust which domestic spies cause amongst individuals. They tend to destroy all the confidence of men in each other, and to set strife and hatred betwixt them. Governments forget the end of their existence when they employ so odious a means to attain a trifling object. I had travelled from Munich to Vienna with a French gentleman, who was an object of suspicion to the Austrian police, and with him I was occasionally in the habit of walking about, and wherever he went he was followed and watched. Thus it is that the substance of a nation is wasted, and its morals often perverted, to provide a fancied security for its fearful rulers.

The university of Berlin was established in 1810 by the munificence of the sovereign, who gave a palace for this purpose, and salaries to several learned professors, whom he called from other places. In 1818, it instructed more than 800 students. The mode of instruction, and what is taught, are similar to the mode of instruction, and to what is taught at Göttingen, under which head a more particular description of a university is given. The most celebrated Professors at present are Schleiermacher, Göschen, Savigny, Hufeland, Thaer, and others. There is also a university at Breslau, one at Königsberg, one at Halle, and one at Griefswalde; to these the newly established one at Bonne must be added, making six for [I-85] the whole kingdom. High-schools, in which a learned education is begun, are established in most of the towns. In Berlin alone there are five such. There is also a military school, and a school for engineers; three seminaries, in which schoolmasters are educated; several academies for the arts,—for singing, for architecture; a school for the blind and a school for the deaf; and altogether, more than 250 places for education. Many of them are private, but none can be established without permission.

Berlin is at present one of the places where animal magnetism is most cultivated and studied, and Professor Wolfart makes experiments in this branch of knowledge, and instructs others in it. In Britain it is despised. In Germany it is honoured, and public professors are appointed to teach it. Premiums have been offered by learned bodies for the best classification of its phenomena; and laws, both in Bavaria and Prussia, regulate its administration, and prescribe to what persons its secrets may be made known, and its blessings given.

Museums, galleries of pictures, learned societies, and various collections of things that are not useful, abound in Berlin. They cannot be called peculiarities, for they are found in every city of Germany, and it requires a most practised eye to ascertain the superiority of one to [I-86] another. One which deserves to be mentioned, from the evidence it affords of what learned triflers can employ themselves with, is a collection, in high preservation, of those worms which are sometimes found in the bowels of the human body, (Eingeweide Würmer,) and whose existence there constitute a particular disease. The cure of this disease cannot be promoted by such a collection, neither can it explain either the nature or the sources of the disease. A Professor Rudolpi is the collector. A similar collection exists in Vienna, whose collector is not only thought to be a man of industry, but of talent. These gentlemen must very much need a decent occupation. To bestow professorships on them, and to honour them, seems to me like the vain worship of an idol. There is but one step lower in which learned uselessness can go in its filthy researches. I should be sorry, by the selection of this peculiarity, to teach the reader to infer that the Germans were particularly fond of such pursuits, and that this fondness was a feature of the national character. A love for trifles and absurdities may probably be more common among the learned of Germany than among the learned of other countries, but trifles and absurdities are the occupations merely of a few, and intelligent Germans lament the fondness for them as a peculiarity [I-87] of individuals, and not as forming the national character.

There are fewer public reading rooms in Berlin than in any city I have visited in Germany, and this was to me a matter of regret, as they are good places to gather items of information. There are a great many pamphlets and periodical works published there; some of them are devoted to political subjects, as those published by Speners and Voss. One work which is celebrated on account of its editors, Messrs Savigny, Eichorn, and Göschen, gives information relating to jurisprudence only. Dr Wolfart instructs the world periodically in the progress of animal magnetism, another work gives an account of all new voyages and travels, and various daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, accounts are given of the progress of the fine arts, but there are only two what may be called newspapers, which admit political discussion in their columns. They are both published twice a-week, which is but a scanty supply of political fare for a population amounting to 179,000 people. Political reformations or revolutions effected by such preparations, can never answer any good purpose. Information amongst all classes must be more generally spread. One of these newspapers is devoted to the court, and sometimes gently censured Prince Hardenberg for too great a love for the freedom of the press. He is thought to be its great champion, [I-88] because he declared some years ago, that its influence was beneficial both to sovereigns and subjects. He has since made ample reparation for this departure from state wisdom, by the representations he made at Weimar, where a newspaper called the Oppositions Blatt, one of the most liberal of Germany, was at one time suppressed from his demands.

Without being a man of liberal principles, Prince Hardenberg has been a reformer through his life. He began his career, I believe, at the court of Brunswick, with many professions of benevolence, many promises to forward the education of the people, and he excited many hopes of the improvement he was to effect. He had his fortune, however, to make as a statesman, and it soon appeared that to insure that was the great object of his ambition. It seems now secured, but his disposition to reform remains. He moulds nations in his hands, and if the subjects of Prussia do not improve, it will not be because their institutions have not been many times remodelled and reformed.

The population of Berlin is rapidly increasing; in 1813, exclusive of military, it amounted to 166,584, and in 1817, to 178,811, of which 86,099 were males, and 92,712 females. In 1813, 146,026 professed Lutheranism, 12,117 Calvinism. The Jews amounted to 2698, the Catholics [I-89] to 5725, and the Mennonites were 18. There were in Berlin,

The following notices are chiefly taken from a work in the German language, published at Berlin in 1818, by Mr Demian. The monarch of Prussia is said to possess more unlimited powers than any other of the sovereigns of Germany. And the circumstances of his having, in 1809, given an entire new form to the ancient states of East Prussia,—of his having, in 1808, destroyed all the privileges of the different classes of citizens, but as they depended on his will,—of his having at that period altered all the ancient forms of government, which time had established in the different towns of his dominions,—and of his now promising to his subjects, as a favour, some new constitutions, seem to justify this view. The ancient privileges of the cities, and separate classes of citizens, were undoubtedly most mischievous things; but it was rank jacobinism to attempt to destroy all these old distinctions and privileges by a decree. It was, in fact, an arbitrary abolition of corporate rights, which have been not unfrequently abolished by the sovereigns of [I-90] Germany. The destruction of the University of Wittenberg by this sovereign is another instance.

The disposition to reform possessed by the monarch of Prussia and his minister, which has almost amounted to revolution, has brought into their own hands nearly the whole of the ancient privileges of the different classes of people. The reigning family was, in the middle of the seventeenth century, petty sovereigns, scarcely capable of bringing together an army of 2000 men, limited in all their operations by nobles almost so powerful as they were. Yet the Prussian monarch now rules over a territory of 79,162 square geographical miles, a population of 10,000,000, and an army of 300,000 men. He possesses almost unlimited power, and the welfare of millions can be sacrificed to his ambition.

In moral observations, time may be for a moment neglected, and we are then so much astonished, that a simple count of Brandenburg should have become the quiet possessor of a third of Germany, as that a lieutenant of artillery should have seized on the empire of France. In one case, we may trace a family passion for aggrandisement, that has constantly descended from father to son, and that has become legitimate from the permanence of the evil and the slowness of its progress. In the other, we see only the madness, the fury of a single life, which is less likely to have imitators; because [I-91] it has not become legalized by opinion, and is abhorred by all good men. The petty counts of Brandenburg, who were originally little more than officers, either of the army, or for the administration of justice elected by the people, are now the unlimited sovereigns of Prussia.

Of the 10,000,000 subjects now belonging to Prussia, 6,832,566 dwell in the eastern part of the monarchy, 2,896,022 in the western part; Swedish Pomerania has 120,000, and Neufchatel 51,000 inhabitants. In the circle of Dusseldorf, on the right bank of the Rhine, 527 persons live in each square geographical mile; on the left bank there are 465 to each square mile. The circle of Lauban, in Upper Lusatia, has also 500 inhabitants to each square mile, the circle of Aix la Chapelle has 300, of Cologne, 287, of Cleves, 250, of Erfurth, 219, of Minden, 212, of Reichenbach and Merseburg, 187, while the provinces of East and West Prussia contain only 69 to the square mile, the circle of Potsdam itself only contains 81; in the circle of Frankfort, on the Oder, there are 100. With the exception of one part of Upper Lusatia, the recently acquired dominions of Prussia are three and four times more numerously peopled than the old, which are some of the most sandy and desolate parts of Europe. By subjecting the inhabitants on the Rhine to the Prussian government, a more polished has been placed under subjection to a less [I-92] polished people. The greater part of the subjects of Prussia are certainly German or European, which cannot be said of Austria; the greatest part of whose subjects are of Slavonic or Asiatic origin; but many also of the subjects of Prussia are Slavonians, Wendens, and Bohemians, who are people almost without civilization. The scattered peasantry of Prussia proper are not much better. From such subjects, slavish armies can be always raised, and with them it is now intended to secure the repose of Europe. Civilized people are now to be kept in awe by barbarians.

The largest half of the subjects of Prussia are Protestants, about 4,000,000 are Catholics. In East Prussia, most of the inhabitants are Lutherans, they possess 384 churches, the Calvinists 18, and the Catholics 83. In West Prussia, half of the inhabitants are Catholics, and the other half consists more in Lutherans than Calvinists. In Brandenburg and in Pomerania, nearly all the inhabitants are Lutherans, a few Catholics and Calvinists are mixed with them. In the province of Posen, there are 517,743 Catholics, 208,168 Lutherans, and 3783 Calvinists. In Silesia, one-half of the people are Catholics, the other half Lutherans, with a very few Calvinists. In the province of Saxony, the people are chiefly Lutherans. In Erfurth and the Eichsfeld, the Catholics are as one, the Lutherans as eight. In Munster Paderborn and the dukedom [I-93] of Westphalia, the people are chiefly Catholics. In the provinces on the Rhine, Catholics are also most numerous. In Dusseldorf, there are 203,833 Catholics; 69,600 Lutherans; and 98,587 Calvinists. In Minden, the people are chiefly Protestants; in the circle of Coblentz there are also many. In Neufchatel, Calvinism is the predominant religion. In the whole kingdom, the Mennonites amount to 17,000. The Moravians are somewhat less numerous. I will not affirm that there is strict toleration amongst all these people, that the Christians do not hate the Jews, and the Catholics the Protestants, but all these sects are strictly equal in the eye of the government. Although moderation and justice on its part may do much to soften angry passions, and its power may generally prevent overt acts of violence, yet it cannot produce that toleration and that charity which are of the heart. They are probably more general in Germany than in any other country of Europe, but they are, even there, not yet perfect.

The ordinary revenues of Prussia are estimated at seven millions sterling, the domains give one million, the regalia, such as salt, the post, &c. one million, tolls on rivers and roads, one million. The remainder of the seven millions is procured by taxes. The principal of these are a land tax; a tax on trades; a tax on persons; and taxes on doors and windows. These are not equal throughout the [I-94] kingdom, particularly the land-tax, which is considerably higher in the western than in the eastern provinces. Indirect taxes are levied on meal, malt, horned cattle, wine, beer, vinegar, brandy, sugar, coffee, tobacco, spices, colours, wood, hay, straw, coals. There are stamp and other excise duties. The whole nett about L. 4,000,000 sterling.

In 1817, the government bought corn for its subjects in Westphalia and on the Rhine to the amount of L.330,000, which, with the army being then on an extraordinary footing, and costing L. 4,000,000 sterling, when its ordinary expence is estimated at L. 2,000,000, made the expence of the year far exceed the revenue. The debts, which are described to have been before very great, were augmented in 1818.

There are yet something like states or parliaments in some of the provinces of Prussia. In East Prussia they consist of three orders; 1st, The greater nobility; 2d, The smaller nobility; to which were united the free inhabitants of Cölmer; 3d, Deputies of the towns. But since 1808, these persons appoint deputies, viz. the nobility four; the Cölmer stand one, and the deputies of towns three. They are elected for three years, but must be approved of by the monarch. They form a permanent committee, which meets in Königsberg, but has no other power than to lay its wishes before [I-95] the throne. It has no share either in levying taxes or making laws.

In Brandenburg, the states consist only of a committee of the four orders of clergy, great nobility, small nobility, and towns, which, like the committee for East Prussia, has nothing to do with making laws or levying taxes; but takes care of some funds belonging to the province, appropriated to paying debts contracted in its name.

In Pomerania, the three orders of clergy, nobility, and deputies from the cities, have general assemblies, and discuss in them the interest of the country, but Mr Demian has not stated what power they have; with such “states,” we cannot wonder that the Prussians are anxious to have a new constitution. In most of the other parts of Germany, there has always been some limitations set to the monarch’s power, by the different orders of privileged persons who composed the states. But the power of the sovereigns of Prussia got above the states of their country, and since the days of Frederick the Great, the latter have dwindled into insignificance. However loud public opinion may now be at Berlin, though it appears to have very little consistency, and however much may have been said about the secret societies of this city, the Prussians have been, and are still more despotically governed than any other people of Germany. They are, in this point, behind the [I-96] Bavarians, the Saxons, the people of Wurtemberg, and perhaps also behind the Hannoverians. Such an opinion is entertained by the Germans themselves. They regard the former of the people here mentioned, with the inhabitants on the Rhine, as most advanced in political knowledge, and as possessing the soundest opinions.

The Silesians are probably the best part of the population of old Prussia. The inhabitants of Berlin, who are the most conspicuous of all the Prussians, as a political people, are given to trifling and debauchery. I observed there that same sort of meretricious glare which I had noticed at Potsdam. The Gen d’Arm Platz, which has been mentioned, is a specimen. There were some splendid shops; but in general, fine painted houses, gilded signs and golden letters, only concealed poverty and dirt. The cabarets, or dancing houses of the town, are notoriously numerous and profligate; the people are less domestic than those of any other part of Germany. I will not affirm from my own observation, but I am disposed to believe from all I have been able to learn, that the Prussians are the most boasting, flippant, and empty people of all the Germans. They make more noise than the rest, without having any thing more to be proud of, except that they have been long governed by greater despots than any other Germans, [I-97] and that they have, under one of their sovereigns, been conspicuous in history.

There are two sorts of nobility in Prussia,—the great and the small nobility. The first is, again, distinguished into several kinds; 1st, Those who were formerly independent princes of the empire, and are now called mediatized nobility. There are eighteen of these who possess extraordinary privileges; they can be subjected only to a particular court of justice—the superior court at Berlin; they are free from all military service; they may keep a guard of honour: the administration of justice, of police, and the patronage of the churches and schools on their properties, belong to them; they are in possession of all the domains of their properties or sovereignties; the direct taxes levied on their subjects belong to them; their own property is free from direct taxation; they may work mines and salt works, but must deliver the products into the hands of the sovereign. This is the most privileged class. The second have similar privileges, but they are under the jurisdiction of the courts of the province in which they live. The third are distinguished as possessing the administration of justice, and the appointment of the clergymen and schoolmasters on their properties. All, even the small nobility, have some particular privileges, such as being subjected only to the highest tribunal of the province; they pay less land tax, particularly in Brandenburg, [I-98] Pomerania, Saxony, and Silesia, than the other inhabitants of these provinces, and they are considered as having a greater right to places of honour than the rest of the people, though, since 1808, the rights exclusively to possess noble properties, and to be officers of the army, have been taken from them.

The clergy are also free from taxation.

In all those provinces which remained to Prussia after the peace of Tilsit, all differences of rank and privileges amongst the inhabitants of cities was, and remains, destroyed. The right of citizenship may belong to every man, of whatever religion or country he may be. Even unmarried women may possess this right. The Jews enjoy in Prussia all the rights of other citizens; and no other condition is requisite to practising any handicraft or trade, than buying from the government a patent or permission, which every one must buy. Formerly every person was obliged to serve an apprenticeship, to wander three years in search of knowledge, and then to be examined, before he could be a master. The rights of settling in any town, and of practising a trade in it, or the rights of citizenship, were purchased from the magistrates. Natives of any town could acquire these rights cheaper than strangers could acquire them. These regulations seem to have resembled, in most points, what we call the freedom of corporations. They are now [I-99] all done away. The monarch set trade free from the fetters of ancient custom, and he pinioned it with his own. No man can now exercise any sort of profession without obtaining and paying for the permission of the government. By the abolition of all the ancient regulations, the sovereign increased his own power and influence very much. He increased his revenue by the price paid for the permission, and the power to give or withhold it is a power to let an individual live or to starve him.

In place of the various old customs by which the towns were formerly regulated and governed, a very theoretically perfect constitution was given to them all. The citizens now elect their own magistrates, subject to the confirmation of the crown. They had formerly the nominal privilege of doing this, independent of this confirmation, though the value of this privilege was much diminished by a few persons having in general seized on the magistracy. It does not appear, therefore, that the monarch of Prussia deserves the praise of generosity, which has-lately been bestowed on him, for having granted to the inhabitants of cities some new and valuable privileges. In fact, he arbitrarily abolished all the ancient customs of the people, and thereby possessed himself of all the substantial part of the power which belongs to controlling more directly the magistrates and the revenue of the towns.

[I-100]

Small towns of 3500 people have one salaried bürgermeister, and one salaried counsellor, with four or six unpaid counsellors. Towns of 10,000 inhabitants have also a salaried syndicus, with from seven to twelve unsalaried counsellors. Larger towns have one salaried upper bürgermeister, six salaried counsellors, of various titles, with from twelve to fifteen unsalaried counsellors. The salaried people are jurisconsults, and are elected for twelve years; the unsalaried are tradesmen or merchants, and are elected for three.

Some efforts have been made in Prussia to convert the land, the property in which is now divided between the lord and the peasant, into the full property of one or the other, and to free the peasantry from servitude, but they have not yet succeeded, and the condition of the peasants is different in different provinces. In some of them, leibeigen-schaft, or servitude, is yet general, and without any modifying stipulations. In others, the servitude is ameliorated by a variety of ancient customs and laws, which secure the property of the peasant. In others, the peasantry are free.

It seems that an improper method was followed when it was attempted to set property and the peasants free. The lord has a long-established right to rent and services,—the peasant an hereditary right to the use of the land; and the way in which the land was to be made the full property of one [I-101] or other of the parties, was, that the peasant should resign half of his land, and retain the other half in full property. This supplies no accurate compensation for the rights of the two individuals, and it diminishes still more the size of the farms of the peasants, which are at present so small as very often barely to furnish a subsistence for a family. The more rational way would have been merely to have permitted either of the two parties to buy according to his pleasure and convenience, and according as he could make a bargain—the rights of the other. More is said on this part of the subject in the Chapter on the Division of Property in Land. Most of these remarks apply only to the ancient provinces of Prussia. The provinces on the Rhine have long had their feudal laws abolished; and this is one of the circumstances which makes it so much to be regretted that they should have been united to a country in which ancient feudality and modern despotism are both yet powerful.

Nothing will be said of the various departments of the ministry, further than that there is one whose peculiar duty it is to superintend and regulate commerce and manufactories, and that these branches of the industry of man have long been in Prussia protected and encouraged by all the power and wisdom of the government. There is another department of the ministry under whose superintendence [I-102] the religion and establishments for education of the whole country are placed.

Prussia, though consisting of no less than 39 distinct, and formerly independent parts, is at present very scientifically divided into ten provinces, as follows: 1. East Prussia; 2. West Prussia; 3. Brandenburg; 4. Pomerania; 5. Silesia; 6. Posen; 7. Saxony; 8. Westphalia; 9. Julius-Cleves and Berg; 10. Lower Rhine. Over each of these provinces, an officer called an Upper President, is placed, who is a sort of viceroy, or king’s lieutenant for the province. Each province is again divided into several circles of government, Regierungsbezirke, generally three, over which a provincial government is placed, consisting of a president, and two boards, or committees; a government director presides in each committee, and it is composed of several persons called government counsellors. These two committees regulate the whole temporal concerns, even the most minute, of the circle, and amongst them may be enumerated making roads, and restraining the press. They are the censors of the press for all other writings than those on theological subjects, of which the consistoriums are the censors.

With these censors for the press in every part of the Prussian dominions, it is too much to affirm, as it is sometimes affirmed, that the press is free in Prussia. It is completely under the control of [I-103] the government, and nothing is or can be published which it does not approve of. What, in compliance with the spirit of the times, it permits to be published, is another thing, but this permission hangs from its will, and the freedom of publishing is not secured by positive laws, or long continued custom.

Everyone of the circles of government mentioned is again divided into districts, over which a land-counsellor, a police director, or some other servant of the crown, according to its importance, is placed. This scientific and minute government has been introduced by Prussia into all her newly acquired provinces; and it is here particularly mentioned as shewing to what an extent of minute interference the cares of the government go, and how attentively it has provided that no small parishes of men shall govern themselves. They are governed by its police director.

The affairs of the church, and of establishments for education, are governed in each Protestant province by a consistorium;—consistoriums will be described in speaking of Hannover, and in the Catholic provinces by the upper president, assisted by the bishops as counsellors. A particular part of the consistoriums, called the church and school commission, which consists of clergymen and school-masters, has the superintendence of the education of the poor, and power to make propositions for the [I-104] improvement of the regulations of the smaller schools; high schools are under the consistoriums themselves; universities are under the control of the minister of the department for religion and education.

There is also in each province a medical college to superintend and regulate medical police. In all these regulations a multiplicity of governors, and inferior governors may be observed with a strictness of subordination not to be surpassed by the most disciplined army. If this land be not at the height of prosperity, it cannot be for want of obedience on the part of the people, nor for want of regulations on the part of the governors. If its roads be wretchedly bad, if the country be desolate and uncultivated, as it generally is wherever I have seen it, it is not for want of persons, engineers and others, employed by the government, who have no other duties to perform than to keep roads in order, and to encourage cultivation. The immense quantity of persons who, by this system, are made to take a part in the government, is perhaps its very worst feature. Whatever changes may take place in its form, they are attached to power, and the remainder are accustomed to obedience; and, however the names of things may be altered, nearly the same undue quantity of power, and the same unreflecting obedience, will and must exist for many years.

[I-105]

For the administration of justice, the chief court, from which there is no appeal, is the upper Secret Tribunal at Berlin. For each of the provinces there is, or is to be, a tribunal of first instance, with a power of appeal from the tribunal of one province to the tribunal of the other, as second instance. There are particular courts for the mines and salt works. In the province of Posen, there are something like justices of the peace, and processes are there carried on verbally. Most of these tribunals consist of several members, and correspond in so many things to those of Hannover, that no further details will here be given of them.

There are ten different orders of knighthood, or of merit and medals, in Prussia. The fountain of royal honour flows copiously over the land, and leaves no part of it unwatered and unfertilized.

I left Berlin on the morning of January the 3d, 1818, at so early an hour, that no person was moving in the streets. It was freezing very hard, and the icicles formed from the breath attached themselves to the whiskers of the men, and to the necks and heads of the horses who were so unfortunate as to be going, with the wind in their faces, towards Berlin; I was grateful that it was at my back. Many people, mostly women, were going into town with quantities of vegetables. This is, therefore, a general feature of German society, and [I-106] it is one in which it differs from ours, inasmuch as our daily markets are much more generally supplied by means of horses and carts, or a vast deal of the common labour which in Britain is performed by animals and machines, is performed in Germany by women. Many of them had profited by the snow to yoke dogs to little sledges, and were thus dragging their goods to market. Some of the animals required beating or encouraging to make them proceed, others could hardly be kept back by the weight of their mistresses, added to their usual load, and were barking with joy as dogs do when their masters first call them from the kennel to join in the sports of the field. Animals are not averse to exertion, and man, as an animal, is not naturally averse to labour. The fact is of importance, because it is frequently asserted, that a natural disposition in man to idleness causes many crimes. None of these people saluted me as the Saxons did, and, though this might be partly occasioned by the cold, it was also partly to be attributed to the less civil, less soft, and less pleasing character of the Prussians.

Charlottenburg, which I reached before daylight, is another palace belonging to the monarch, and famous for containing in its garden the tomb and monument of the late Queen of Prussia. My route was by Brandenburg to Magdeburg, and there are two roads from Berlin to the former [I-107] town; one goes by Potsdam, the other by Spandau. I took the latter, because it was rather nearer, and because I had passed over a portion of the former. Though this was formerly the post road, and the only road, it had now degenerated to a mere track, which it was difficult to find, over wild and uncultivated heaths. It was not without inquiring several times that I reached Spandau, and on leaving it I was indebted to a shepherd, who was travelling my way, for guiding me. Such persons always tell you their history, and they communicate with you frankly, though they are seldom very amusing, but they give you an idea of their occupations and life. He looked after the flock of a nobleman who lived at Berlin, and he had been a journey of three days to the eastward of that town to buy sheep. His flock fed entirely on the otherwise waste lands, he had neither clover for hay, nor turnips to feed them.

I spoke also with a woman, who was carrying a large basket of the only white bread in general use in Germany,—which is little rolls called Semel,—from Spandau to Wustermarkt. The distance was twelve miles, and she made her living by carrying such a load twice a-week. She visited the villages in the neighbourhood, and it required one day to go and one to return. Her road was generally over wastes and heaths, and her employment is a specimen of the half-deserted half-improved state of [I-108] the neighbourhood of the palace-ornamented capital of Prussia.

The difficulty I had had during the day to find the road, prevented me reaching Brandenburg, and made me think it prudent to stop at the commencement of night, when I was by no means tired, and where there was no sort of decent accommodation to be had. I had then walked nearly forty miles, and had never passed, since I left Spandau, any thing like a decent public-house or village, and I had been unable to procure any thing for dinner but bread and beer. The house where I stopped for the night promised nothing comfortable, but as the woman said I could sleep there, I resolved to make myself contented. She gave me, on entering, some very bad coffee, and when, at a later hour, I requested something more substantial for supper, I was informed there was nothing but brown bread, bad butter, and new brandy. I was still more disappointed, when, on asking to go to bed, I was informed I could have no other bed than some straw strewed in the room where I was then sitting, which was filled with a great many people who evinced no disposition to depart. There was, at that time of night, nothing better to be got, and I patiently submitted.

A travelling merchant, who sold earthenware, had taken up his abode in the house, and had carefully informed all the inhabitants of the village, [I-109] that he meant, on that evening, to make a lottery of his merchandise, and he had invited them to come and spend their money with him. Towards eight o’clock they had accordingly, young and old, men, women, and children, assembled, and completely filled the room. He arranged his wares, in the most tempting manner, on a large table. They consisted of cups and saucers, glasses, plates, and pipes, which were neither coarse nor inelegant. Every one of these articles was put up at the same price, and at its full value, or at rather more than its full value. The price was eight grosschen, or about one shilling, and he had eight tickets, each of which he sold for a grosschen. When they were all sold the purchasers threw dice amongst themselves who should have the piece of china. The pedlar risked nothing himself, but, by promoting the gambling of the peasantry, he sold his pipes and his cups, and some of them acquired things of which they had no need. Married women, middle-aged men, and some young people, were the principal gamesters. As they were gambling, the lads and the lasses were roughly playing with each other, and the more elderly people were sitting quietly down to their pipes, their drams, and a little conversation.

To profit by such company,—to learn the ways of thinking of such people,—a traveller should not only know the written language of a country, which is all [I-110] he has time to learn, but also every dialect, none of which he can acquire. I did not properly understand the language of the people, and cannot record their conversation. Almost the whole of the younger part of the males were dressed in short blue jackets and trowsers, with caps, like the undress of soldiers, and they had a military air. The older men wore the long blue coats, hanging almost on the ground, peculiar to the peasantry. In length of coat and size of breeches there was a strange contrast. The jackets of the youngsters descended but half way down their backs, and their trowsers were loose and large, like Cossack trowsers; the coats of the old men nearly reached the ground, and their leather breeches were like a second skin. While the fashions of the women in towns are incessantly changing, they remain in the country unchanged for ages; but the fashions of the men, because they travel about, change nearly so often in the country as in towns.

At midnight the company retired, and, as the room was well heated, though my bed was of straw, I slept away all my discontent.

Even by day-light I had some difficulty, on the following day, to find the road; it was amongst ponds and swamps; thanks to the cold they were every where frozen and passable. I soon saw Brandenburg, and directed my steps by its steeple. This town is surrounded by spread out rivers, [I-111] which might afford an enterprising and industrious people a better means of communication than is now enjoyed by the inhabitants. There is no remains, in Brandenburg, of its having once been the seat of the present reigning family of Prussia. The old castle, which formerly stood on the Marienberg, close to the town, was demolished by Frederick the Great, and all that it contained valuable was carried to Potsdam.

Brandenburg is a town of 10,000 inhabitants, situated on the river Havel. It has manufactories of wool, linen, and cotton, but is principally noted for a great number of corn-mills, which are the means of supplying the inhabitants of Berlin with flour. There are 260 looms employed weaving wool, and 200 in weaving cotton and linen. There is also above 300 acres of vineyards in the neighbourhood, which are probably the most northern of Germany.

A new road is here begun, which is to extend to Magdeburg, but which is yet only completed so far as the village of Plauen. Formerly there was nothing but a track between Berlin and Magdeburg, one of the principal fortresses of the kingdom. I stopped for the night at a village called Perghen, where no other bed than one of straw could be procured. Genthin would have been too short a stage, and Burg was too far. At the entrance of the village there was a toll-bar and house, [I-112] with a coat of arms, not royal, painted on that sort of shield, fixed to a post, which generally, in this country, tells the traveller where he has money to pay. The date of this painting was 1602, and the name of the owner, with the word noble, adeliche, prefixed, was also painted on the shield. It was one of those tolls levied by noblemen on all carriages and horses passing through their estates, so many of which formerly existed, and some of which still exist in various parts of Germany. The people of this nobleman, as the inhabitants of the village styled themselves,—for all belonged to him,—were exempted from any toll when they employed their own waggons, but were obliged to pay if waggons belonging to other people brought any thing to them. The government wished to destroy this toll, but the landlord said, with a grin of satisfaction, “Our nobleman was too strong for it.” Mr Adeliche Beerhern, for such was his title and name, seemed a sturdy sort of fellow, who lived on his own property, without going much to court, and, while he maintains this sort of independence, the monarch of Prussia can hardly be called an absolute monarch. The new road to Magdeburg, if it were made straight, would pass through the estate of this nobleman, but he seemed to like no such novelties as good roads, and had compelled the engineer to make a considerable circuit to avoid his grounds.

[I-113]

Of two public-houses, one of which was filled by noisy drinking peasants, and the other was quiet,—but at neither of which a bed could be got,—I chose the quiet one, and found the people willing to get me any thing the house or the village afforded for my supper, which consisted, however, of potatoes and a small piece of veal. The room was a large barn sort of place, excessively black from smoke. Two long tables were placed on two sides of the room, near the walls, against which oaken benches, as seats, were fixed. A large oven and the entrance occupied one of the other sides, and at the fourth side was the door to go into the kitchen, with a bed-place at each side of it. The bed-places were sorts of recesses, which are closed during the day by sliding doors.

There was a man here who said he was travelling about the country seeking employment, but who seemed to live more by his wits than by work. He paid for his potatoes and straw like the ancient bards, by reciting songs, poems, and stories. The principal subjects of his themes were the triumphs, real and imaginary, of the Prussian armies, the fatherly care of old Blucher, and the crimes of Buonaparte. He seemed to have collected all that had been written on these subjects, and quite charmed the landlady and the two maids with his recitals. They were doubly pleased when he sang any thing which they knew, and when [I-114] they could join with him. They also had learnt to sing of the heroic deeds of the Prussians, and nothing else seemed to give them any pleasure. He had bought two books, one was called the Triumphs of German Freedom, and the other was extracts from the bulletins of the war. He had read them so often he knew them both by heart, and could repeat any portions of them. They had been his great teachers, and he delighted the people of the house with many true accounts of Prussian achievements. He was completely in rags, and appeared to have nothing but what was given him, yet, for that very reason, because he knew that the supply of his wants depended on his giving pleasure to others, he had acquired the talent of giving it, and kept his hearers not merely amused, but delighted, all the evening. He made them happy, and, in spite of his nakedness, and the cold weather, he was happy himself. While a reciprocation of services is the source of one of the highest enjoyments of men, nobody seems to be so much injured as those classes of society, who, having all their wants provided for, never feel any necessity to exert the talents to give and receive pleasure, with which nature has endowed them. When the females were gone to bed, this miserable-looking being entertained the man-servant with the history of his amours and his gallantry, and no dashing guards’ [I-115] officer, glittering in scarlet and gold, ever boasted of more success. This was strange society, if that can be called society, of which an individual is but the silent spectator; but a lonely pedestrian has often no choice; it is a matter of chance with whom he sits down.

My day’s walk was about thirty miles, and the soil, I observed, was very generally light and sandy. Some forests were passed, but no inclosures. Where the country was cultivated, there was no separation between the fields but water courses, and the furrow extended farther than the eye could follow it. Notwithstanding it was Sunday, many persons were working, and the girls of the public-house continued spinning all the evening, as they listened to the stories or joined in the songs of the ragged man.

What I experienced for these two nights, and on my road, where I could not procure a bed, and scarcely any thing to eat, may serve as a specimen of the wealth, or rather poverty, in which his majesty of Prussia’s subjects live. The reader will remember, that I was not more than seventy miles from Berlin, that I was on a high road, and that houses of public entertainment had neither beds nor any thing to eat. Such is the state of the dominions of the great Frederick. With such a degree of poverty, and thinly scattered as these people are, it is in vain to hope for any improvement [I-116] but by enriching them, and by letting their numbers increase; and it is quite certain these objects can never be accomplished by the glories of the monarch, nor by those multiplied governments and governors, who produce poverty in proportion as they are numerous.

It required four hours the next day to reach Burg, which is a small old fashioned city, with gates and walls, and centinels, and tax-gatherers at the gate, like all the perfect cities of Germany. The church is an immense mass of stones rudely piled together; with nothing to disturb the heavy flat uniformity of a gable-wall rising into a steeple, but two small windows and a door. It looked as if it had been built to overshadow the houses in its neighbourhood. In the parade, as the public square of most of the towns of this part of Prussia is named, there was a Colossal statue of some warrior of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. An old woman who happened to be crossing the square at the moment, and who, unfortunately for me, was not one of the best chronicles of the place, as she barely remembered the name of the hero, who was probably in his time called immortal, told me it was the statue of one Rolla; further she knew not; she was much better pleased to go about her business, than to attend to questions which she was puzzled to answer. The statue was hewn out of sandstone, was in armour, and was placed against [I-117] the corner of a house, as if its present situation had not been its original one. The legs were nearly worn away, from having served as whetstones for the knives of two or three generations of neighbouring butchers, and Rolla appeared likely at no distant period to be tumbled from his station.

The weather was warmer to-day; it thawed, which made the track, for the new road was not yet completed, rather dirty; I reached Magdeburg at five o’clock, somewhat tantalized by a winding, and fatigued by a heavy road. The country was partly cultivated, much of it was forest, and near Magdeburg, much of it was marshy and morass; yet there were more villages and more large houses in this day’s walk than I had seen since leaving Saxony. I had scarcely entered the town before I was accosted by two or three lads, with offers to show me a good inn, or if “I wanted any thing else;” they then whispered to me, “hübsches Mädel,” pretty girl, and they were ready to introduce me to some of their acquaintances. They were not quite so impertinent, intrusive, and disgusting as the Italians, who profess the same trade, but equally ready to serve. This was not the first time I had been so accosted in German towns. I found my way to an inn without their assistance. It was not one of the large houses that are numerous and good in Magdeburg, but a middling sort of inn, where I supped with [I-118] some German travellers, and with the landlord and his wife. In the same room where we supped was a billiard table, and through a window, at the farther end, spirits were sold to whoever demanded them. After supper, the landlord introduced his little grand-daughter, to display her knowledge in geography, and her skill in recitation. She callea forth from the other guests many such exclamations as, “Ach du lieber Gott, ein charmantes Kind.” Ah! Good God! A charming child!

Magdeburg was distinguished in the tenth century by the peculiar favour of the Emperor Otto the Great, from the partiality which his wife Edgid, an English Princess, is said to have borne it for its resemblance to her native London. Little or no resemblance is now to be traced further than that, like London, it stands on the banks of a river. It has one long good looking street, called the Broad Street, a name indeed it merits; which, terminating with a church at both ends, has no despicable appearance. The large square has undergone the usual transformation in its name, and marks tolerably well the change which has taken place in society. It was the cathedral square, it is now the parade Platz. Where the clergy formerly solitarily meditated under the trees, or discussed, as the rosy wine mantled in their cheeks, the mysteries of theology, there soldiers now wheel and march, and thrust forward, [I-119] first the right shoulder, then the left, with all possible activity and noise. There was as much bustle as if the days of the Great Frederick were returned, when this lover of cudgel discipline and long queues, rose with the sun to superintend the noble labours of soldier-drilling. I leave it to others to decide whether the dominion of the sword, which this change marks, be more or less beneficial than the dominion of the crozier. There is another square, in which there is still standing a monument, which was erected to the Emperor Otto in the tenth century. It is hewn out of sandstone.

The cathedral is a celebrated piece of Gothic architecture, but cannot be compared with many of the cathedrals and abbeys of Britain. With the exception of the cathedrals of Milan, of Cologne, Strasburgh, some of the buildings in the Netherlands, and those cathedrals which our countrymen built in France, there is but little Gothic out of our country which is worth much admiration.

The churches have all two steeples, a singularity sometimes seen in other towns. The houses present appearances somewhat similar to those of Leipsic, but the fronts are more ornamented with all sorts of fantastical things. Among these, the great dragons and flying serpents at the ends of the waterspouts, which vomit the rain as it [I-120] falls on the roofs to the middle of the streets, were some of the most conspicuous and singular. The brass handles of the doors were polished, and there was a sort of neatness and cleanness conspicuous about the houses, to which I had long been a stranger. The “Gerichtshof,” Palace of Justice, was open, and I entered, but it is only into the deserted halls you are allowed to penetrate. The chambers of justice are closed against all but advocates and judges.

Magdeburg is a very strong fortress, and it is the chief place of what was formerly an independent archbishopric of the same name. It came early into the possession of the Brandenburg family, and followed the reformed religion at an early period of the Reformation. The city itself possessed, like all the cities of Germany, a sort of republican government, which had allowed the natural industry and ingenuity of the citizens room to develope themselves; and these, with a favourable situation, had made Magdeburg, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of the most flourishing cities in Germany. Its inhabitants had shown that they knew the value of their freedom, and they, on many occasions, defended themselves manfully against threats, exactions, and open attacks.

Few cities have been more conspicuous, in the history of Germany, than Magdeburg, though many have constantly played a greater part. Its complete [I-121] destruction by the army of General Tilly, in the year 1631, is a blood stain, that, so long as Schiller’s history of the thirty years’ war shall be read, or Magdeburg remain, can never be erased, and that will always attest how much more cruel religious wars are than any other. After a siege of six weeks by the army under Tilly, the city was taken by storm on the 10th of May, and the number of inhabitants was reduced, in a few short hours, by the most horrid deaths, from 30,000 to 1,000, and not a building was left standing but two churches, and a few small houses. Amidst the murdered bodies, and the burning ruins, did this true soldier of the church collect his Croats and his Walloons in the cathedral, and there return in glorious song his solemn thanks to the benevolent Father of the beings he had been massacring, that the murder and the brand were completed. When some officers, whose names history has not preserved, came to Tilly, and requested him to put a stop to the carnage, he told them, “Come back in an hour, I will then see what is to be done; but the soldiers must have their reward for their labour and danger.” The destruction of Magdeburg only occasioned the Protestant princes of Germany to unite more sincerely in their opposition to the Emperor, and thus the wicked deed insured final success to the party it was meant to terrify and to ruin.

[I-122]

The town is said to contain 34,700 people, and is a place of considerable trade. The government of Prussia is doing all it can to favour Magdeburg, and that part of the commerce of the Elbe which centers in it. Seventy-five vessels are enumerated as belonging to it; yet it appears, from a comparison of the years 1798 and 1815, that the trade was greater in the former than in the latter year. Ribbons and woollen cloths are some of the principal manufactures of the town, but of the latter there was a remarkable diminution, while there was a small increase of the cotton manufactured between the years 1802 and 1815. The peace and the new steam navigation established between Berlin and Hamburg, should, however, be favourable to Magdeburg, and when I saw the town, there was an appearance of bustle and employment.

I left Magdeburg at noon on the following day, January 6th, and passing, in the course of a walk of twenty miles, through seven villages, reached Exleben to sleep. The number of the villages showed how much better the country is peopled here than between Berlin and Magdeburg. It had lost its sandy nature even before reaching Magdeburg; it was now become a good clay soil, and was all open and cultivated. The hills were gently undulating, and the numerous villages placed in the vallies, and surrounded with tall pines, [I-123] above which nothing was seen but the church steeple or the white shining walls of some nobleman’s house, looked at a distance more picturesque than the villages of Germany generally appear. Though the houses were built of the usual materials, and in the usual form, both men and women looked cleaner than the peasantry do in general.

There was a wedding-feast at one of the villages, and the peasantry still preserve the ancient custom of collecting on such occasions as numerous a party as they can entertain. I have heard instances of their bringing together more than a hundred guests, and of their placing before them eatables enough to satisfy them, and brandy enough to make them all tipsy. There were only between forty and fifty persons present on this occasion. The guzzling was over, or at least suspended, and there was nothing to admire but the dresses of the peasant girls. Each girl wore a small green silk cap, from which streamed a great variety of different coloured ribbons, while, on ordinary occasions, the cap is black, or entirely laid aside. The hair is all combed back from the forehead, and rolled up from behind, and it is kept in this situation by the cap, which is made of pasteboard, or some stiff substance. It is covered with silk, fits close to the top of the head, and comes down on each side towards the ears, and otherwise looks like a monk’s cowl. Similar ones [I-124] are worn in southern Germany, but they are there generally of embroidered gold or silver. Their long stays tightly laced, at the bottom of which the loose petticoats project all round, and then hang straight down, made them look as if they had been formed by some artist who intended to terminate them at the waist, in a point, and had then altered his mind, and placed the point on a large base, and them on two legs. This is a mode of concealing the human figure, within a distorted shell, that has been common to all the beauties of Europe. A short linen gown, or rather jacket, fits tight over the long stays, and descends no lower than them. The petticoats are all made of blue, white, and red striped woollen, and descend only half way down the legs; white worsted stockings, with flaming red, or other coloured clocks, and high heeled shoes, made up their dress. The whole party were clothed so much alike, that it might have been supposed they were all sisters. Among the men, the young ones were dressed like the inhabitants of towns, and the old ones wore long blue home-made coats, that descended to their ankles; they were lined or faced with red, and ornamented with large metal buttons. The old men wore cocked hats, and had the appearance of veteran soldiers. It is probable, from its resemblance, that this dress is derived from the dress worn by the soldiers of the Great Frederick. The [I-125] peasants were then, as now, soldiers, and their dress in that capacity became their dress as peasants, just as at this time the younger peasantry mostly wear something that looks like the undress of the military. The use of a military dress may be promoted by the peasants who are retired from service being allowed as a privilege to wear regimentals.

At Exleben, where I slept, two noblemen resided, which was a great source of vexation to the inhabitants, who, when the noblemen do not reside among them, are generally free from all services except a certain rent, either in money or corn; but when they reside the peasantry must supply them with horses, carry their harvest in, plough their ground, and must give them the third goose and the tenth lamb. The people seemed to feel these services as a hardship, and, from their complaints, I judged they were not accustomed to them. Those must be bad regulations which make it disagreeable to the peasantry that the landholders should live on their estates.

Notwithstanding the many villages in this neighbourhood, and though the road is the principal communication between Magdeburgh, Brunswick, and Hamburgh, it appeared to be very bad; it was full of hollows, in which, as it now thawed, waggons were sticking fast, and people labouring to extricate them. The traffic appeared capable of paying for a better road.

[I-126]

From having rather an extensive view of the country after leaving Magdeburg, I was reminded that the people in general throughout Germany dwell in villages, and not in single detached farm-houses. The time which the cultivators must often waste in going to and coming from their lands with the bad roads of this country, makes this an inconvenient practice; and an obvious improvement in German husbandry would be for the farmers to live on the lands they cultivate. There was a time when it was necessary for common security that the people should crowd round the castle of their master, and when, being his property, it might be necessary that they should labour under his eye, or the eye of his bailiff; and succeeding generations continue to follow the ancient custom when the circumstances are no longer the same. The manner in which the land of the peasants is divided and separated, a piece here and a piece there, operates to make them continue this manner of living. But now when it has been declared that feudal services shall be abolished, if the people are left to act for themselves, each individual will certainly find it more convenient to have all the land he cultivates in one place. Purchases and changes will ultimately accomplish this, and probably the German agriculturists will then build houses and barns each on his own farm.

CHAPTER IV.
brunswick—hannover.↩

Helmstädt university.—Brunswick.—Tombs of the sovereigns.—Number killed in battle.—Different characters of the former Duke.—Former state of Brunswick.—For what now remarkable.—Traits of character.—Extent of territory.—Population.—Carolina college.—Roads.—Appropriate inscription.—Hildesheim.—Hannover buildings.—Monument to Leibnitz.—Library.

The university of the ancient town of Helmstädt, in the territories of Brunswick, was founded in 1574, by Julius, the then Duke of Wolfenbüttel, the great patron of learning, and the great reformer and legislator of that period. The church, the police, and education, were all objects of his care, but, above all, he appears to have protected the peasantry in their rights and privileges. To him they were chiefly indebted for those regulations which are called the Meyer Law, which secure to the peasant the possession of his little farm, on paying to the lord a certain rent, and do not allow the rent to be increased. He was both a religious and a learned prince. Under his patronage, and the patronage of his successors, supported [I-128] by grants from the states, the university long flourished. Caprice, perhaps, or vanity, latterly directed the patronage of the dukes of Brunswick to their new-founded college of Carolina, and the university of Göttingen, supported by a more powerful sovereign, deprived Helmstädt of much of its lustre. The latter university was abolished when the French took possession of the country, and then all the importance of the town was destroyed. It contains about 5000 inhabitants, but has nothing except a pleasant country to render it in the least worthy of notice.

Many curious stories are told of the late Professor Beireis and his extensive museum of natural and artificial curiosities. His purchases were so extensive, and he vaunted so much of the sums he gave for them, that it was a common belief amongst the people, that he could only acquire the wealth necessary to make these purchases, and to outbid empresses and kings, by making gold himself. If he possessed the art of doing this, it died with him. His museum is sold; but he is yet remembered as a “strange old man, and perhaps a sorcerer.”

I arrived at Helmstädt at ten o’clock on the following day. Many marks of its antiquity still remain. Its streets are crooked; its houses face every corner of the heavens,—some of them protrude into the street, some of them have large courts before them, and they are all of an indescribable [I-129] shape, but seem to have been built from the corners of other buildings; they had all high roofs, and every storey, as it rose above another, projected beyond it, so that the roof was the largest and most conspicuous part of the house. The general building materials were timber, filled in with clay whitewashed, or with bricks. All the beams were covered with inscriptions carved on them, generally taken from Scripture. The doors were all of oak, very often highly polished, and always ornamented with nice shining brass handles and knockers; and numerous small windows were decorated with white curtains. Helmstädt was another example of the grotesque old towns of Germany.

I reached the town of Brunswick at six o’clock. It was quite dark, and I was indebted to a civil stranger for conducting me to an inn, where I found a good supper and clean bed. The road was again very bad till I arrived at Helmstädt, when a new and a good road conducted to Brunswick. It had now thawed for two days; walking was become heavy and tiresome. There was nothing to be seen or remarked, and I had no other amusement but to while away the time with idle dreams.

Brunswick possesses the characteristics of other old German towns, particularly crooked streets [I-130] and strange built houses. A practised eye may, no doubt, discover a great many differences in each of these, but to an unpractised one they are all alike; and a stranger needs a guide if he but go abroad. The sovereigns of Brunswick have sometimes been extravagant, but no one of them has left any monument of very good taste. There are no buildings that are beautiful, but several that are picturesque, from the little gilded turrets and balconies that grow out of their corners and sides. The tombs of the sovereigns, and a statue of their renowned ancestor, Henry the Lion, are placed in the principal church of the town, and are objects of general curiosity. But the clerk, or Cantor, who is the showman, was also a teacher of music, and as he was employed in the forenoon giving lessons, it was necessary, to gratify my curiosity, that I should return after dinner. There can be no doubt that the reflections made on visiting the abodes of the dead depend entirely on previous associations. When we look on sovereigns as something more than men, which seems to be very natural, for even their bodies are preserved for veneration, we are apt to feel great sympathy for their misfortunes, and almost to regret that these objects of admiration should be subject to death. The pomp of their life seems to follow them to the tomb, and we may be as awe-struck by the stately shew of glittering coffins, as by the ceremonies of [I-131] an introduction to kiss the hand of living majesty. There was something, however, either in the vanity of thus making a shew of frail dust, or in the circumstance that several of these princes had fallen as soldiers in a foreign service, which deprived me of all particular respect for the illustrious bones I was amongst. Even the superb coffin of the last duke, who fell at Waterloo, pure and heroic as his conduct is sometimes described to have been, could not restore this feeling. I considered him more like a soldier of fortune than a generous prince sacrificing his life for his people.

No less than ten of this royal family have been slain in battle; nine are deposited at Brunswick, and one sleeps at Ottensen, near Altona. Had they been killed in defending any of the sacred rights of men, any of the principles of morality, or any hallowed truths, they might have been justly admired and honoured; but one had been a major-general in the Austrian service, and another in the Prussian service, and, however they might for a moment have been ornamented by the wreaths of victory, sound philosophy, sound morality, and sound feeling, can only regard them as having sold their lives for a title or a star.

The younger branches of the nobility of Germany, whether belonging to a sovereign family or any other, can find no other situations to fill than the higher ones of the army or the priesthood, and [I-132] there are no offices in the Protestant church that are worthy their acceptance. Their own opinions will not allow them to be advocates, physicians, agriculturists, or merchants, and whenever they are not so rich as they wish to be, they unfortunately can only become richer by selling themselves for soldiers to the highest bidder. The life of man ought to be sacred. Perhaps all the reasons which have been urged to justify taking it away, under any circumstances, are false and inconclusive. Every good man shudders at the necessity of doing it, and he can never honour those who make doing it a trade, whether they are titled soldiers or common executioners. The statue of Henry the Lion is a rude memorial of the time in which it was executed, the twelfth century, and resembles the figures seen on the top of the oldest tombs of some of our kings.

We know little more of that Duke of Brunswick who was buried by Altona, than that he was the general of the army of the coalition, and that his last appearance in the field was as commander-in-chief of the Prussian armies at the battle of Jena; but in his own country he is known, according to party opinions, either “as one of the noblest of princes, who ranks in history second to Frederick the Great, as a hero and a friend of humanity, as the patron of the arts, and as the father of his people;” or “as a man of a good heart, but of [I-133] wild and unbridled passions, who might have been a good man, had not his situation given him flatterers for his lusts. He felt well, but judged ill. His earnest desire was to be a great man. He thought himself far before the age in which he lived, when he possessed but a small portion of its wisdom. And he sacrificed the real prosperity of his country to the vanity of filling a page in history.” Such are the differences of opinion relative to this prince. The poor old man was to be pitied when he found himself compelled, by the necessity of supporting his pretensions to greatness and talents, to take the command of an army at the advanced age of seventy one, and to stake his reputation and his life against the greatest military man of that time. He lost both, and the half-contested battle of Jena, while it was lost chiefly by divisions among his troops, and among his generals, which he could not control, only shews how ill he had appreciated himself, when he undertook, with so ill-formed an army, to contend against so powerful an opponent.

Brunswick, which is now only known as the residence of the sovereign, and only famous for good sausages, chicoree coffee, and mumm, was once a powerful town, independent of its prince. It then carried on more trade than any town in the north of Germany, except Hamburg and Lubeck. It was a member of the Hanseatic league, and was a pattern [I-134] and protectress to all the smaller towns of the north. Its fate has been like that of many others;—industry and ingenuity brought wealth and power; with wealth and power came pride and indolence, and neither the same abilities nor the same care were employed to preserve power and wealth which had been used to obtain them. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, Brunswick possessed money, fortifications, and courts of justice, of its own; at the end of the fifteenth century it was fully free from all actual control of the prince, often resisted his wishes and his armies, and refused him homage till he had promised not to violate its privileges. Quarrels amongst the citizens ensued; the magistracy fell into the hands of some few families; it was no longer chosen from the body of citizens, but only from the jurisconsults, and by the jurisconsults. The power of the sovereign was increased by the Reformation, by having lawyers for counsellors. The different sovereigns united, in the seventeenth century, to destroy the freedom of the towns, and Brunswick, like the rest, was, towards the beginning of the eighteenth century, reduced to bow its neck to the yoke of the prince. It is now very quietly governed by magistrates, who must be confirmed by him, and is a good obedient town.

The common, or rather universal, use of sausages, as food in Germany, for which it has just been mentioned Brunswick is famous, has suggested [I-135] to students, who have a slang language amongst themselves, to call every thing that is perfectly indifferent, or approaching to nauseous, Wurst, sausages. Chicoree coffee is made from endive, and is much used in the north of Germany. There are several large manufactories of it at Brunswick and Magdeburgh. The use of this plant is not owing to the continental system; it was adopted more than fifty years ago. Mumm, also mentioned as now giving some celebrity to Brunswick, is a thick disagreeable sort of beer, whose inventor was a native of this town. It is held in high repute. Brunswick has still a considerable portion of trade, particularly of the trade between Hamburgh and southern Germany. It contains rather more than 20,000 people. There are manufactories of cloths, papier maché, porcelain, and colours. The inhabitants are famous for making furniture, and their turnery-ware is much esteemed.

The landlord of the inn and his wife were an example of an adherence to engagements that is frequent in Germany. They had been betrothed six years before they were married, but he was called into military service, and, while he was in the army, her friends would not consent to their union. They seem to have struggled cheerfully for better days. He had at length procured his discharge, had married, and recently taken this house. Both he and his wife were models of industry. He [I-136] brewed his own beer, looked after both his guests and their horses, and was an active intelligent man. The wife was a pretty cleanly woman, who kept her house in good order, and had something pleasing to say to every person. She was industrious, like other German women, but she added the virtues of towns, cleanliness and agreeableness to her industry.

The inhabitants, particularly the peasantry, or Brunswick, are remarkable amongst the Germans for personal beauty. The Saxons and Prussians, with all the inhabitants of the north, except the inhabitants of Hannover, are a better-looking race than those of the south. And there is something either in the general fertility and varied nature of their country, or in origin, that has caused the inhabitants of Brunswick to be distinguished even from the natives of the other favoured countries. The men hold themselves more upright, are cleaner dressed, and more active than the peasants of Germany generally are. Laws have given to them great security for their property, and more than half a century ago writers complained of their luxury. They were accused of wearing glass and silver buttons; their wives indulged in the use of lace, and their children were ornamented with silken ribbons. Some attempts which were then made to repress these indulgences are said to have made them suspicious, spiteful, and cunning. The laws [I-137] were found useless, and the peasantry of Brunswick have again acquired their good character and their taste for enjoyment.

The territories of the Duke of Brunswick are scattered, and some parts of them are separated from the other parts by the territories of other sovereigns. The whole are, however, in some respects similar as to soil, surface, and productions; and they may be numbered amongst the most fertile of northern Germany. The surface is a mixture of hill and dale, approaching in Wolfenbüttel to mountainous; the soil is generally a good clay. The vallies produce corn, and the mountains forests and minerals. The extent of the country is 1188 square geographical miles, the number of inhabitants is 209,527: Brunswick is one of the best peopled states in northern Germany. The greater part of the inhabitants, that is, 205,000, are Lutherans, the remainder are Catholics, Calvinists, Moravians, and Jews. The German language is said to be better spoken in Brunswick than in any other part of Germany, except in the towns of Hannover and Celle.

Brunswick is divided into twenty-one city or war circuits, in each of which is a court for the administration of justice, and of the police. The Landesgericht, or court of justice for the whole country at Wolfenbüttel is a court of appeal in second instance, and at the same place there is a [I-138] chief court of appeal. The circuits are united into districts, of which there are six, and over each one of these a chief captain, Oberhauptman, is placed, who has the military business, the high police, and such other duties to perform. These persons are placed immediately under the ministry. The present Duke is a minor.

There has always been states or a parliament in Brunswick, which has taken an active part in making laws, and particularly in levying taxes. They were composed of elergy, nobles, and deputies from the cities, and were in possession of all their ancient privileges till the commencement of the French Revolution. The last general meeting was held in 1772; before and since that time their business was, in general, conducted by a committee of their own appointment. In 1772, their language was by no means that of unqualified submission; they remonstrated with the Duke on his expences, and did not grant him all his requests. He had no power to command. This assembly is now to be remodelled.

Much has been done in Brunswick for the cultivation of the people, so far as school learning goes. One of the most celebrated of the present institutions is the Carolina college. It seems to have been originally intended as a better school, something between common schools and universities, but it is now chiefly famous as a military school. [I-139] This college was founded in 1745, under the patronage of the Duke Charles, and regulated by the then celebrated court chaplain, Jerusalem, [3] who, though distinguished in literature and science, yet merited from his contemporaries the better praise of being a good man. Since that period, there has been no deficiency in Brunswick of literary men and literary pursuits. At present a very good, perhaps one of the best, political journals of Germany is published there by Voss. After having derived much instruction from the history of this country, and of Hannover, written by Dr Carl Venturini, it would be unjust to pass Brunswick without mentioning his name as an historian, who deserves much praise for the care he has taken to pourtray the manners of his countrymen at different periods.

In nothing is the evil of the numerous governments of Germany so apparent, as when good roads are made in one country, which extend only to its boundaries, because the neighbouring country has no funds to complete it. On entering the territories of Brunswick, the change was from a brack to a good road, and there was a good road till I left them to go by Hildesheim to Hannover, and then I came to bogs, ploughed fields, and [I-140] pieces of road. A new road is, however, making, and the wheel-tracks extending on each side for almost a quarter of a mile, shewed what a quantity of land had been injured by wanting a proper road, and how much one was needed. Yet this is the principal track between the manufacturing country in the neighbourhood of the Lower Rhine and Brunswick, at which there are two large commercial fairs held in the year. In fact, I met a great number of vehicles, particularly carts, loaded with goods come from Elberfeld and Sölingen, and going to Brunswick. They had much difficulty to get along, sometimes sinking almost to the nave of the wheel. It is also the principal track, it ought not to be called a military road, for the Prussians to pass from the eastern part of their country to their possessions on the Rhine. It has long been a much frequented route, but has never been a good one. Perhaps the reader may think this frequent mention of the condition of the roads wearisome, but it shews how much the Germans have suffered from the multiplicity of their governments, and it must also be remarked, that there is not one of these governments which has not a great many people employed as road engineers and inspectors; and yet the roads are much worse than in our country, where the government has nothing to do with them. The soil was in general good clay; the country was well peopled, and numerous [I-141] hedge-rows, clumps of trees, and villages, gave it a resemblance to many parts of Kent. It required only better weather and better roads to make it pleasant.

On one of the cottages near the road side was an inscription admirably appropriate to the building, “I built not from pride, nor from hope, nor from lust, nor from a desire of ornament, but necessity compelled me thereto.”

I reached a village called Betmeer Pass, where I stopped for the night. It is in the former bishopric of Hildesheim, but which at present forms a part of the kingdom of Hannover. Under the government of the bishop, the landlord paid eighteen Thalers per year (about L. 2, 14s.) in taxes: under the government of Jerome Buonaparte, of whose kingdom of Westphalia Hildesheim formed a part, he paid eighty-three, and now he pays fifty-one. His house seemed to feel the difference. It was spacious, but in ruins; four beds with curtains were crowded into one room, because no other was weather-tight. The mistress was a good cook, and brought forth at supper time some seldom used remnants of better days, such as a gay table-cloth, and silver spoons, which contrasted strongly with the slovenliness, neglect, and dirt of herself and family, and with the rude fir planks which served as a table. Her clothes were good, but were negligently put on, her bosom was only half covered by the handkerchief [I-142] that was thrown rather than pinned over it, her hair hung dishevelled about her head, and constantly intruded into her eyes and mouth. The husband was much better in his appearance, and talked sensibly on agriculture, and on a variety of topics. The wife, however, did all the domestic labour, he only drank drams, smoked his pipe, and spake with the guests; his labours were farm labours, but they were stopped by the season, and he did not apply himself to any thing else.

The people of this country all speak Low German with one another, not one word of which I could understand, and all the conversation which was carried on in that dialect was lost for me. The crucifixes by the road side were evidence enough of the Catholicism of the inhabitants. In the village was a nice house which belonged to a Catholic gentleman, who had the title of Finance Counsellor to the Protestant King of Hannover. I observed an alteration in the appearance and habits of the people. They were here shorter, fuller faced, and dirtier than the people of Brunswick.

The town of Hildesheim was once, like the rest of the towns of the north of Germany, almost an independent city. It was the capital of the bishopric, and the bishop still lives there, though the sovereignty now belongs to Hannover. The power of the town might have balanced that of the [I-143] bishop, but it is as nothing when compared to that of its present powerful sovereign. Large steeples and the cathedrals make Hildesheim at a distance look like a much handsomer town than it is. Its situation is even good, but crooked and small streets, with high roofed houses, without any good buildings, and only one open square, make it rather a dismal looking place. The change in the government has had a pernicious effect on the city; the wealth that used to be dissipated in it is now partly dissipated in Hannover, and, as the general prosperity of a country is nothing to any individual when compared with his own prosperity, it was natural that the citizens should complain of the decay of their town and trade.

Before entering the town of Hannover, the eye is arrested by a very ugly pile of bricks. This is the steeple of what is called the Markt-Kirche, or market-church. It is like a blot on the air; it taught me to expect, in the rest of the buildings, every thing that was heavy and old-fashioned. I was, therefore, agreeably deceived when, on entering what is called the Egidian new town, I saw straight well paved streets, houses that appeared rather light and elegant, a handsome walk branching to the right and left, and one spacious house, with a place in front for a garden. This was, however, the best part of the town, and the crooked streets and old buildings, though neither so numerous [I-144] nor grotesque as at Brunswick and Helmstädt, were sufficient to give it all the characteristics of the cities of the north. I had sent my trunk from Dresden to Hannover by the post-coach; its weight was sixty-five pounds, and it cost about L. 1, 2s. This conveyance is, however, perfectly safe. On going to the banker’s I found he was a Jew, and, consequently, as it was Saturday, his office was shut. I had, therefore, to wait till Sunday.

At various places on the road, as I approached Hannover, I saw new buildings, and something like decent farm-houses, which are marks of prosperity very rarely seen in any part of the Continent. The road from Hildesheim was good, and some hedge-rows, and nice gardens, and, above all, the G. R.s which glittered on the toll-houses, and on the road-menders’ caps, reminded me strongly of England. This was much augmented on entering the town. The soldiers were dressed like our own, and I heard the military music playing for the officers’ dinner “The Roast Beef of Old England.”

The town of Hannover is situated in a flat plain, at the very farthest extremity of the hills and fertile country I had just passed through, and at the very commencement of those sandy districts which extend, without interruption, from it to the Elbe, the Weser, and the sea. On the north-west side lies [I-145] a hill called the Lindenberg, and in its neighbourhood the soil is fertile, and the country pleasant; on the other side the soil is generally sandy, and the country flat. A little river, called the Leine, divided into two streams, runs through it, but is in general so completely built over that it is not seen till the bridge over it is reached. In the vicinity of the Marstall, or royal stable, and by the palace, it is exposed to view, and there gives a little beauty to the whole. The town contains 20,000 inhabitants, and is increasing and improving. The Leine divides the old from the new town; and the former has as an appendage the Egidian new town, which is the best built and most agreeable part of the whole. There is not one good street, and but few good-looking houses, and, on the whole, the capital of his Majesty’s German dominions may, in point of buildings, be compared to some old fashioned third rate provincial town of Great Britain.

The only building which has the least claim to the character of elegance is the palace of the Duke of Cambridge. It was built by a nobleman in the year 1752, and afterwards purchased by the government. Even this, however, is nothing but a plain and elegant, though rather a large house. The royal palace, which has once been large, is partly in ruins. The chapel, the theatre, and some other of the old parts remain, and some new corners are built and building; the other parts have [I-146] been burnt or pulled down, and present only a mixture of confusion and ruin. The house in which the ministerial business is conducted, die Regierung; the Parliament House, das landshaftliche Hause, at present repairing, the library, the Fürsten hof, which is the residence of the Duke of Clarence, may be mentioned as decent-looking places. The manner in which the other houses are built, even when they are large, with a frame of oak, filled in with bricks, the timber being still seen, gives them a mean and old fashioned appearance.

The town-house is one of those old Gothic, or, according to Goethe, German buildings, which have so many different corners and shapes, that no one particular shape belongs to it. In lightness and ornament it is far inferior to many of the old houses, similar to those of Helmstädt, which abound in Hannover, as well as in all the towns of this part of Germany. The fronts of many of them are entirely composed of little towers, extending all the way to the top, and being sometimes smartly painted and ornamented with a variety of figures and weathercocks, they look like gay summer-houses, or small antique castles. A similar mode of building may be traced in all the old farm-houses, whose gable ends, and ornaments of wood, which, in that situation, look natural enough, often reminded me of small Gothic chapels. The general [I-147] prevalence in this country of what is called Gothic architecture, together with its prevalence and excellence in Britain; to which country it was carried by the early invaders from this part of Germany, make it probable that it had its origin here, and leave no room to doubt that this fantastical style, with its multiplicity of ornaments, was once the common style of building the farm-houses of this part of Germany.

There is one point in which most of the towns of Germany resemble one another. They have all once been fortified, the fortifications are no longer of any use, and they, or at least the walls of the towns, are converted into agreeable walks. Hannover has such a walk, and it extends round the whole town. On one part of this walk, not far from the library, and at the end of an open place which is used as a parade for soldiers, stands a little temple, whose cupola rests on twelve columns, and which contains a marble altar, supporting a bust of Leibnitz; on the bottom of the bust his name is inscribed; and the name of the artist, Hewetson, to whom it does no dishonour, is seen on the back part. On the frieze of the temple stands in large letters, “Genio Leibnitzii,” and no further inscription is required to tell who he was, and why he was thus honoured. Its situation, though naturally good, is bad from the things in its neighbourhood. It should have been in a garden, devoted [I-148] to contemplation; Leibnitz has no connection with soldier-drilling, nor have the machines which are obedient to a corporal’s stick any thing to do with Leibnitz.

The design is chaste and simple, and does great credit to the taste of the gentlemen who planned and executed it. Amongst them I may mention Messrs Von Reden, Patje, Ramberg, Hoffner, and Brandes. They were the original proposers of the monument, which was erected by subscription. The government contributed liberally, and it was completed in the year 1787. The principal merit of the design belongs to Mr Ramberg. It is pleasing to record the modesty which did not allow these gentlemen to engrave their own names on the temple which they had raised to Leibnitz. To appropriate to ourselves a share of the honour we confer, in giving money to raise a memorial to an illustrious man, is often a great motive for giving it. And, if the names of artists, subscribers, and munificent princes, were not to be inscribed on the monument they raise to the dead, the dead would be often unhonoured.

Leibnitz is a name that already too well fills the world to leave me any room to speak of him. Much of his life was passed in Hannover, and many of his manuscripts are still preserved in the library. They are all shewn to strangers with unexampled goodness, by the librarian, Mr. Hofrath [I-149] Feder. Amongst them are collections of proverbs, historical remarks, epigrams, fables, mostly written in French, something of every sort of literature. What remains of this great man’s works which are unknown, would give an ordinary man much reputation, but it is, perhaps, wise to withhold what Leibnitz himself never thought it right to give the world. He died in November 1716, and he was buried in the church of the new town of Hannover. The stone put up to his memory there is simple, and it remained for the present generation to pay him a proper tribute of respect.

The library is liberally open to the inspection of strangers. It is rich in historical works, and in works written in the Low German dialect. The inhabitants and strangers who are recommended are permitted to take books home to read. There are many reasons why it is to be wished that individuals or bodies of men should provide books for themselves, rather than that they should be provided by governments; but the difference is so great between collecting books and locking them up to be looked at or to rot, and collecting them for general use, and the advantages of the latter are so great, that, compared with the former, it is highly meritorious. The natural history society which exists in Hannover has also a library, and there are several private societies in which books, journals, and newspapers, may be read. There are several [I-150] collections of natural curiosities belonging to individuals; but, compared to other German towns, Hannover is very poor in museums and collections of works of nature or art. In England it seems to be thought that much of our wealth goes to Hannover, and there it is thought much wealth is sent to England. Neither is true. Neither the palaces of the monarch in Hannover, nor his gardens; neither the splendour of the nobility, nor the patronage which is bestowed on the arts, betrays the influence of the riches of Britain.

The streets of Hannover are well paved, and the foot-paths are raised. This latter is a convenience so rarely seen out of England, that it is more than probable it was borrowed from us. Insurance companies are not common out of England, but there is one in Hannover, which, in all probability, was established in imitation of the English. It was begun in the year 1750, and was confined to the province of Calenberg, and is supported, I believe, by the states of this province. Combined with this institution there is a regulation relative to fires, which might be adopted in every town with advantage. In case of fire, all the citizens, according to their trades, have some particular stations and employments assigned them. The origin of such a regulation is said to have been the company of merchants engaging amongst themselves to assist in saving each other’s property [I-151] in case of fire, and for this purpose they all provided themselves with sacks, to remove whatever was moveable out of danger. This is still their duty. Masons and carpenters have to pull down neighbouring buildings if necessary; smiths are engine-workers; and every thing which foresight can imagine as necessary to be done on such an emergency, has somebody appointed to do it. Every citizen, not otherwise stationed, has a numbered bucket, and no sooner is an alarm of fire given, than every one, like the sailors of a well-ordered ship, repairs to his station. From these precautions fires seldom take place in Hannover, and are soon extinguished.

The improvements since the fourteenth century have been very great. The most flourishing towns of this country, as described by the historian Spittler, were then most wretched. “After all their privileges, so little comfort could be found within their walls, that nothing but the greatest necessity could drive men to live in this manner. The miserable buildings were crowded together. The streets were not paved; the houses were thatched with straw, and if they were remarkably elegant, they had a wooden chimney. Before or behind the house was a large dunghill, where both men and animals, hardly separated within doors by a plank from one another, provided for the future manure of the field. What would have done people no [I-152] harm if they were living separate in the country, became disease and pestilence when they were crowded together. Fire very seldom broke out without a third of the town being destroyed, and seldom came a sickness in the land which was not like a pestilence to the inhabitants of the towns.” [4] There are many of these features still visible in the small towns of this country, such as the wooden chimneys and the dunghills, and destructive fires are frequent. It may give some idea of the progress made in comfort, to add, that so late as the end of the sixteenth century some of the houses of Berlin were thatched with straw; wooden chimneys were used in 1708, and they remained in Brunswick till 1745. They are yet to be seen in the town of Münder, in Hannover, and many houses throughout the country are yet destitute of chimneys.

CHAPTER V.
hannover—hamburg.↩

A mode of salutation.—Effects of mockery on character.—Appearance of country.—Freedom of German manners.—Queen Matilda.—Zucht-house.—Treatment of mad people; of criminals; prisoners of state.—A farmer chief-judge.—A wax manufactory.—Agricultural society.—Institutions.—Country.—Shepherds.—Uelzen.—Paper-mill.—Cloth manufactory.—Regulation of police.—Landlady and Pastor.—Specimen of education.—Specimen of opinions.—Lüneburg.—Nobleman farmer.—An Amt Voght.—Main chaude.—Harburg.—Bridge built by Marshal Davoust.

The German poet Goethe mentions how pleased he was when his beloved Fredericka publicly kissed him amongst her other friends and relations as they took their leave from the family. [5] This is an ancient mode of salutation in Germany, which modern refinement has not yet banished from all classes. I once saw a young woman on a visit, who, when she came down stairs in the morning, saluted in this way the whole of the persons who were assembled. In 1817 I went to see the widow [I-154] of the murdered Hofer, the Tyrolese patriot. After spending a large part of the day, and dining with this respected lady, when I took my leave she gave me a mother’s kiss, and I had nothing to regret but the want of more power to assuage the sorrow of the aged, and care-worn, and neglected matron. It was given to me in part, for I felt assured she was consoled by the visit of a solitary Englishman, which was occasioned by esteem for the memory of her husband. When I left the town of Hannover, on the 28th of May, with an intention of visiting most of the provinces of the kingdom, all the females of the family in which I had lived gave me an affectionate kiss. Such a mode of salutation is perhaps dangerous without that purity of heart to which all things are pure, and which, in its faith, can drink of the well whose waters are poison to the unbelieving.

It is a long time before a sufficiency of philosophy or apathy is obtained, “unmoved to sever or to meet,” and had not the females of this family mocked at their own sorrow, real or pretended, they would have made parting more painful. Sporting with affliction may lighten momentary care, but it has a pernicious influence on the general character. It allows no emotion to be permanent and sacred, and there are some we ought to indulge, or, at least, leave time to alter and assuage them. Always to laugh is rather more absurd than [I-155] always to cry, and to assume the propriety of doing either as a general rule of conduct, is to proceed on a false theory of human nature, which produces affectation, and often deprives men of all claim to the virtues of open-heartedness and sincerity. They act a part so often, that at length they lose all character but what they derive from their theory. There are few of our emotions which do not deserve, from their importance, to be observed and remembered, and they who endeavour to suppress them exclude themselves from a source of wisdom. The Germans are a good deal tinged with a sort of false theory, though it takes in them a different shape, according to the temperament of the individual; some will laugh all sorrows away, and others always indulge melancholy.

I reached the town of Celle at five o’clock in the evening, after a dreary tramp of twenty-four miles. The country was chiefly heath and morass, a nursery for frogs and beautiful insects, in which a patch of cultivation round a miserable village, and a herd of cattle, were now and then seen. The brown heath was mixed with large white spots of the common rush in bloom, which glanced on the horizon, and dazzled and bewildered the eye. There was almost as many royal tolls as villages, the collectors of which had given the travellers good advice, by inscribing on their boards, [I-156] “Hutet euch vor Strafe, und bezahlet Zoll,”—Beware of punishment, and pay the tolls.

At an inn I met a family travelling to Hannover, in their own carriage, and forming part of them was a young couple, who were either recently married, or were going to be married. They caressed each other, in the public room, in a manner that we should call indecent, but which I had before discovered to be a part of German manners. Franklin has said, “Men have more pride, and even pleasure, in killing than in begetting one another; for, without a blush, they assemble in great armies at noon-day to destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can, they exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory; but they creep into corners, or cover themselves with the darkness of night, when they mean to beget, as being ashamed of a virtuous action.” The Germans, in this respect, may approach to wisdom, for they seldom betray any shame at exchanging in public the signs and the endearments of legitimate love. I am not disposed to take seriously the remark of Franklin, and can readily imagine why our joys should be secret. They excite the envy or the desire of less happy people, and those who display them have no right to complain if they are exposed to sarcasm or libertine attacks, since they betray a want of delicacy and of respect for others.

Before reaching Celle, some people were breaking [I-157] up a piece of ground, in consequence of the common lands in this neighbourhood having recently been divided and appropriated. The spot was claimed by the sovereign, as lord-paramount, and the people had to pay him a small rent for the privilege of labouring it. There was a great want of a drain for the whole, which might easily have been made, if the exertions of each individual had been properly directed. They had not, and the consequence was, that the land lay so wet, it was impossible to sow it with winter corn. The practice was to sow it with oats, buck-wheat, barley, or potatoes.

In the evening I visited the old ruined castle, once the habitation of the dukes of Lüneburg, and last inhabited by the unfortunate Queen Matilda of Denmark. She died here in 1775. A monument, which is at present very much defaced, and almost destroyed, was erected to her memory, in a place called “the French Garden,” a little out of the town. It is surrounded with trees and shrubs, and has a gloomy sentimental air, somewhat in unison with the taste of the Germans.

On the following day I visited the Zucht-house, Penitentiary,—which is situated in a suburb called Wester-Celle. Permission to do so was requested from the chief of the establishment, who immediately granted it. He had formerly been a captain in the German Legion, and remarked, that there [I-158] was nothing to admire if I had seen similar establishments in other countries. The Burghauptman, who can only be considered as the turnkey, though he has the fine name of Captain of the Castle, accompanied me, and we first visited the cells for mad people. Here, as in other countries, the mad and the criminal are confined together. Why should guilt and misfortune be confounded in the minds of the society, by the unfortunate being condemned to live with the criminal? Is it merely that both must be subjected by force? Or, is it that state-doctors regard crime as insanity, and therefore shut both into the same building? This plan is objectionable, not on account of the mad people, who do not feel it, but on account of the sane, but unreflecting part of the society, who may be taught by it to believe that criminality and insanity are alike unavoidable.

There were about eighty mad people and idiots. All that are in any manner furious are shut up in cells. The idiots are left at large in the building, but remain under the same guardianship as the felons. The cells, or, as they may rather be called from their size, little apartments, were all on the ground-floor, and were well aired, and well lighted. There was a great want, however, of discrimination in the treatment; those who were absolutely furious, and those whose greatest folly was continually reading the Bible aloud, were constantly [I-159] confined in similar cells. This was very different from the regulations of a benevolent physician of a mad-house at Pirna, near Dresden, whom I remember to have seen, but whose name I have unfortunately forgotten. He made himself intimately acquainted with the dispositions and characters of every one of his patients, and judiciously adapted his means of cure accordingly. Neither of the medical men who belonged to the establishment at Celle lived in the house; its management was entrusted to an officer of the army, and the keeper of the mad people was also the gaoler. My conductor was a very stupid fellow, who knew nothing whatever of the methods followed in order to cure these unfortunates, he only knew they were fed once a day.

From the cells for madness we went to the apartments for the criminals. From fifty to sixty persons were in each working apartment, the males and females each by themselves. All the women, and some men, were employed spinning either wool or flax. The different buildings formed three sides of a square, and on the fourth side was a wall, and the gates. The ground enclosed by the building is the place in which the prisoners are allowed to go for exercise, and the inhabitants of each room take their turns to walk. A certain time is allotted them every day. Each prisoner has a separate bed, but there are so many as forty [I-160] or fifty beds in a room. Formerly, more than one person slept in the same bed, which it had been found prudent to alter.

Many of the men, unable to spin, were idling about, but there was neither noise nor confusion amongst them. All the women were patiently and quietly at work, and were all tidily and decently dressed. There was no other keeper present in each of the apartments for the females during the whole day than an elderly woman, who gave the prisoners flax, and took back the yarn, and she was perfectly at her ease, as if she were among children, instead of people confined for transgressing the laws. Fifty English females, under similar circumstances, would, even after the benevolent labours of Mrs Fry, present a very different spectacle. The evil of confinement is not to be remedied by outrage, but it is so great an evil, that it looks like tameness or apathy to be perfectly resigned to it. It marks a want of energy of character, rather than an exalted virtue. It was a better sign in the females, who were employed, than in the men, who were idle, and yet contented.

The spinning is done for merchants, who deliver a certain quantity of flax or wool, and receive back a certain quantity of yarn, for spinning which they pay. The prisoners sometimes, when they are very industrious, earn enough to pay for their keep, [I-161] and to acquire a small sum of money. The keeper did not know the exact number of mad people and of criminals confined, but he believed there was nearly 500. The whole of this establishment, without being guided by any philosophical views of reforming criminals, and without intending more than to confine them, and find them employment during their confinement, was decent, clean, and well ordered.

My conductor knew what had excited the curiosity of most visitors, and therefore he took great care to inform me of five persons who were confined in secresy as prisoners of state. They were of a better condition of life than the rest of the prisoners, had separate apartments, and were not shewn to the public. One of them had killed some person in a duel, and he was undoubtedly punished according to law. Another was a civil servant of the government, whose accounts had been found out of order. For what the others were confined was unknown. It is most probable that they were all justly confined, but some people believed they were innocent or persecuted men. The government, therefore, gets by this measure a worse character than it deserves. The world rightly judges that nothing but wrong is perpetrated in secret, and the government that wishes for a good reputation should court publicity.

Further from Celle than the Penitentiary, but [I-162] lying in the same direction, is a farm belonging to the President of the chief court of appeal, Herr von Schlepegrell. It was formerly a waste, and has been brought under cultivation by him, but has cost more money than it is worth, or will sell for. There is no other rational criterion of the value of such improvements but their produce, and the cultivation of this waste, however good the intention, cannot be praised. It is a good sign for a country when persons in the situation of the President turn their attention to agriculture, their success encourages imitation, and their failures are not followed by ruin. Lord Kaimes, whose writings did much for the improvement of the husbandry of Scotland, was also a judge, and when I remarked the analogy between him and the Herr von Schlepegrell, I wished the labours of the latter might also be successful.

The farm is situated about two miles below Celle, on the banks of the Aller, and the whole of it is a light sandy soil. Nearly 400 morgen, about 320 acres, are constantly cultivated, under the following rotation of crops, rye or wheat, and then oats, barley, buck-wheat, or potatoes, for two years. In general, no part of it is left fallow, but after some years it becomes so foul, that it is obliged to lie a summer to kill the weeds. Oxen are used for working, principally because there is a right belonging to [I-163] the farm to feed on large commons, and oxen can be turned out better than horses. A small flock of about eighty sheep was kept, but none bred; fifty cows were also kept, and fed on the commons. The East Friezland or Dutch breed of these cattle was preferred.

The province of Lüneburg is famous for bees, and much of the wax is bleached and manufactured at Celle. I visited one of the wax manufactories, and was very civilly conducted through every part by the owner. He was full of that attention and politeness I have now often experienced from Germans. They are always ready to oblige. The wax is bleached by simply watering it, and exposing it to the sun. No sort of chemical agents are employed, and it requires nearly a summer to finish the bleaching. A person had visited the owner, offering to shew him a more ready way to bleach, but that he said would have required him to alter his premises, and he was then too old. The manufactory had been established by his great-grandfather, had been continued unaltered by his grandfather and father, and he meant it should remain unaltered till his death. He complained that the concern was no longer profitable, the price of wax had fallen too low, which he attributed to unfair dealers mixing it with cheaper ingredients, and he would not allow that it could be occasioned by a cheaper mode of bleaching. There is a water communication [I-164] from here to Bremen, from where his candles were exported to Russia and other places. He complained of some restrictions, of which I was ignorant, on the importation of wax into England.

There is another farm in the neighbourhood, also situated on the Aller, but above the town, and favoured by a much better soil, which is celebrated from having formerly been the residence of Mr Thaer, the Fallenberg, or the Young of Germany. He may perhaps be called both. He was formerly a medical practitioner in Celle, he then hired this farm; he has translated many of our agricultural works; he has long edited journals of agriculture, and he has done a great deal by his writings to diffuse a knowledge of this art over Germany. He is now Professor of Agriculture at Berlin. The King of Prussia has given him an extensive tract of land, which was formerly a waste, at Mögelin, in Brandenburg, where he unites a practical school of agriculture with accommodations for boarding pupils, in some respects similar to the establishment at Hofwyl. The farm is of less consequence to the present owner than a large spirit distillery. There were some very fine teams of oxen, all of the East Friezland breed, and being all regularly harnessed, they looked admirably. The owner was occupied, and I visited under the guidance of one of his servants, his distillery, and fattening-house. He had [I-165] not more than twenty oxen; the premises are capable of holding forty,—they were all clean, and in good order. Uniting a farm with a distillery, and fattening cattle, is a frequent speculation, and succeeds very well. All the spirit is made from wheat, generally brought from Brunswick by water. One of the workmen, who had possibly heard of a steam-engine being employed to mash, to pump, and to perform all the work of the distillery, imagined it could also produce the spirit, and he inquired if brandy were not made in England by a steam-engine.

I had a long conversation with the keeper of the orphan and work-house, who explained all his labours to me. He had had much experience in the management of poor; the object of the institution over which he presided was to relieve distress, to encourage industry, and to prevent begging, and, accordingly, the funds were more devoted to employing people, though at a loss, than in giving them relief in any other way, and he thought begging had been prevented, if not destroyed. There was still, however, much distress.

Celle is the seat of a royal agricultural society, “Königliches landes Oeconomie Collegium,” whose principal business is to superintend and conduct a general inclosure of all the common lands. A Mr Meyer devoted the greater part of his life to this [I-166] business, and wrote a large work on the subject, which served as the basis of the law and regulations which have since been made, but which I was unable to comprehend.

The Hannoverian ministry are extremely solicitous to promote agriculture, and they are taking great pains not only to divide the common lands, but, by exchanges and compensations, to give a connected piece of land to each peasant, equal in value to that land which he now cultivates, and which is very often separated into fields at different places. Most assuredly it is desirable that the land belonging to each person should be all in one place, but it may be doubted if authorizing a commission of gentlemen, however impartial and disinterested, to bring this about, can ever effect it so well as merely allowing and encouraging the parties to do it by exchanges and purchases. It is an immense power that of disturbing the property of others, and its exercise will not be followed by content. This is an example of men governing too much, though from good motives. Some reliance ought to be placed on the self-interest, if not on the wisdom of mankind. It is fully adequate to produce those public benefits, which the rulers of the world seem to suppose can only be produced by their interference.

There is no account published of the transactions of this society; it publishes lists of the premiums [I-167] which it offers for particular discoveries. It is only praised as useful for dividing common lands, to promote a better system of cultivation, by any other means, is hardly within its sphere. Arthur Young somewhere observes such societies do not promote improvements in agriculture. His opinion is probably correct, and, above all, it is correct when they are appointed and paid, as this society is, by government. The funds that pay them are funds taken from agriculture, or some other productive labour, and the more numerous such societies are, the larger must the funds be which are required to support them, and in that same proportion they are pernicious to the real productive industry of the country.

In Celle there is a college, or large school, where medicine and surgery are taught, which possesses a good library and an anatomical theatre, and with which a school for the instruction of midwives is united. No midwife is allowed to practise who has not been instructed. There is also a good Latin, or High School. The Marstall, or Harass, belonging to the sovereign, has been useful in improving the breed of horses. Lists may be procured, for such are kept, of all the mares which have been brought to the royal stallions in any year or number of years. They ought to be glorious beasts of whom men think it right to number and record the embraces. They degrade themselves by attention to such [I-168] trifles. Their labour in recording, of which they are sometimes so proud, is not productive labour, and where the whole wealth, manufactures, and commerce of any country are known in all their parts, it does not follow, that it is either wealthy or prosperous; it probably possesses more accountants than productive labourers.

All around Celle, like most other German towns, there are little gardens, which belong to the various inhabitants, who cultivate in them their own cabbages and potatoes. The women are the principal gardeners, and at this time of the year they were all busied, till it was dark, digging and sowing. Another common, or rather universal feature of German towns was also visible at Celle. This is, that, with the town-house, a wine-house, called the Raths Kellar, is always united. This curious union may have orginated in the quantity of persons who had business with the magistrates, and who wanted amusement and refreshment while waiting. Celle was formerly the residence of that branch of our royal family, who were Dukes of Lüneburg before this province was united to the others, by the marriage of the only daughter of the last duke with George I. and it has ever since been the favourite abode of such of the nobility of Lüneberg as have not chosen to live in the town of Hannover. It is also the seat of the chief court of appeal for the whole [I-169] of the kingdom, and is inhabited by a great number of genteel families. It is altogether a well built and well paved little town, and with its institutions for learning, with the accuracy of the language which is spoken, and the polished manners of its inhabitants, it presents a good specimen of improvement. Its advantages of situation are all derived from the Aller, a little river, which, running through Celle, connects Brunswick with Bremen.

Between Celle and Eschede, a distance of 12 miles, there were but two small villages, the land being for the greater part heath, the soil sandy, and in many places mixed with loose stones. At the second village was a nobleman’s property, or an “Adeliche Hof,” which was in a most ruined state. It was a wretched house falling to decay, and most of the houses on noble estates are in the same ruinous condition. In this country, a very small breed of sheep— Heyde Schnucken —is numerous. They are the heath sheep of Britain. They are a hardy race of animals, which feed and nourish themselves on the few plants and short grass that are intermixed with the heather. They are the true wealth of the farmers, supplying them with both food and clothing. They require no other care than to be housed at night. For this purpose, sheds are built in many parts of this otherwise unbuilt land. Every peasant has a large flock, and [I-170] most of the labourers, servants, and shepherds, have some few. The flocks generally consist of 200 head; each animal weighs from 25 to 30 lbs. its fleece about 2 lbs. the wool is coarse, and sells from ninepence to a shilling a pound. Rye, oats, and buck-wheat, are principally cultivated. The ground is ploughed for a few years, and then allowed to rest for a few years, during which time the sheep are turned on it. Oxen are also here used for the same reason as at Celle.

The farms here are from twenty to sixty-four acres of land each. Each farmer keeps a shepherd, and one or two servants, who are generally the younger branches of the family. The heath, or rather the surface of the soil, is cut off in flakes, and, thrown into the stables and yards, forms the greater part of the manure in use. The instrument for cutting it resembles a carpenter’s adze, but is larger, and is very expeditiously used, in the same manner as that instrument is used. This was a beautiful still summer’s night. The men were unyoking their cattle, and turning them out to graze on the stunted heaths; the women, followed by one or two children, were bringing home their last loads; and I did not retire to the close and dirty inn till the disappearance of all the people, and the shutting all the doors, warned me of the lateness of the hour.

After leaving Eschede, there were no villages for [I-171] four hours, but several flocks of sheep, attended either by shepherds or shepherdesses. I expected to hear music and singing; never were they more requisite to relieve a loneliness and sterility of country. But the shepherdess was long past the gallant season of life, and nobody was either playing or singing to her. She was reading, not love sonnets, but the Bible, which she shewed me, with some sort of distaste, deeming it but sorry amusement compared with her week-days avocation of knitting stockings. The inhabitants of the towns of Germany knit on Sundays, those of the country will not on that day touch a needle. Fortunately they all can, and do read. A shepherd, who was lying on his belly with his heels in the air, was of opinion that he ought not to knit on a Sunday, and he was reading meditations, Betrachtungen, for every day in the year, on life, death, and immortality, published by some clergyman of Magdeburg; he left his book very readily to gossip with me. He had forty sheep of his own, while he was the shepherd of another man, who paid him by giving him yearly two sheaves of corn, two shirts, and coarse cloth for a jacket and trowsers. He received no money wages.

Two or three houses standing together, surrounded by trees, sometimes relieved the desolation of the otherwise barren waste. The people spoke of these precisely as the Indians speak of their habitations. [I-172] In that bush, said a shepherd, there are three houses; in that other two; and in that one still farther off there are two more. It is curious to reflect on that alteration in society by which a Herr von dem Busche, whose family probably took their name from such a house as that I saw last night, placed in such a situation as was here described as a bush, has become one of the privileged nobility of the present day.

Uelzen, where I dined and slept, is a nice little town. Most of the inhabitants were enjoying themselves in their summer-houses, of which there was one in every garden, and the town is surrounded with gardens. At the entrance to most of the houses were two stone benches, on some of which people were seated smoking, who exchanged the afternoon salutation with every passing neighbour. The upright stones at the end of these benches were shaped in an ornamented manner, like common tombstones, which they otherwise greatly resembled; and they disposed me at first to think that every family was buried under its own door sill.

The river Ilmenau is navigable from the Elbe to Uelzen, and the English and the Hamburgers are said to have formerly carried on with it a considerable commerce. Much of the commerce from Hamburg to southern Germany still passes through it. [I-173] In the town itself much spirit is distilled, wax bleached, and cloth and paper made. I visited a paper-mill. It is one of the largest in the whole of Hannover, and employs twenty-eight persons. It was not badly erected, but it was small and incomplete compared with the establishments for the same use in England.

The owner seemed much attached to the promised freedom of Germany, and he hoped much from constitutional governments, while he deplored that they were not yet established. He delivered his opinion freely on the new constitution which Hannover had received, and on the conduct of the Hannoverian government, which, he said, neglected the commercial interest. He employed people to collect rags, and he thought the government did wrong in allowing any of this raw material to go out of the land. In fact, like other men, in the blind pursuit of his own interest, he blamed the government for not doing what it ought not to do. All which every individual can justly demand of a government, is to allow him to follow his own interest undisturbed; but he wanted to hinder other people, such as rag-collectors, and the merchants who sent rags out of the land, from seeking their interest. Thus it is in every branch of society; all men wish to be themselves free, but they are willing to bind chains on others. He complained, and perhaps with justice, of the [I-174] jealousy and narrow-mindedness of some of our manufacturers. He had friends who had been in England, but not one of them, although they had made it their business, had ever been able to see the inside of a paper-mill. The liberality of people on the Continent is certainly on this point great. There are but very few establishments which a stranger is not permitted to visit on asking permission. The fear of having inventions and improved methods stolen by foreigners, is perhaps extended to illiberality amongst the manufacturers of Britain.

The cloth manufactory at Uelzen was a specimen of that destruction which changes in political relations cause. Twenty-eight looms were formerly kept at work; at this time there were only, in general, eight or ten, and at the moment even these were idle. The owner dyes, bleaches, and weaves. With the exception of spinning, the cloth is made fully ready in the same premises. Here also were complaints. When a man finds his property decaying, and his hopes destroyed, it is natural to complain, only it is wrong in men to complain of any one act of government rather than of their own veneration for it, by which alone it has the power to vex and disturb them. The same principle operated on this gentleman as on the other. He wanted a tax on the exportation of wool, and a prohibition to bring foreign-made cloths into the country. For Hannover it is of [I-175] much greater consequence that the farmer should have a good price for his wool, than that the capitalist should be able to make a profit on manufacturing cloth.

In the evening I walked to a village called Bienenbüttel. The country was, as usual, nearly a flat sand, with much heath, and cultivated only where there was water. This was the case at Bienenbüttel, where there was a rude oil and a rude corn mill, and the usual concomitant of fertility, either a nobleman’s house or an ancient convent. This was a nobleman’s house, belonging to a Herr von Hartwig, at present a ruin. An idea of what is here regarded as wealth may be known from this, that a man ploughing described two farmers of his village as great farmers, grosse Bauer, and very rich, who cultivated about forty acres of land each, and had nearly 200 head of common sheep, and kept one shepherd betwixt them.

On asking at Bienenbüttel for a bed, I was told permission to lodge me must first be obtained “from the Baumeister,” or chief man of the village; my passport was sent to him, and the permission obtained in due course. This officer is charged, among other things, with the police of the village, but submitting passports to his inspection was a new regulation. It was customary to make the innkeeper responsible, who was obliged to see the passport of each stranger, and record his name in a [I-176] book kept for that purpose. This extension of the power of the police is a proof of the progress which statesmen are making in the craft of government. Through controlling the press, they guard our understandings from being bewildered by too strong a glare of truth. Their passports serve to check our wanderings, and, at the same time, to register us, that, for the comfort of our friends, we may always be found; and they secure our sleep by placing us under the care of the magistrates. Those who have watched the progress of this benevolent craft, cannot doubt that in time its professors will take the health of their subjects under their own special care, and will preserve in perfect order all the organs of the body. For the benefit of the suffering and diseased, may that time speedily arrive.

The landlady of the post-house where I slept had been divorced from her husband, on account of unfaithfulness, but it had brought no degradation on her. She had then two very decent young women living with her to learn housekeeping. She was a fine fat dame, about fifty years of age, a ruling wife, under whose eye no hand but her own was idle, and who was evidently addicted to entertain her company with conversation. She told me, in a short time, so much of her own history as did her honour, and was expatiating very warmly on some slight she had that morning received from the village pastor, when he entered, and she received [I-177] him with a profusion of smiles and welcomes, which he amply repaid. Leading her to the sofa he seated himself by her side, and looked all sweetness. She became immediately gentle, reproached him in a very endearing way for not using her chaise that morning, when she had prepared it for him, and regarded him with as much tenderness as it was possible to give to a countenance accustomed during thirty years to keep post-boys and maids in order by its frowns. She had that morning been fatigued by a walk round her farm, and tempted by the warm weather she had remained en déshabille the whole day. Her clothes, tied close round her neck, and connected at her immense waist, formed at the bottom a circle of several feet in diameter; as she stood up she had the appearance of a cone with a very large base. Her head was closely pinned in a morning cap, and there was nothing to conceal the dimensions of her red cheeks.

The pastor was a dark complexioned healthy-looking man, about the same age as the lady, and was also, I understood, separated from his wife. He was either naturally stately, solemn, and grave, or had assumed these appearances for the sake of his profession. He had that day been at a feast given by some neighbouring Amtman, and the wine he had drunk seemed to give loudness and pomp to his words, and to add something to his vivacity. So soon as the first compliments were over, he began [I-178] an accurate description of his day’s adventures, which he easily arranged like one of his sermons, under three heads; 1. His journey there; 2. His stay; and 3. His journey back. The feast was the most important part of it, and was most minutely described. The number of dishes, the manner in which they were placed on table, the skill of Mrs Amtman in exciting rather than in satisfying the appetite, the wines, the company, with their behaviour, and remarks, were all taken in turns, as a first and second division, and so on of the principal heads. Every word was measured and spoken deliberately, and the tobacco puffed forth to make a full stop at every short sentence. Politeness, the respect due to the pastor, and perhaps a tenderer feeling which lived in, I will not say filled, the mighty space which the robes of the lady inclosed, kept her attentive, yet she was much more accustomed to talk than to listen, and she could hardly preserve herself from sleeping. As the history went on, the pastor hitched himself on the sofa close to the lady; his hand rested first on the shoulder nearest him, it then glided softly over the broad back, on the other, his face came almost in contact with hers, his hand returned, it sunk slowly over the swelled bosom, till it rested above her knee. His voice assumed a more tender and less positive tone; the lady regarded him with looks of much complacency, and they appeared [I-179] ready to sink to rest in each other’s arms. As this was going on, the two young women and the son of the landlady retired one after another. The scene was no longer fit for the participation of a third person, and I sought refuge in one of the arbours of the garden to laugh heartily at the loves of the little pastor and the fat landlady. This was a little in caricature, but otherwise a fair specimen of the manner in which the Germans indulge in the tender emotions in presence of other people.

A tutor had been kept in this family. The son of the landlady, who was intended to succeed her in the post-house, and who was then a collector of taxes for the village, and managed the farm, played on the pianoforte, and sung during the evening. He had been in to Mecklenburgh, where the soil is stiff and fertile, to learn farming, and had brought back with him a sufficient knowledge of the methods practised in that country, heartily to despise his own sand, and the means employed to cultivate it. Learning is very often blind, and he wanted to carry into practice here the methods of Mecklenburgh, though he was not persuaded they would answer; and the obvious and only means of making his sand fertile by artificial irrigation, or mixing other soils with it, had never occurred to him. It is by such means as these, however, that the [I-180] land is any where made fertile, and probably they are the only ones which can render it productive.

I was fortunate, the following day, to have the schoolmaster and parish-clerk of a neighbouring village as a companion to Lüneburg. The people here, he said, did not like learning much; they were sensible of the value of reading and writing, and calculating a money account, and they encouraged their children to learn them, but they did not comprehend what was the use of geography or natural history, and all his laudable attempts to teach them to the children failed, because they were laughed at by the parents. One old peasant had heard something of his opinions as to the moon’s being inhabited, and as to the stars being not mere shining sparks, but other suns giving light to other worlds, containing millions of beings like ourselves, and he had come to him and questioned him very magisterially if such were his belief. The schoolmaster said he had not seen the inhabitants himself, but that such opinions were entertained by very great and wise men, and therefore he verily believed them. On this the old man cried out against him as a heathen, who wanted to destroy the religion of the land, made complaints against him, and endeavoured to get him dismissed. He had not succeeded, and had only made the schoolmaster form an unfavourable opinion of the Bauers.

[I-181]

Something may be learnt of the character of a people from their common phrases. The schoolmaster described an old woman of his parish, who was obliged to have some support given her, because her only son had remained on the field of battle. Erist geblieben is the common German phrase for expressing that a man has been killed in war. It is also a phrase which is in ordinary use for remaining or staying, and is totally unconnected with any emotion either of glory or honour. Its use shews accurately how the feelings of these people on this important subject have been degraded to the most perfect indifference by a long series of wars, and by the practice of selling them to fight the battles of other nations.

The town of Lüneburg is a very ancient place, as may be learnt not only from the appearance of the buildings, but also from a short description and history of it, written by the Zöllner, Toll-gatherer, at Lüneburg, Mr Urb. Friedr. Christoph. Manecke, who, with true compiling German diligence, gives a list of no less than 46 works, which had supplied materials for his book of 150 pages. The steeples are all built of red brick, and have an ugly, and indeed frightful appearance. There is not one which does not give the idea of danger from being apparently ready to fall. Mr Manecke says they have been exposed to various accidents, owing to their weight, and the ground not being [I-182] very firm on which they are built. They have also been struck with lightning, and have been burnt. It is an heterodox taste not to admire steeples. Yet, after having seen some of the finest of the world, I confess my heretical eyes have never discovered any beauty in the modern Babels. And I may be allowed to hope, for the benefit of all nervous people, that no Babel taste will be suffered to waste the grant which has been made to build new churches on building new steeples.

Lüneburg is going to decay, and from the immense quantity of bricks which have been employed in the buildings, it promises to be at some future day what Rome has before been, a quarry, though a small one, out of which materials will be dug for other buildings. Several circumstances, such as the situation of Lüneburg, on a navigable river, and the salt and the lime which are found in its neighbourhood will always preserve it from total destruction; but it has now less commerce and wealth than formerly. The town once took part in the herring-fishery, had twice as many brewers as there are at present, and not one of the present ones are rich; it had formerly several manufactories of frieze, woollen and cotton cloths, all of which have decayed. The lime-burning and salt-making remain, but one great source of the prosperity of the town, the trade from Hamburg, is much diminished. Nearly 50 vessels [I-183] were formerly employed, there are not above 30 at present. I shall endeavour to explain the causes of the diminution of the commerce of Hannover, generally at a later period, and therefore only here observe, that one cause why the trade of Lüneburg is diminished, is some new tolls which the King of Prussia has laid on all things coming into his dominions, or passing through them by land, in order to force the commerce of Germany so much as possible by the Elbe and by Magdeburg. It would hardly be supposed that a toll on land-carriage was necessary to make the people prefer water-carriage, but so it is in this country, even where the roads are in such an execrable state, that, on entering Lüneburg, I saw two waggons, each with ten horses, to draw a load that, on good roads, would require four.

In its history, Lüneburg resembles the other towns of the north of Germany. In early days, it was united with the Hanse towns, had a magistracy independent of the crown, and a flourishing trade. It gradually fell more under the power of the sovereign, who took the great sources of its trade into his own hands, and subjected the whole of it to his regulations. Its magistracy became dependent on him, and its trade decayed.

A limestone rock, close to the town, may be considered as a curiosity. There are two other spots in the neighbourhood where limestone is [I-184] broken, but this rock, rising to the height of 150 feet above the sandy flat country, and perfectly isolated, seems brought there, according to a German author, by enchantment. It is, I believe, a sulphat of lime. The strata lie in confused and broken masses, and contain very fine crystals. Like most of what is useful in this country, except air and light, it is the property of the sovereign, but he lets it for a certain sum per year. The services of a certain number of condemned persons are also let with it, who are employed in breaking, burning, and grinding, the lime. It forms a considerable article of trade, and much of it goes to Hamburg.

At the foot of this rock there is a salt well, which could supply 4400 tons of salt per week; but as a market can only be found for about 20,000 tons in a year, the well is not very actively worked, and much of the water is allowed to run away. The manner in which Germany has always been a prey to its numerous governments, is explained by the fact, that when this country was occupied by the Prussians, his majesty of Prussia had no objection to his good town of Lüneburg supplying the rest of his dominions with cheap salt, and Lüneburg then exported 21,622 tons of salt in a year. Before that period, and since, its exports have not exceeded 7000 tons. Throughout Germany salt is a royal monopoly, and every monarch, anxious to [I-185] sell his own, rarely allows that of any other royal trader to be sold within his dominions. The process of making it is very simple. The water is pumped up and evaporated by boiling till the salt remains, which is then dried, and it is fit for sale. Eighteen boilers are employed. As it is a royal manufactory, however, it has several inspectors and overseers, two or three salt-commissioners, and secretaries, besides clerks and accountants, and all that numerous class of servants, which always make royal monopolies the most expensive of all monopolies.

Close to Lüneburg a Herr von Meding lives on his own property, and cultivates it under his own direction. He has fine plantations of oak; sows wheat, and rye, and clover, like an experienced good farmer; pays his workmen by the piece; and has an improving estate.

I walked to a village called Pattenson to sleep. At a public-house called Einen Hof, where I stopped in my way, where every member of the family was ragged and dirty, where the house appeared never to be swept, and where there was no sign of either cleanliness or neatness; yet even there a person was kept partly to instruct the children. He had been a soldier and a servant, and taught the boys and girls reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography. He also assisted in the labours of the farm.

[I-186]

I expected to find a good inn at Pattenson, but, after seeking through the whole place, a deaf and dumb man, who, by his signs, would have done no dishonour to the Abbe Sicard, but who had never been out of his own village, explained to me that there was no other than the one at the door of which he was standing, and which had all the appearance of a very miserable ale-house. The woman could give me a bed, but it was first necessary to have the permission of the Amts-Vogt to lodge me. This is the title of a servant of the crown, who has a portion of its land to administer, and who is charged with the police and administration of justice in a certain district. We have no corresponding officers in England by whose title his can be translated. I had no objection to see an Amts-Vogt, and therefore went myself to obtain his permission. He was in a small chamber, surrounded with books and papers, and he either wished to practise or shew the little learning he had. He persisted in speaking French, though he could not make out a sentence without using German words, and it was then difficult to understand him. He understood it so little, that, after reading my passport, which was in French, he supposed I was Mr Gordon, our minister at Vienna, who had given it to me. This was a rare instance of presumption and ignorance. Pretension is common amongst the Germans, but it is generally combined [I-187] with a portion of knowledge. Every German knows how to display and to make good, in the estimation of the world, all the talents he may possess, but there are very few whose pretensions are supported by so little as this gentleman’s were. He gave me permission to sleep.

The landlady was a mere peasant, but a civil well-behaved woman, and talked to me about tithes and taxes, and made many reflections on the calamities of life and the miseries of old age, as she placed before me a wooden trencher and the raw ham, Schinken, I was to have for supper. I have on many occasions found the women of this country, in her situation of life, more intelligent than the men, when the latter are neither schoolmasters nor magistrates. They are in all things the great managers, both of the house and of the farm, and therefore know more about them than the men. She described very accurately the ancient land-tax, of which the quota to be paid by each parish having been apportioned by the States, the individuals of the parish assessed themselves so as to make up this quota. She knew that the country had been examined and measured to levy a new land-tax; and she was perfectly sensible of what she suffered by tithes being taken in kind, and by a tax on persons, which, together, hardly allowed her to procure a subsistence. Yet she and her husband were at no time idle. In summer they cultivated their [I-188] land together; in winter he dug and carried peat into the town for sale, while she, with the servants, spun and wove.

At ten o’clock, when the people should all have gone to bed, I was rather surprised to see a dozen young men and women, and amongst them the servants of the house, collected at the door and playing main chaude. [6] It was a beautiful night, and this amusement lasted, with much laughter, and some very hearty slaps, till midnight. The last time I had played at this game was with the family of the public-house at the village of Simplon. I should have joined in it here with great pleasure, but I was not sure that my patience was equal to the pain inflicted by the hard hands of the peasantry. People who, after a day’s labour, can [I-189] thus amuse themselves, and be happy, assuredly find a compensation in their own minds for the sterility of the land, and the disadvantages of their situation.

Part of the town of Harburg was destroyed by the French, with a village about a mile distant from it; but both are now rebuilt. It was Harburg which the French in a manner united to Hamburg, while Marshal Davoust governed the latter, by means of a very long wooden bridge and two flying bridges, over the two branches of the Elbe. The bridge was built over a swamp, close to Hamburg, and, with about two miles of road and the flying bridges, reached from one town to the other, a distance of at least six miles. It was all built of wood, but very strongly and substantially built, and capable of supporting the heaviest waggons. It was constructed in the short space of sixty-two days. Wherever Davoust’s power reached, from there he brought artizans, mechanics, labourers, and materials; he made every body work who could work, and for whom he could find an employment. No view of lasting utility could ever have persuaded the people of the country to have built it, but, when it was built, it ensured Hamburg so ready a communication with the dominions of Hannover, that it was probably worth preserving. The materials were, however, thought of more value than the bridge; it made boatmen less [I-190] useful, and men were breaking it up. The present means of crossing from Harburg to Hamburg is a large sailing boat, which leaves Harburg every morning at seven o’clock, and Hamburg every evening at four. To cross at any other time by this route, that is direct from one town to the other, a boat must be hired expressly, which is rather expensive. There is a small boat ferries across a little distance above Harburg, but lands at a considerable distance from Hamburg. I crossed by it, and reached Hamburg at three o’clock. I was surprised to observe, as I crossed the Elbe, a steam-boat with English colours flying, on board of which was a band of music, and which occasionally fired salutes. It was a party of Britons celebrating in this manner the birth-day of their sovereign, and strengthening their loyalty by the joys of friendship and good cheer.

The road from Hannover to Hamburg traverses the province of Lüneburg, and such a short description of this province will here be subjoined as may enable the reader to form an idea of the German dominions of our sovereign.

Lüneburg is the largest, and, with one exception, the worst part of all the territories of Hannover. Its general character is flatness; its surface is drift sand, mixed with granite blocks; its produce is a stinted heather, on which a small but hardy race of sheep pick up a scanty nutriment. [I-191] These, with their guardians, male and female, knitting brown worsted stockings, are very often the only inhabitants seen in this Arcadia of the north for many miles. The southern part of this province, where it touches on Hildesheim, is fertile. In the neighbourhood of the Elbe there are good marshes, and the land on the banks of many of the little streams is tolerably fertile. Wherever the hand of man has laboured and watered the soil, there it is not absolutely sterile; and the fine trees of various kinds which grow round all the houses and villages give reason to suppose that the sand is but on the surface, and that not far beneath it there is a congenial and a fruitful soil. There are many bogs and morasses in this province; and in many places, particularly where streams have forced their way to a considerable depth, a bright yellow marl is found, which, spread on the surface, binds and fertilizes the sand.

The principles of vegetation are not yet so thoroughly known that it may be positively asserted, that the only reason why sand is not productive is its incapacity to retain moisture. There are, however, some reasons to believe this is the principal cause. For example—wherever men have artificially watered it, there it becomes fruitful; wherever it lies so low that the water cannot leave it, there vegetation takes place; and, probably, it is nothing but this vegetation alternating [I-192] with its destruction, occasioned by a large quantity of stagnant water, that has produced all those beds of peat or bogs which are found in this province, as well as in many other neglected parts or the world. Without industry, man has nothing; and until labour, directed by extensive knowledge, and stimulated by private interest, shall have been carefully applied to this province, it ought not to be affirmed that it is unproductive. It cannot be cultivated with the same expence as some other soils; but that it has been cultivated in places, in spite of the many disadvantages the people now labour under, and cultivated many years since when men were much more ignorant than they are now, are proofs, that, under the spur of that increasing population which ought to spread itself over Europe, these deserts might bloom into gardens. There can be little doubt that the now fertile Holland was once a morass like much of Lüneburg, and that the plains of Lombardy are indebted for all their fertility to that system of artificial irrigation at which the feeble descendants of the men who executed it are lost in wonder.

In the province of Lüneburg, and also generally all over the northern part of Germany, large masses of granite are found, which excite much surprise, and even wonder. Rude blocks lie on the surface, or are buried in the sand. Smaller pieces are [I-193] found deeper buried, all the angles of which are worn away by the violent action of water; but there are no granite mountains in the neighbourhood. Amongst the persons who have attended to the subject there is a difference of opinion as to what cause brought and scattered these stones all over the country. There is a traditional opinion that there formerly existed to the southward of the Erzgebirge, or Saxon and Bohemian Alps, an immense lake, which at length forced an opening for itself in what is now the channel of the Elbe, and through the neighbouring broken and destroyed rocks of the Switzerland of Saxony. It is said that these waters carried with them all those stones and sands which now cover the surface of the north of Germany. It is at least certain that the sand and the stones have been brought by the same cause, for the latter are found buried at a considerable depth in the former. It is one occupation of the peasants, when all the larger stones have been cleared away from the surface, to seek for them under it by means of an iron probe. When any are discovered, they are dug up, and employed to mend the roads, and to build walls and houses.

The professor of mineralogy at Göttingen, Mr Hauseman, however, thinks they must have had a different origin. He has examined them attentively, and affirms, I believe, that there is no granite rocks similar to these stones to be found in [I-194] the neighbourhood of the Alps above mentioned, and that similar rocks are only to be found on the coast of Scandinavia. Hence he is inclined to suppose these stones and sand must have been conveyed from Norway to Germany. It is not for me to decide between tradition and learning, but only to remark, that, whatever might have been the cause of this phenomenon, it is one proof of those numerous and mighty changes which have taken place on the surface of the earth.

To support the tradition, it may, however, be mentioned, that to this day the Weser, the Elbe, the Ems, and nearly all the other rivers of the north of Germany, bring down, in great floods, large quantities of sand, which they deposit in their course, and which, as it dries, is often blown over the land. It is also a fact, that all the land at the mouths of these rivers, and in Holland, which has been embanked from the sea, is more clay than sand, and is extremely fertile. It seems, therefore, more rational to attribute the sand which covers the north of Germany to the action, but at some former period more violent action than at present, of its own waters, than to the action of the ocean, or to suppose that this sand has grown out of, or has been left by, the sea.

CHAPTER VI.
hamburg, and free towns of germany.↩

A contrast.—Jung fern Stieg.—Altona road.—Activity.—Affluence and cleanliness.—A custom.—Buildings.—Börsen Halle.—Country houses.—Rainvill’s garden.—Klopstock’s grave.—A part of his character.—Dancing saloons.—Number of children born out of marriage.—Effects on moral character.—Education.—System for the relief of the poor.—Professor Büsch.—Theatre.—Otto von Wittelsbach.—Commercial travellers.—Commercialinns.—Formation of the Hanseatic league.—Former extent.—Present influence of Hanse towns.—Number of free towns.—Present form of government.—Senates.—Citizens.—Their share in the government.—Quantity of jurisconsults.—Commissions conciliatrice.—Leave Hamburg.

There is a great contrast between the silent town of Hannover, the quiet and almost deserted sands of Lüneburg, and the crowds, the activity, and the bustle of Hamburg. They are trifling to a person who is wafted from London; but they appear extraordinary to an inhabitant of Hannover, when he visits Hamburg for the first time. He is lost in amazement, and thinks he can never sufficiently expatiate on the animation that excites so much wonder. This shews how calm, regular, [I-196] methodical, and even dull, Hannover is, compared with Hamburg. Some Hannoverians had described to me, with exstacy, a public promenade at Hamburg, called the Jungfern Stieg, and I had been so long accustomed to their own quietness, that I was almost prepared to join in their opinions, when I saw the quantity of people and of apparent enjoyment on this walk on the evening of my arrival in Hamburg.

Its name, translated, signifies Maiden’s Stile; and, if I might judge from what I saw there, it has always been much frequented by a class of ladies, who are very numerous and famous in Hamburg, and who generally remain for the whole of their lives maidens in the eye of the law. On one side, through its whole length, there is a row of handsome houses, a broad carriage road, a walk planted with four rows of trees, and the other side is bounded by a small handsome lake formed by the Alster, a river that flows into the Elbe at Hamburg. The coffee-houses may almost vie with those of the Palais Royal for splendour; and, towards evening, it seemed as if the whole population of the town were collected on this single spot. The busy hum of the conversation of such a multitude, and their restless movement, was like the waves as they break on the shore. Many were walking. Many were sitting about the coffee-houses, or on benches, and many were idly gazing on the still [I-197] waters. It was a beautiful summer’s evening, and the moon shone both in the heavens and in the lake. Several boats floated on it, and the people in them were still, and seemed more disposed to enjoy than to disturb the serenity. The multitude were of all ages, of all descriptions, and of all countries; and remained enjoying themselves late in the night. In other parts of Germany, the people go quietly home, and to bed, towards ten o’clock; but, at midnight, the walk was yet crowded, and it was long after before all the revellers had retired. Such is the luxury or profligacy of commercial cities.

On Sunday afternoon the town appeared deserted, its whole population were passing on the road between Hamburg and Altona. The gay and the wealthy were gallopping on horseback, or rattling along in a sort of wicker carriages, many of which were standing ready to be hired; the modest and the middling classes were hurrying out of the dust to reach some of the delightful public gardens which lie on the banks of the Elbe. The poorer people sought their pleasure in the cabarets of the neighbourhood, or in looking at curiosities and wonders which they probably saw every Sunday. Wild beasts, and stalls for the sale of old books, fruit-sellers, dealers in earthenware and in old iron, fiddlers, hand-organ players, and Punch, fortune-tellers, and men inviting the passer by to game, some [I-198] bawling English blacking, and others praising as wonderful for its virtues Dutch cement, curiosities both dead and alive, here a remarkable calf, and there a penny show, booths in which feats of horse-manship and wire dancing were exhibited: In short, some amusements and follies of all kinds were collected on this single spot, and it may be doubted if the motley scene could be surpassed by any thing at Naples, or on the Boulevards of Paris. All this in a German town, and on a Sunday, surprised me. Dancing on a Sunday evening is every where common, but the greater part of the day is devoted to revelry and shows only at Hamburg. It resembles Paris on Sunday. And on week days, when the quays, the streets, and the change are crowded with people of all countries, it resembles London.

Although the hospitable magistrates have given protection to several persecuted classes of men, and have enlarged and enriched their city by opening her gates to the natives of Antwerp when that town was taken by the Spaniards, to the Jews who were driven from Portugal, to the French who fled at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and lastly, to those who fled from the French Revolution; yet Hamburg must always be considered as a German town. Though mixed with foreigners, the people are, in their language and customs, German. It is situated at the very northern part of Germany, where the national characteristics of dulness [I-199] and heaviness are said to be strongest, but whenever they are applied to the whole German people, they ought to receive many limitations. Activity is generally proportionate to the density of population. The inhabitants of Berlin, of Hamburg, of the kingdom of Wirtemberg, and of the provinces on the Rhine, are notoriously the most active of all the Germans; and in all these places, the population is proportionately crowded. That the peasants who are thinly scattered over the sandy plains of the north without one large city betwixt Berlin and Hamburg, or betwixt Frankfort and Copenhagen, are dull and heavy, may be true, but these characteristics are not true of the inhabitants of these cities, and particularly they are not true of the inhabitants of Hamburg, who have always participated in the management of their own affairs, and whose industry has not been controlled or limited by an arbitrary government.

It was principally between Altona and Hamburg that the French destroyed so many buildings when they had possession of the town. Several ruins remain, and those houses which have been rebuilt have been run up in a hasty manner; many of them are small and ill-looking, which gave the place itself, animated as it was, a very shabby mean appearance.

A native of our own country, who has not resided for some time out of it, would scarcely remark [I-200] as peculiar the apparent comfort, cleanliness, and affluence, which struck me as distinguishing the people of Hamburg. I was indebted for the observation, and for the pleasure which contemplating the enjoyments of our fellow creatures gives, to my residence in a poorer country. All around the city there are several little distinct districts, or lands, some of them are dependant on Hamburg, and some on Hannover. These districts are generally rich marsh lands; their inhabitants are extremely wealthy, and the women are said to wear on gala days diamonds and jewels that are splendid enough to adorn a princess. Each of these districts has a costume somewhat resembling the costumes of the Swiss, and the people, who are generally handsome, look neat and gay. Before reaching the town, I had seen many of them, their larger and better houses, their finely painted milk-pails, with polished hoops, and their cleanly appearance, plainly indicated more affluence than I had lately seen. They give the market of Hamburg, where they stand, selling flowers or fruits, or watching the piles of vegetables ready to be sold, a gay and animated appearance. The servants and the workmen were all neatly and well dressed. I saw nothing like poverty and wretchedness, and with better clothes the people looked handsome and healthy. Cynics may rail at affluence and luxury, [I-201] but the beauty of the human face and figure, which seems to be increased as men live in ease and enjoyment, proves their advantages. Excessive labour and poverty distort and disfigure the form. I was sensible of this as I looked on the people and the enjoyment at Hamburg, and as I recollected the unwashed faces, dishevelled hair, neglected clothes, and squalid persons of the scattered inhabitants of the sands of Germany. Good living and luxury appeared to have had so great an influence, that I could hardly believe the people were all Germans.

Almost every woman of Hamburg carries, when she goes abroad, a small long basket under her arm, which is covered and concealed by a shawl employed solely to hide it. Every one provides herself with the handsomest shawl her means can procure; it is often better than any article of the dress, and those used by servants of opulent families are of considerable value, and descend like an heir loom from mother to daughter for several generations. Scandal has been very busy with the fame of those ladies who carry baskets, but if all these are of doubtful reputation, they amount to at least half the females of Hamburg. The baskets and shawls give an air of gentility and of intrigue, and curiosity wishes to know what it is which is so carefully concealed.

Hamburg is very well situated to be kept clean, a branch of the Elbe washes it, and the Alster, the [I-202] little river before mentioned, runs through the town in two small streams. Yet it has not been improved in proportion to the goodness of its situation, and the wealth of its inhabitants. The streets are narrow, crooked, and ill paved, the houses are badly built, and huddled together, and when good-looking, can be rarely seen. The public buildings are large, but not handsome, and most of the churches are great masses of red brick, all the steeples of which, having sunk, now lean on one side, and look ready to fall. No pains seem to be taken to keep the town clean, the canals were suffered to be without water, and emitted in the warm weather most unhealthy smells. St Michael’s church is modern, and possesses the advantage of standing in an open place, where it can be seen. It is a very second rate building, in which all the faults of Italian architecture are carried to a ridiculous excess. It is well proportioned, and had the architect only spared himself the trouble of the ornaments, had he left out his pilasters on high pedestals, and not cut his cornice into innumerable angles, had he made the building as simple as possible, it might have been elegant. But at present it has a heavy and gloomy appearance.

The handsomest building in Hamburg is the Börsen Halle, but unfortunately this is situated in so narrow a street, that it can be scarcely seen. It is the coffee-house of the merchants, where they meet [I-203] to hear and tell the news, to smoke their segars, and plan their speculations, with every mercantile information at their command. Newspapers, current prices, journals, periodical publications, every thing necessary to the merchant is collected. In the building are reading-rooms, ballrooms, a library, a coffee-house, a restaurateur, and every kind of refreshment both for body and mind. It is supported by subscription; strangers are admitted, on being introduced. The rooms are splendid, and the accommodation excellent. A mercantile newspaper is published in the same building, which is known all over Germany, and perhaps in every commercial town in Europe. The Halle is open the whole day, but it is most frequented a few hours before and after change time. In ornamenting such places, rather than in building churches, the merchants of Hamburg like to display their wealth; in them, in their houses, and places of amusement, you can form an idea of their affluence.

I found the environs of Hamburg delightful. The noble Elbe, smooth as a mirror, was uniting its waters to the ocean, and reflecting gloriously the rays of the sun. Below Hamburg the land rises rather abruptly from the river, and its bank is adorned with well laid out gardens and fine houses. The beauty is rather in the territories of Denmark than in those of Hamburg, but much of [I-204] it is owing to the merchants of the latter, who have employed their wealth to adorn this part of the country. There are few parts of the world which are so abundant in signs of human happiness as the environs of London. The nice houses and gardens; the windows ornamented with flowers and curtains; the regular and beautiful walks, are all signs of enjoyment. There each house has the appearance of being the comfortable habitation of a family, and the joys of the inner chambers are not less dear to our hearts than the gaiety of the outsides to our eyes. The environs of Hamburg present similar pictures of human felicity. The merchants employ their wealth to make themselves and their families comfortable and healthy houses, removed from the close and crowded city. They may have borrowed this taste from us; but it seems natural, and, whenever men are not dazzled and corrupted by their idle reverence for monarchs, they will assuredly make comfortable dwellings for the mass of the society before they build palaces for the few.

The Hamburgers are greedy of amusement, and the environs of the city abound in houses of entertainment. One of these, from its elegance and beauty, deserves to be mentioned. A little below Ottenson, a small village, farther than Altona from Hamburgh, is a beautiful garden, which, in point of situation and neatness, may vie with any of the [I-205] world. It occupies the rising bank of the Elbe, and commands a view of the river and opposite coast. On the summit of the hill stands the house, which is elegantly furnished. Every kind of refreshment may be procured. That never-failing accompaniment of such places in Germany, a band of music, filled the still and fragrant air with sweet sounds. You sip coffee, or lave your lips with wine, under the shade of fine trees; you throw your eyes over the wide and majestic Elbe, and, music sounding from a distance, makes the scene a sort of paradise. The general calmness and gentleness of the people allow no noise and turbulence. They were like the place, still, and yet happy. It is called the “Rainvillsiche Garten,”—Rainvill’s Garden,—is one of the favourite resorts of the best company of Hamburg, and does honour to their taste.

No stranger goes to Ottenson without visiting the grave of Klopstock, who is buried in the church-yard, beneath the large linden tree, under which he delighted to sit. His second wife is buried beside him, and two plain stones mark their graves. Some lines from the Messiah are sculptured on his tombstone, but they are so much scribbled over by the names of visitants, every one of whom is of more consequence than Klopstock, that his name can scarcely be read. He could not have chosen a more delightful residence than the neighbourhood [I-206] of Hamburg. The country is beautiful, and the society of the town is equal to the society of any town of Germany. He appears to have been in one point—perhaps he was in many—like our own Gray. He wished to be thought a gentleman, or a man of the world, rather than a poet; he assumed the appearance and behaviour of a polished courtier, and when his auditors expected to hear him talk of the laws of rythme, or the difficulties he had found in executing his own productions,—when they expected to gather from him the wisdom of poetry and of inspiration, he talked to them of skaiting and of managing horses. As Goethe was beginning to be known in the world, Klopstock was at the height of his reputation; and the latter visited the former at Frankfort, on his way to Carlsruhe. The young poet expected to have learnt much from his senior relative to their art. Klopstock, however, recommended to him the skaits which were used in Friezland as better than those used in Germany. Goethe procured himself a pair, which, as he is a great lover of relics and antiquities, he probably preserves to the present day. Hagedorn, another early German poet of some celebrity, also lived and wrote the greater part of his works in the neighbourhood of Hamburg. In Ottenson church-yard, the Duke of Brunswick, who was before mentioned, is also buried. The little spot contains the dust of a prince [I-207] who was honoured as a hero and of an illustrious poet.

The wealth of the inhabitants of Hamburg, and their love of amusement, is also shewn in their dancing saloons, which are splendid and numerous. There is one by Altona, intended for every description of persons, which merits the character of a superb room. Such places are constantly visited, particularly on Sundays and holidays, by the young of both sexes. Some are frequented only by females of lost reputation. There is one such, called the Hall of Apollo, which is one of the most splendid rooms in the whole town, and which is occasionally visited by a class of persons who, in our country, would regard it as a profanation. My attention was directed to it by a middle aged citizen of the middling classes of life, who spoke of it in presence of his wife, and several other persons, as a place which all strangers visited, and where he had no objection to accompany his friends. There is something of decency about the haunts of vice on the continent, that while it renders them more dangerous, does not invest them with that character of terror and blackguardism which belongs to them in our country. Their decency is, in truth, their greatest evil, as it leaves young men no motives arising from disgust, from delicacy or prudence, to avoid them.

Such assemblies, and the opinion entertained [I-208] with regard to them, must have a powerful influence on morals; it may perhaps be traced in the number of children born out of marriage. In Hamburg, in 1817, the whole number of births was 3589, out of which 338 were the children of parents not married. The proportion of natural to legitimate children was one to ten and a half. Hamburg has the name of a free town, and because many persons are ready to attribute every crime and every disorder to freedom, it is necessary to remind the reader that similar assemblies, if they are not so splendid, are equally numerous in the royal residences of Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, and in Berlin they are certainly more libertine and profligate.

The number of children born out of marriage is also equally great, and greater in royal cities, than in the free town of Hamburg. In Paris, in the year 1815, out of 22,612 births, 8976 were children born out of marriage. The proportion is here more than one third. In Petersburgh, in 1816, it was one out of seven;—7888 was the number of births, and 1111 of these were natural children. I have also met some accounts of the children baptized in Dresden, but they did not extend to a great period, and therefore do not justify any general conclusion. The proportion of children born out of marriage was, however, as one to four. In the provinces of Bremen and Verden, in the year 1791, the whole number of births was [I-209] 5873; of these 255 were children born out of marriage; in 1792, the whole number was 5775, and then the children born out of marriage were 280; in the first year the proportion was one to twenty-two, in the second, one to twenty. In Paris there are four times as many, in Dresden twice as many, and in Petersburgh one third more children, proportionately, born out of marriage than in Hamburg, while in the province of Bremen there was more than a half less. This latter was, however, the proportion of a period long past, and there may now be a great difference. [7]

Were all these children the result of a loose and promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, if their fathers took no further notice nor care of them, they would mark a most deplorable state of society; but there is reason to believe, that, in France and in Germany, the parents of many of the children live constantly together, and that nothing is wanting to the legitimacy of their union but the mere ceremony of marriage.

It is a matter of surprise how magistrates and legislators, who take on themselves the task of preventing crimes, not only tolerate, but license [I-210] places where the temptation to commit them is hatched; how they can take away a life for forgery, and sanction that dissipation to participate in which forgery is committed; how they who take on themselves to prescribe all the actions of their fellow men, can permit them to frequent assemblies in which manly virtue, and all the better affections of the heart, are sacrificed on the altar of low sensuality. But legislators are ignorant of the mischiefs, and careless of the consequences, of laws. They have in their youth trod in the enchanted circle of dissipation, and ever afterwards live on in its delusions. Their ambition is not, and never has been, to make men good, but to make them obedient; and there is reason to believe they have often seduced nations to be criminal that they might be rendered more tractable. Their desire is to govern, and, for the sake of a paltry revenue, as a means of governing, they license prostitutes and sanction gambling. They substitute their laws for the laws of nature; they usurp the authority which reason ought to have over men, and, when they have taught the human race to look only to them, to bow in obedience to their authority, they teach one species of immorality by their commands, and another by neglecting to forbid it. We accordingly find, in the much governed countries of Germany, that men, otherwise decent and respectable, frequent assemblies, without a blush, which, [I-211] in countries where the cares of the government are somewhat less extensive, where the people think more for themselves, no man could visit without reproach.

The establishments for education in Hamburg are very good. Every parish, of which there are five, has its own school, where the poor are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion, free of expence. Exclusive of these, there is a school destined for the children of paupers,—Die Industrie und Arbeit Schule,—in which they are taught the above useful arts, and also how to perform various sorts of work. There are several schools of a better sort. There is a high-school, in which the classical languages are taught, and there is what is called a Gymnasium, in which young men are prepared for the university; but Hamburg itself has no university. In most parts of Germany the whole education is completely under the control of the magistracy, while in Hamburg there are many private schools.

When the French were in possession of Hamburg, they suspended the establishment which formerly provided for the relief of the poor. When it was in activity not a beggar was to be seen, and before it was established they were so numerous, that it was impossible to walk the streets without being very much annoyed by them. During the time its operations were suspended, the evil again [I-212] grew intolerable; they are now resumed, and, during my stay in Hamburg, I saw only three beggars, at the moment I was about to depart. They had taken their station at the common landing-place, were most wretched-looking, and were very importunate in their demands. It is forbidden by the laws to give alms, under a penalty of five R. Thalers, half of which is to be given to the beggar if he informs against the giver. Indiscriminate alms given is not a virtue; but I am slow to believe any general rule can be the exact measure to which our charities ought to extend, and I am unwilling to think that the good of society can ever demand a law for the suppression of our benevolent affections. This is something worse. It bribes villany to smite charity.

The establishment dates from the year 1788, and was supported by all the power of the government. The superior part of it consisted of an upper poor committee, composed of five senators, two elders of the parishes, and twenty citizens. In this committee, the treasurers of the churches, the chiefs of the orphan-house, of the hospital, and of the penitentiary, had seats and votes. Their principal business was to provide employment for the poor, and to take care of the funds for their support. A smaller committee, consisting of twelve, directed those persons who claimed assistance to be employed, rewarded, or punished, according [I-213] as they were in distress, were industrious, or were negligent. To promote the aim of the establishment, the town was divided into five districts, and each district was again divided into twelve quarters, and, as the town does not contain more than 107,000 inhabitants, each quarter could not contain, on an average, 2000. Each district had two overseers, and the respectable citizens in each quarter, in conjunction with the overseers, and under their guidance, looked after the poor in their quarter, and collected what funds they could for their support. They visited the houses, and inquired into the character of every person asking or needing succour. They ascertained what was the cause of their distress, and what was the best means of helping them. All these circumstances were marked on papers of a certain form, provided for that purpose, so that the whole life and character of every one of the poorer people became known to the magistrates, and was put on record. The industrious were encouraged, the idle were compelled to work, and those whose misconduct had brought misery on themselves, were otherwise punished. Care was taken that the children were all sent to school. It was, in fact, a most extensive police of citizens, and perhaps as efficient a one as could be established. There can be little doubt, that when it was vigorously followed out there would be no beggars, but the great mass of the [I-214] poor would fall under the tutelage and care of the poor committees.

One of the principal promoters of this scheme was a Professor Büsch; and for his services to humanity, the citizens, under the guidance of a society which there is in Hamburg for the encouragement of the useful arts, have erected a monument to his honour. It is placed on the walls of the town, which are converted into a promenade. It is a simple obelisk on a pedestal of granite, on which is a medallion of Büsch, and some figures, emblematical of learning, and of the peaceful virtues of citizens. There is nothing to admire in the execution. The inhabitants of free towns in modern times, like the inhabitants of the free cities of ancient Greece, know how to honour merit; and, in the estimation of wisdom, the world is likely to be more benefited by a monument to such a man as Büsch than by all those which are erected to commemorate victories, which are at the same time defeats,—which are glory to one nation, but shame to another. Modern wars are made from such a calculating policy, that the merit of being pre-eminently just rarely belongs to any one party.

The theatre of Hamburg does the wealth of the citizens no honour. It is a small, ill built, ill looking house; but the company of performers is generally supposed to be the third best of Germany. Those of the Court, or of the Burg theatre [I-215] at Vienna, and of the theatre at Berlin, are superior; but Hamburg has given birth to and nourished a great variety of talent. The celebrated Madame Shröder is a native of Hamburg, and received her theatrical education there. The manner in which Otto von Wittelsbach, a tragedy, written by a Professor Babo of Munich, was represented, gave me a favourable opinion of the performers, particularly of a Mr Herzfeld, who both looked and played the high-spirited, open-hearted, generous, disappointed, fierce, and insulted Otto very well. The tragedy is written in prose, but the fable is good, and the language plain and neat, and it is recommended to the Germans by its being taken from an event in their own history.

Otto was the friend and supporter of Philip of Suabia, whom he in a great measure helped to the imperial throne. Philip had promised him one of his daughters in marriage; but afterwards, out of policy, refused to give him either of them. And Otto, reconciled from supposing Philip’s conduct would promote the welfare of the state, assents to a proposal to assist the King of Poland, then engaged in war. He is too noble himself to suspect deceit in others; but Philip has a minister, who seeks, by the crooked paths of policy, to attain that security which is always reached by the strait ways of righteousness. The manner in which this minister leads his [I-216] master from one step of state policy to another, till he makes the once noble Philip do the basest things, which fill him with fear and horror, is an instructive lesson. The minister hates the generous Otto; and, by his persuasion, the letter of recommendation which the emperor gives Otto to the King of Poland, warns the latter to be careful of him as a disturber of the public tranquillity. Otto confides the letter to his sword-bearer, who says, no seal ever yet hindered him from reading a letter, because he cannot read. In this he resembles his master, who had begun to learn, when the monk, his instructor, gave him a book, which began, “The vow of chastity, of poverty, and of obedience, is the only key to the door of heaven.” Otto threw the book away, and forgot his reading. The seal of the letter gets melted by chance, it is read to Otto by a friend, and he then discovers the manner in which Philip wished to impose on him; he returns to court, upbraids, and in the heat of altercation murders the emperor; he is put to the ban of the empire, his castle of Wittelsbach, the ancient seat of the “Agiolfinger,” is destroyed, and as he is about to leave it and his country on a pilgrimage, he is murdered.

I know no German tragedy which is so simple and plain, so clear from all absurd sympathies and powerful fates, and mysterious necessities to commit crime as this. It has not that vividness [I-217] of character, and appropriate language, that admirable representation of old times which distinguished Goetz von Berlichingen; yet Otto is the very picture of a true knight, and the spirit of the manners of that time seems to have been caught and copied. Men of strong passions, whose conduct has been accurately described, who were unalloyed by affectation and unpolished by refinement, who lived for themselves, and so separated from the rest of the world, as to remain unaltered by its opinions, probably afford some of the best materials for tragedy. We are sufficiently acquainted with the character of the days of chivalry to appreciate the sentiments, and take an interest in the conduct of the persons who lived in those days. And a tragic author has little more to do than to copy the language which has been handed down to us as theirs. Professor Babo has done this, and he has succeeded. The piece, though not new, was received with great applause, much of which was undoubtedly due to the good acting of Mr Herzfeld.

I may here mention a class of men I have frequently met in Germany, but with whom I am not sufficiently acquainted to describe them accurately, more than by their outward marks. If you meet with two or three persons riding on horseback in company, and they have long rapiers hanging at their sides, and are well wrapped up in great coats and caps, with a little portmanteau [I-218] strapped on behind their saddle, you may be sure they are mercantile travellers. If the colour of their clothes approaches grey, and are rather coarse, if they boast of the excellence of German manufactories, and exalt the patriotism of using only them, if they have a mortal hatred for English manufacturers and machinery, if their manners are rather presumptuous and coarse, like men grown suddenly rich, and they are rather dirty and slovenly in their persons; they are of the same class of people, but they surely come from the neighbourhood of the Rhine, from Elberfeld, or Sölingen. The riders I have seen in all parts of Germany, and I have occasionally associated with the sect at Leipsic, Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, and in Holland, and I have found them every where alike.

They are a numerous class of men, as the whole commerce of Germany is yet much more carried on through them than through the ordinary post. They are more usually partners than hired persons. From the nature of their pursuits, from their mixing much with society, and from their having shared in that good education which is given to every child in their country, they are some of its most shrewd and practical men. Their business teaches them not to confine their love to any tract of Germany, and the impediments they feel to their success from the numerous governments, makes them [I-219] rational and steady patriots. Several petitions and remonstrances which have been sent from the commercial class to the diet at Frankfort, and to the sovereign of Prussia, relative to a freedom of trade for all parts of Germany, and to giving free constitutions to their country; and some very spirited and well reasoned articles on some branches of political economy which have frequently found their way into the Allgemeine Zeitung, published at Stutgard, and which were the production of some of this class of men residing on the Rhine, shew in what manner they begin to interest themselves in politics. They are united by interest, they have frequent opportunities of communicating with each other, and they can give weight to their sentiments. They have suffered from an alteration in the course of trade, are yet ignorant how beneficial a free intercourse between nations is, and they are led by their apparent interest to wish for laws restricting the importation of French and English articles, and to ask for a monopoly. With these natural defects, and with too great an habitual love for amusement, they are certainly to be ranked amongst the most active and political of all the German people.

There are two points in which they excel; they are not noble, they belong to no caste, and are, of course, opposed to exclusive privileges; and they do not form incorporated trades, and are, therefore, [I-220] not opposed to a free exercise of the industry of any citizen. They are gathering wealth and political power, and untainted with the metaphysics of the philosophers, the technicalities of the lawyers, and the enthusiasm of the students, and far removed from the ignorance and degradation of the peasants, may be looked on as some of the most sane and healthy minded people of Germany. They are neither visionarily mad, nor practically slaves. There were not less than eighty persons of this description from all parts of Germany, who dined at the table d’hôte every day, who were constantly going and coming, and who afforded an endless change of faces and of society.

In commercial inns a mere idle traveller finds no companions, for every other inhabitant has his distinct occupations and friends, who find him amusement when he is not employed. Nor are such inns to be recommended to those who pine after comfort and repose, and who are desirous of having all the little scraps of information which are usually supplied by an intelligent waiter, or a valet-de-place. They are, however, worth visiting; at them you feed excellently, the conversation is always animated and loud; the opinions of this class of men merit attention, and the large parties which assemble form a singular feature in society. Never but in Germany, and in commercial towns, [I-221] have I seen a table d’hôte which was habitually frequented by more than sixty persons.

The end of the thirteenth, and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, seem to have been fruitful in associations to obtain or preserve freedom. The Hanseatic league, though neither the first nor the last, became one of the most powerful of such associations, and, with the exception of the union of the Swiss, has lasted longer than any other. A union of the cities on the Rhine, which was also formed for the purpose of protecting their property, and giving security to that commerce which was just then beginning to spread civilization over Europe, preceded the Hanseatic league. These unions were not copied from one another, but were, in each instance, the result of a necessity to protect the property of merchants from the ravages of freebooters; and the mercantile classes, relying on themselves, united together for protection and security. They are remarkable instances of a common interest uniting men who lived under different governments, who were separated from each other, and who wanted the magic bond of a common country. At that time men defended one another because they were injured. Now, they do it, because they are subjects or slaves of the same monarch.

In the fourteenth century, the Hanseatic league comprised almost all the considerable towns of Germany [I-222] and Holland. The number was at one time sixty-two, and though they were too much scattered to act well together, their common interest held them united, and made them at that period formidable to all the sovereigns of the Continent. The power of these latter, however, became gradually too great to be resisted by scattered individual towns; and each of them fell in its turn under the sway of some prince. A change of commerce reduced the prosperity of some of the towns, and the powerful league was at length again reduced to the two cities with whom it originated, Hamburg and Lubeck, and their later sister Bremen. They are probably indebted for their continued independence to the distance at which they are situated from any power capable of conquering and retaining them with advantage.

Hamburg has been often assailed by the Danes, but they always wanted power sufficient to subdue it, supported as it was by the other Hanse towns, and sometimes by the intercession, if not by the arms of the emperor. It was obliged, however, to purchase in 1768 a resignation from Denmark of the right it claimed to the town, and a future security from attack.

Some account of the present state of the governments of these three towns will be interesting, not only from their antiquity, and from the honourable place they hold in history, but also from the influence [I-223] they are likely to have on the future prosperity of that people, whose language their inhabitants speak. They are far removed from the other busy parts of Germany, and, from the facility of communication by water, have almost so much to do with Britain as with Germany. But they are the great emporiums for the commerce of this latter country, and are constantly visited by crowds of travellers and merchants from every part of it. Their language is German, their publications spread through Germany, their customs, their freedom itself, their laws are German, and though they possess none of that lofty fame which dazzles and deludes, yet, from their prosperity, they are likely to enjoy a considerable influence on opinion. Their newspapers, particularly the “Deutsche Beobacter,” published at Hamburg, warmly espouse the side of liberality, and are much read in Germany. Though separated from the active parts of it by large districts of sand, they can thus make their voice be heard on the far side, and may help their countrymen in those rational struggles they have now commenced, to obtain political freedom, through the medium of opinion. As an example of the influence of their press, I may mention, that the newspaper of Bremen was the first to publish an account of a man being tortured in Hannover in 1818, which then attracted the notice of the literary public of Germany, and since [I-224] then the torture has been abolished in Hannover. Their interest, also, is most intimately connected with the freedom of trade in Germany, and as this can only be obtained through free constitutions being given to the rest of their countrymen, the press of the Hanse towns will assist in obtaining them. With commercial people freedom and prosperity must be synonymous terms, and the geographical situation alone of these towns must make their inhabitants admirers of freedom.

In a mere literary point of view, I am not so able to appreciate their effects, but it may be remarked, that Klopstock lived and wrote in Hamburg, and that Goethe was born and educated in Frankfort. And, according to the general principle, of liberty being the mother of talents, it may be expected that the natives of the free towns should, in no case, be behind the inhabitants of the other parts of Germany.

The general form of the government of these three towns is the same. In name it is republican, and each is an independent sovereign. Under the empire they were subject to no control greater than that to which each individual sovereign was subject. There were formerly fifty-one free imperial towns in Germany, which were also republics, which had sovereign power within their own territories, but over which the emperor had in some measure extended his dominion rather more than [I-225] over the princes of the empire. They were the principal seats of the wealth, civilization, and industry of Germany. At present Frankfort on the Maine is the only one remaining. All the rest have fallen under the dominion of different sovereigns. The alterations in society, from rude freedom to polished slavery, are nowhere more strongly marked than in the history of Germany. Political power, from having been much divided, has become gradually concentrated in the hands of a few sovereigns, and men have only lately learnt all the evils of this concentration. As Frankfort is now independent, and as it forms, with the three cities of Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, a distinct part of the empire of Germany, and each one has a vote at the diet, I shall include Frankfort in the few observations I shall here make on their different constitutions.

Both the executive power and the power of administering justice are placed in all these towns, in the hands of a senate, which is composed, in Hamburg, of four bürgermeisters and twenty-four senators; in Lubeck of four bürgermeisters and sixteen senators; in Bremen also of four bürgermeisters and twenty-four senators; and in Frankfort of two bürgermeisters and forty-two senators. In the three Hanse towns the senates fill up all the vacancies which may occur by death in their own body. The qualifications requisite for [I-226] a senator are, that the person is a citizen,—that he follows that Christian confession of faith which is followed by the city. In Bremen, for example, each member must be a Calvinist; in Hamburg, a Lutheran. He must be of a certain age,—not related in a certain degree to the other members of the senate,—and he must not be in the service of any foreign prince. In Frankfort the members of the senate are only required to be Christians, and the citizens take a small share in electing them. The senate elects six persons, and deputies chosen by the citizens elect six more. These twelve elect three persons, and of these three the senate chooses one. In this manner every vacancy is filled. In all these towns, therefore, the citizens, who are only a part of the people, have little or nothing to do with the election of their own magistrates.

When the towns of Germany first grew into importance, there were no large accumulation of capital in the hands of individual tradesmen. Each citizen had his own house, worked at his trade, had his single apprentice, and very often no journeyman. It was not at that time an unjust principle to regard him only as a citizen who possessed, within the walls, a house of a certain value, because, in fact, there were at that time few other inhabitants of towns than those who did possess a house. But in our times all this is altered. Large [I-227] capitalists employ many men who constantly live in cities, but who can never accumulate, with the wages of their labour, a sufficiency of wealth to purchase a house in a city, where, from convenience of situation, every house has the value of a palace. And when the law makes it a necessary condition to obtaining the rights of a citizen, that a man shall possess a house of a certain value, all the people who cannot buy a house, and who, at the present day, are probably the majority of the society, are therefore excluded from the privileges of citizenship, by a regulation made under circumstances totally different from the present, and when the present circumstances could never have been contemplated or imagined.

Such a regulation as this is in force in most of the Hanse towns, and thus a large body of the inhabitants are excluded from every participation in political power. Thus, in Hamburg, those citizens only take part in public affairs who possess a house of their own which is worth 1000 Reichs Thalers, species, or about L. 200 Sterling, and who have had the right of citizenship conferred on them by the senate. To obtain them, also, it is necessary for the aspirant to prove that he is not noble,—not a Wende,—and not a Cerf— Leibeigner, —that he professes one of the three Christian confessions of faith,—and that he does not already possess the right of citizenship in any other city. In Frankfort, [I-228] to be a citizen a man must possess 5000 florins, or L. 250 Sterling; but here the legislative body, at the recommendation of the senate, has the power to give the right of citizenship to persons of extraordinary talents, or who may otherwise have a claim on it, when they do not possess this sum. The rights of citizenship are in Lubeck and Bremen in the gift of the senate, and, in the latter city, to be permitted to take part in the public affairs, a man must possess 3000 Thalers species, or L. 600. It is not enough, in the eyes of legislators, that wealth has of itself a thousand charms, but they have increased its influence on the mind by giving it a multitude of privileges. In fact, it has now usurped all the power of legislation, and most penal laws are now made for the mere protection of wealth.

The senates must consult the citizens when new laws are to be made,—when new taxes are to be levied,—when war is to be made,—when a new religion is to be tolerated,—when the domanial property of the city is to be sold,—when the armed force is to be augmented,—and when any expences are to be incurred. The power to make propositions belongs entirely to the senate, and it makes them not directly to the mass of the citizens, but to different persons who represent them. In Lubeck the citizens assemble in twelve colleges, or guilds, according to their trades; each college [I-229] appoints a certain number of elders, with whom the senate communicates in writing. In Bremen, the citizens, divided into four sections, appoint a certain number of notables who act for them, and who are called together by the senate, generally several times in the year.

Hamburg is divided into five parishes. Over the citizens of each of these parishes three elders have authority. They are called the college of fifteen elders. The college elects its own members from amongst the citizens of the different parishes. It also elects nine deacons for each parish, who, united with them, make together the college of sixty, and twenty-four subdeacons for each parish, who, united with the rest, make the college of 180. The elders elect, further, six adjoints for each parish, who, united to the others, make the whole number 210. When the citizens are called together to communicate with the senate, the members of these colleges must attend; the remainder of the citizens may if they please. Before any propositions are made to the whole of the citizens, they are communicated to the elders, and their opinion is asked as to the propriety of assembling the citizens, though they have no power to compel this when the senate does not please. When the citizens are called together, and 200 are assembled in the town-house, the bürgermeisters appear, and the propositions which the senate has to make are [I-230] read. A copy of these is given to each of the five parishes, the members of which, with the senior elder of each parish for president, go into five separate chambers to deliberate, and each parish comes to a separate resolution. The elders of the different parishes now meet, and make, according to the resolutions of each parish, a joint resolution, which passes for the resolution of the citizens. If this agree with the propositions of the senate, it is then law. If the propositions are not agreed to, the senate may propose them again. Should they then be rejected, the senate, with the college of sixty, the elders, and the deacons, confer on the subject, and endeavour to come to an agreement. When this occurs, the citizens are again called together, and, as their leading men are now in unison with the senate, the propositions are generally assented to. Should an agreement not be obtained by these means,—should the citizens obstinately refuse their consent to the propositions, the senate retires them “from its great love for freedom and peace;” if it should obstinately persist, a deputation of twenty persons, half elected out of the senate, and by it, and half elected by the citizens, have a power given them, from which there is no appeal, to decide the question. From the power which the elders have of leading the debates, and of afterwards making the resolutions nearly what they please,—it appears that this should be called the senate [I-231] communicating with the elders rather than with the citizens. There is reason to believe, from its having been found necessary to compel a certain number of persons to attend, that the citizens found themselves of no consequence in these assemblies, and therefore left off frequenting them. Hamburg, however, is the only one of the Hanse towns which has the least claim to the name of a popular government.

In Frankfort the citizens, that is, persons who possess L. 250 Sterling, and have had the rights of citizenship given them by the senate, are divided into three classes according to their ranks; the first are nobles, learned men, public servants, &c.; the second, bankers, merchants, retail traders, &c.; the third are mechanics, and persons not included in the two first classes. Each of these classes elects twenty-five deputies, by each of the members inscribing the names of twenty-five citizens on a piece of paper, and giving it in to the president, and they together making seventy-five, are the electing college, and elect forty-five persons who take part in making laws when the legislative body is called together. This election is renewed ever year. These forty-five elected members, twenty members of the senate chosen by it, and twenty members of what is called the permanent committee of the citizens, chosen by this committee, form the legislative body of Frankfort. The president is always a senator. This body is to be assembled [I-232] once a year by the senate, and remains six weeks together. It is in the power of the senate to call them oftener, and to keep them longer together.

In describing the subjects on which the senates are generally obliged to consult the citizens, I described the duties and functions of this legislative body which represents the citizens. The permanent committee of citizens, mentioned above, consists of fifty-one originally elected by the citizens, the vacancies are afterwards filled by this committee, choosing six of its own members, who, with six of the forty-five representatives of the citizens, elect some persons to fill them. Their office is permanent, and six of them must be jurisconsults,— Rechtsgelehrte. The influence which this class of men have in Germany, and the number of them who are employed in every department of government, deserves to be remarked, and pondered on by all those who speculate on the further progress of German society. Thus of the twenty-four senators of Hamburg eleven must be jurisconsults, and three of the bürgermeisters, four secretaries, and four “Syndici,” who have the power to give advice, though not a right to vote in the senate, are all jurisconsults. Thus also in Bremen, of the thirty-eight persons who compose the magistracy, twenty-nine are jurisconsults. These are people learned in law, who have no other occupations but those of governing and judging, and no other emolument but what they derive from their [I-233] trades. An equal proportion is to be found in all the governments of Germany.

Formerly in civil suits of a certain value, an appeal might be made from the decisions of the senates to the court of the empire. At present, there is no appeal but that of sending the papers of any process to some faculty of jurisprudence for their decision. It is intended to establish a court of appeal for the four free cities, but at present the senators possess, uncontrolled, the power of administering justice. When to this, and the share they take in legislation, is added, that they alone are the executive power, that the accounts of the expenditure, with the exception of Frankfort, are submitted only to them, and that they hold their offices for life, it appears to me, that, so far as form and paper constitutions go, the senates of all these towns have unlimited power; yet I believe no instance is known of their being guilty of oppression, or of their failing to support, to the utmost of their power, the general interest of their fellow-citizens. The favourable opinion which the citizens entertain of their governments, may be partly derived from they being much better than the governments of the surrounding monarchies. But so far as paper constitutions are imagined to be a security to the governed against the power of the governors, they appear to be perfect anomalies in [I-234] politics; the people have no securities, and yet they are not oppressed.

The causes of the moderation of these gentlemen in the pursuit of power, as compared to the conduct of other governors, may be traced to their having little or no territory, above all, no valuable distant territory, and, consequently, they can have no revenues but what they derive from the citizens. They live amongst the people, and they are, therefore, so much under the influence of public opinion, as if they had no control over the press, and every third man were a political writer. Conversation, without public meetings, or official and authorized public bodies, gives a consistency and a force to public opinion which keeps the magistrates within the bounds prescribed by custom. What Villers has said of Lubeck, the government of which is notoriously a close oligarchy, in describing the constitutions of the Hanse towns, appears to me applicable to them all. “Le gouvernment de Lubeck semble être une convention de famille sans défiance et sans jalousie, où l’amour de la mère commune, où la bonne-foi rèciproque et le respect du contrat d’union tiennent lieu de limites et de vigilance active.” [8]

[I-235]

There is great difference between a form of government and principles of governing. It is of no consequence what the former is, provided the latter be right, though there may be some forms under which there is a greater probability that the principles will be right than under others. It is the form of the government of these free towns, its approach to an oligarchy of lawyers, which is wrong; the principles of governing, because they have always been subjected to the opinions of the people, are commensurate with the wisdom which the people possess, and they are, therefore, contented, and the government is good.

Some wish has been expressed to separate the judicial from the executive functions, and although this is, in theory, an excellent principle, yet to put it in practice in Hamburg, while public opinion can control both the executive and judicial powers, seems hardly worth the trouble and expence it would occasion. A greater improvement would be the admission of people of every religion into the offices of the state, and to the privileges of citizenship. Intolerance is at present carried farther in the Hanse towns, particularly in Bremen, than in any other part of the north of Germany, and it is extraordinary enough, that, combined with this intolerance, the members of the church in these two cities should have more wealth and worldly power than the generality of their Protestant brethren. There is [I-236] nothing in the form of these governments which is worthy of imitation, or which can be imitated by the rest of Germany. In fact, most of the cities of Germany have formerly had similar constitutions, and they have either destroyed themselves, or they have been destroyed for their inefficiency. There is nothing in these governments more than the expence of a too numerous magistracy to prevent the growing prosperity of the towns. The inhabitants, from their extensive communication, must increase in knowledge and liberality, and, from the one specimen which I have given of the influence of their press, and from the nature of their occupations rescuing them from those fatal speculations which too often occupy the mere literary men of Germany, they may be expected to exert a more beneficial influence on the whole country, than any other equal portions of the community.

All the free towns have some territory more than is enclosed by their walls, and some of it, as Ritzebüttel, which belongs to Hamburg, is at a considerable distance from the city. The amount of the inhabitants, subjects of the different free towns, that is, both within and without their walls, is as follows: Frankfort 47,372; Lubeck 43,127; the city has only 25,526; Hamburg 129,739; and Bremen 46,270. Their revenues are estimated, that of Frankfort L. 80,000, that of Lubeck at [I-237] L. 37,000, that of Hamburg L. 100,000, and that of Bremen at L. 40,000. They have all some debts. Together, they contain a population of 266,000 persons, and a revenue of L. 257,000 per year.

Hamburg and Bremen have adopted those commissions concilialrice which were first invented in Denmark. They are composed of two or three persons who have power to decide disputes, quarrels, and claims in a summary way, without letting them go through all the tedious formalities of a regular law process.

I left Hamburgh on Monday, June 8th, in a boat that goes every afternoon at three o’clock to Harburg. It cost an hour and a half to cross. The weather was fine, and the company mixed and agreeable. A great deal of the conversation was of that trifling sort which a very mixed society of people, all strangers to one another, usually have. At length, some political topics were started, and it was easy to remark, that most of the people thought more than they dared to say. I ventured to suggest, that the many persons who are employed in Germany in the capacity of governors of one sort or another, was one great cause for the quantity of taxation, and for that continued poverty of the people of which they were complaining. Immediately I was reproved for venturing too far, and cautioned to be careful of [I-238] what I said; which shews under what inspection and restraints, real or imaginary, the people yet suppose themselves to labour. From politics the conversation became economical, the subject of the distresses of the commercial world was introduced, and the machinery of England blamed as the cause not only of ruin to England, but of ruin to the world. I said something in favour of machinery, but every person present, particularly some mercantile travellers, were my opponents. Mine was the right cause, and the steadiest of the believers in the hurtful effects of machinery declined to say much for his opinion. The prejudice against machinery is not confined to Germany, but it is, I believe, more violent there than in any other country; there books have been written expressly to prove that the machinery of Britain was the ruin of the Continent.

On arriving at Harburg, my companions went their various ways, and I took a solitary evening walk, intending to visit that part of Hannover which lies on the shores of the Elbe and the sea. I thought to have reached a little town called Buxtehude to sleep, but heavy sandy roads prevented this, and I stopped at a little village called Obergonne, where the contrast was great between the comforts of an inn at Hamburg, and those which a village alehouse could afford, and between the busy multitudes of that town, and the silence of [I-239] the little family. They were all going to bed as I entered; it was ten o’clock, and I was soon shewn the little room where I was to sleep. There was a decent bed in one corner, but on two sides were several shelves, and on them the milk and cream from five cows, and part of the provender of the family were kept. The family were farmers, possessing about twelve acres of land, for which they had some services to perform, and tithes but no rent to pay. They exercised their industry in a variety of ways, such as digging peat, and sending it with their little produce to Hamburg, but they were still poor, and destitute of any thing like comfort. They were too indolent, or too much occupied, to keep either their house or their persons clean.

CHAPTER VII.
free lands near the elbe.↩

Names.—In what their freedom consisted.—How separated.—Stade.—Forlifications.—Trade.—Appearance of country.—A difference of manners.—An adventure.—An advocate.—A country parson.—Ottendorf.—Land Hadeln.—Farmers.—Servants.—General appearance.—Budjadinger Land.—Borough English.—Opinions.—A German proverb.—Royal tolls.—Provinces of Bremen and Verden.

The shores of the Elbe, the Weser, and the Ems, appear to have been very long inhabited by a race of men who either had a different origin from the inhabitants of the rest of Germany, or who found so many advantages in their situation that they made, at a very early period, some advances in civilization, which have ever since given them a superiority over the rest. It is said that they were Friezlanders, that they spoke a different dialect, and were in many points different from the other tribes of the same nation who spread themselves over Germany. They ardently loved freedom, they formed themselves into various little republics, without either sovereigns or nobles, and in this state they [I-241] long preserved their independence. The towns of Bremen and Hamburg are well known examples, which still exist. The names of some others have utterly passed away, but not only the names, even the privileges of several still remain. These are known by the names of the land Kehdinger, land Wursten, the Alte land, and, above all, the land Hadeln. The three former lost many of their liberties when they were conquered by the nobles, and the archbishops of Bremen, at an early period, and much of the property of Kehdinger having become, through the misfortune of a dike breaking, which the inhabitants were not capable of repairing, the property of the crown, they were subjected to its magistrates and regulations. They still retain, however, the privilege of electing their own magistrates and clergymen, and they retain their own courts, in which the pleadings are public, and spoken, and in which justice is summarily administered. These courts are composed of magistrates, partly elected by the inhabitants, and partly appointed by the crown, and they are always attended by some of the inhabitants who are elected by the remainder, to perform this and other duties during three years. They have a right to give their opinion, though they are not accustomed to give it, and seem to be a sort of jury. The land Hadeln, or, as the Germans affectionately call it, das Ländchen, retained the most privileges. [I-242] The inhabitants, divided into parishes, not only elected all their own magistrates, and all the officers of justice, of the revenue, and of the church, but they were completely free from great tithes, from nobles, and from that servitude of the peasantry which has had so sad an influence on the rest of Germany. By a sort of contract with the crown, they paid it a round sum, about 10,000 R. Thalers per year, which they levied as they pleased in lieu of all taxes. They were free from all quartering of soldiers. They were entirely governed by a sort of parliament or states chosen by the different parishes, and at the head of all was placed a sort of royal commissioner. The people themselves kept the roads in repair, and the chief duties of the government of Hannover towards it seems to have been, to give it the name of its dominions, and to take a portion of its revenue. The presence of the French, however, reduced these privileges to a par with those of the inhabitants of the other provinces of Hannover, and though they have now recovered the power of electing their own magistrates, and are again in possession of their ancient tribunals, and again elect their own tax-gatherers, they have lost the power of taxing themselves, they have lost their own separate government and states, and are now in these points subjected to the same rules as the other inhabitants of Hannover. It does honour to the sovereigns of this [I-243] country that they allowed this little land to enjoy all its ancient privileges, till it was occupied by the French. I had heard and read a good deal of it, and the last chapter had left me at Obergonne, on my way to the very northernmost part of Germany, where it is situated, to visit it. Destitute as it is of all influence on the large societies of Europe, and of all romantic beauty, it is only remarkable as yet possessing the last remains of those free institutions which were imported from this country into Britain.

Nature seems in a manner to have separated the several little districts which have been mentioned from the rest of the world. The Elbe, the Sea, and the Weser, bound them on one side, they extend backward from the water but a few miles, and then vast moors, and barren sands, intervene between them and the other cultivated places. I passed on the following morning, on the inner borders of the Alte land. To my right all was fertility and cultivation, to my left there was nothing but a bleak black waste. A village, called Hornburg, through which I passed, though not within these districts, was so much better than any village I had before seen, that it gave me a favourable idea of what was to come.

The town of Stade, which I also passed through, is the seat of the provincial government, and of the courts of justice, for those parts of the dominions [I-244] of Hannover which are named Bremen and Verden. It lies at some distance from the Elbe. A little river, the Schwinge, passes through it, and flows into the Elbe, but it is too small to be navigated by any other vessels than large boats, and it is said to be growing shallower. It is the only fortified place in the whole kingdom; every other part of the large boundaries of Hannover are defenceless, and here nobody can well come but the English. It is kept up to ensure a communication with England, and more than L. 8000 have been voted by the states of Hannover, in order to make this a perfect fortress. Achilles was invulnerable in every part but his heel; it is the heel alone of Hannover, which the wise men of that country are making impregnable.

Stade contains 4000 people, and was formerly a place of considerable importance, but the filling up of the river, which industry might have prevented, and other circumstances, particularly its conversion to a fortress, have reduced it from maintaining itself to be nearly dependant for support on the revenues of the rest of the country. Sonne says, [9] that, in 1815, four vessels were sent from here to catch whales. In 1818, however, there were none. Formerly Stade did share in this fishery, but the [I-245] capitalists found they could employ their capitals much more advantageously in Hamburg than in Stade, and they had moved there. It is amusing to remark how the commerce of three carriers and eight owners of small vessels are called by this author an important trade. Nothing can give a more correct notion of the state of commerce in this country than such observations. They are better than a host of figures. It is admitted, however, on all hands, that the commerce of Stade has decreased.

Stade is of some importance to the sovereign, from being in the neighbourhood of that part of the Elbe where he makes people purchase a permission to sail on its waters. A vessel, which was formerly an English gun-brig, and which is the whole naval force of his majesty’s German dominions, is stationed here, to levy the toll, or see the certificate that it has been paid in Hamburg. Ships belonging to Altona and Hamburg, the inhabitants on the left bank of the Elbe, and some of those on the right bank, with their own productions, pass toll free, every body else must pay. This is, undoubtedly, the most important toll on water belonging to Hannover, and it is said to produce, when the expences of collecting it are paid, about L. 5000 per year. But this is a sealed part of the management of government, and all which is known concerning it is mere conjecture.

[I-246]

It was only on quitting Stade that I entered the fertile marsh land of Kehdinger. The country was regularly divided into small fields, planted with fruit trees, and rich in promise of an abundant harvest. In the other parts of Germany, the houses of the peasantry are built of the coarsest materials, and are seldom either painted or whitewashed. They have neither rails nor gates, and yards, gardens, and fields, frequently lie uninclosed. They seem to be so much employed in providing the mere necessaries of life, that they have no time to attend to its luxuries. A savage curiously carves the head of his war spear, or the handle of his hatchet, or he cuts his own face and head into pretty devices, but no German bauer ever paints his carts or his ploughs, or ornaments his agricultural implements. In the marsh lands, the gardens and the yards are inclosed, rails and fences are kept in good order, and the houses and implements are neatly painted. Gigs were standing in the yards, or rattling on the roads. The farmers were dressed like gentlemen, and were often sitting at their own doors, smoking their evening pipes, and seemed to enjoy the comforts of home. This difference of the people may be accounted for in few words. In the marsh lands property is free, the farmers are either the owners of the land they cultivate, or they are capitalists who hire it. They answer to our farmers, but the bauers or [I-247] peasantry are the vassals of nobles, and are yet little better than feudal slaves. The houses in Kehdinger are not collected in villages, but each is built in the neighbourhood of the ground its owner cultivates. This is a most reasonable plan, and it marks a state of society which, in its early stages, was different from that of the rest of Germany, where all the vassals crowded round the castle of their lord. It is an emblem of security, and is of itself almost a proof of a different origin in the people, and of an origin the same as our own. So far as I am acquainted, this method is followed only in Britain, in Holland, on the sea coast from the Ems to the Elbe, to which Holstein may be added, and in the vale of Arno. It is now followed in America, and we may judge that this reasonable practice is the result of men thinking for themselves, and following their individual interest.

Pleased as I was with the appearance of the people and their houses, the first communication I had with them was by no means calculated to give me a favourable idea of their politeness. They are visited by no persons but those who have commercial dealings with them, and they are perfectly unacquainted with any other travellers on foot than pedlars, beggars, and vagrants. They live in affluence, and necessarily despise what looks like poverty. Pedestrians are always poor, and when I asked at a respectable inn at the village of Drochterson [I-248] for a bed, I was very rudely refused. I became angry, and remonstrated in a manner to which the landlord was not accustomed, and he shut his door against me. A different manner of addressing him than that I had adopted would probably have obtained me all I wished, and I had myself partly to blame for his rudeness. Much of the civility or incivility of strangers depends on our own manners. Those who are constantly haughty and rude will find only grinning servility, which pays itself for its baseness by cheating, or neglect and rudeness from spirits somewhat like their own, which disdain to be insulted. We often make ourselves that character we ascribe to foreigners. In the course of my wanderings, I have often said with Goethe,

“Glücklich wem doch Mutter Natur die
   rechte Gestalt gab
Denn sie empfiehlet ihn stets und nir
   gends ist er ein Fremdling.” [10]

Sometimes I have said it in sadness, from not having found the proper means to recommend myself to attention, and sometimes with contentment, from the kindness with which I have been welcomed. [I-249] A solitary foot traveller can never command respect from the quantity of gold he is expected to disburse, and he must never treat landlords, particularly German landlords, who are accustomed to a sort of equality with their guests, like people who are beneath him. He must buy civility and attention by complaisance and politeness.

The worst part of the adventure was, that I had afterwards a great difficulty to procure any kind of lodging. I knew that the innkeeper had violated an express regulation in refusing to lodge a stranger, and I therefore complained of that and of his ill conduct to a magistrate. But he was the secretary only of the district, was chosen by the inhabitants of the parish, among whom the innkeeper was a man of importance, and while a magistrate in any other part of Germany would immediately have sent for him, inquired into the matter, and most probably have punished him; he said he could do nothing in it, more than notice the complaint as one to be brought forward at the next meeting of the monthly sessions; [11] and that, if I felt myself aggrieved, I must then make the accusation, and then the court would judge of the satisfaction to be given. [I-250] The court was to meet in two or three days, and it was to be held in the very inn with whose landlord I had quarrelled, which, from the public business being done in his house, was called the Lands Herberge. At first I resolved to wait, but on consulting the apothecary, the clergyman, and the lawyer of the village, with all of whom I became acquainted, they counselled me not, because the landlord was a great friend of the secretary’s, and I departed. The manner in which the magistrate referred the matter to a regular investigation before a competent tribunal, and the whole conduct of the landlord marked a different state of society from that which is predominant in the rest of Germany. There the Königliche Beamter, or royal magistrates, would have shewn no tenderness for an individual, and there it would be difficult to find an individual who, feeling the influence which property gives him, has any of that sort of independence of the magistracy which my uncivil landlord displayed.

It is one favourable part of the practice of these small districts, that the advocates are not allowed to interfere in such quarrels as that of mine, they are rigidly confined to civil causes, and in the others the parties must speak for themselves. This information was given me by the advocate of the village himself, whom I found an intelligent well educated man. Geography was his principal study, [I-251] and he told me, with somewhat more vanity than truth, that he studied, in all its details, the geography of the whole world, and that, with that of the provinces of Bremen and Verden, and of the land Hadeln in particular, he was intimately acquainted. He knew every village in the whole country, how many houses, and how much cultivated and uncultivated land they contained, and how far every village was from every other. He occupied himself also with politics, and was a good specimen of the class of people to which he belonged. They are always educated at a university, and are in this point different from English attornies.

My adventure kept me at Drochterson a day. My walk on the following day, June 11th, was most delightful. The road, for several miles, lay on the Elbe dike. The river, in all its majesty, was beneath me. It was like a beautiful woman, whose presence absorbs all our attention. Yet there was nothing but what I had frequently seen,—a noble river, spreading into the sea. The morning breeze was fresh and balmy, yet not strong enough to ruffle the surface of the water. The scene gave me spirits, and I went gayly forward. I had now almost traced the course of this river from Prague to the sea. The branch which flows through that city bears the name of Moldau. It was there swift, but tranquil; it was running rapidly through the steep rocks of the narrow channel of the Switzerland [I-252] of Saxony, and smoothly going on its course at Dresden; it was thickly studded with floating ice at Wittenberg and Magdeburg; at Hamburg it was glowing in the sun; and here it was lost in the sea. I recalled the various beauty I had seen it giving and partaking; the gentle hills of Prague; the ruder mountains of Saxony, with their old castles and wood-covered tops; the decaying Wittenberg; the busy Hamburg, and now a land indebted to art for protection, but superior, perhaps, to all the others, in richness and plenty. In all, however, the Elbe was the principal feature of loveliness; with its minor streams, and the advantages of communication which it offers, it is one of the best gifts of heaven. Here it offers a secure haven for ships; there it is a stream washing the doors of the Bohemian peasant, and bringing him, in exchange for his hops and his corn, the hardware of England and the spices of the east. It hardly does this, but it might do it. Nature gave it to be used. She gives us butterflies as baubles; but a noble river is more useful than beautiful. Some travellers have had great pleasure in seeing the sources of the Ganges, or striding over the Mississippi, and, without laying claim to their merit, I had a participation in their pleasure, as I recalled the extent I had floated on the Danube, and traced the waters of the Elbe.

As I was on the dike, and the tide in, the [I-253] islands and houses in the river presented a curious appearance. The former are useful only for grass, and are frequently covered by the water. The houses, one of which is generally built on each island, are risen, by means of artificial mounds, considerably above the level of the highest tides. When the tide is in, the lower parts of the island become covered, and nothing is seen but the mound and the house. Till I had inquired, I could not imagine what had induced people to build houses on the water.

In a place where I stopped for refreshment, there came a man dressed in a sort of blue linen frock, with a common fur cap and dirty boots. He was smoking, and drank some spirits. He talked about carrying out dung, and of waggons, and all the operations of farming, in the dialect of the country. I supposed he was the parish butcher, and was surprised to learn that he was the clergyman. He cultivated his own glebe, and, as he did not keep a team, he seemed under some difficulty to procure the horses necessary for his work.

I reached the little town of Otterndorf, in Land Hadeln, towards evening, and, taught by the experience of the former night, I was cautious in what manner I asked for a bed. I had been recommended to an inn; it was all full with “herrn Officiere.” The woman civilly directed me to another, [I-254] where I was welcomed in a hearty, but ridiculous manner. A tall stately man, with a long brown coat, looking altogether very much like a Quaker, received me with a shake of the hand, and repeated very often, in a solemn tone, and with sundry shakes of the head, Walk in, Sir, walk in,— Treten sie näher mein Herr, treten sie näher. Then calling to his wife, with very tender words, but in a most peevish tone, asked her, could she get the gentleman some coffee. This was his mode of commanding. Up stairs was a billiard-room, and a place to play skittles,— Kegel Bahn, —with newspapers, cards, and other amusements. On going to my room, I was surprised to be met at the head of the stairs by a young man, who, with the peculiar voice and manner of the landlord, shook me also by the hand, and repeated the same words of welcome. It was a perfect farce, but I was restrained from indulging in laughter from supposing he was an impudent waiter, who was mocking his principal. He was, however, the eldest son, and, having never been from home, had acquired precisely his father’s peculiar manner of address, and the solemn singing tone with which he uttered Treten sie näher mein Herr, treten sie näher.

Otterndorf is a clean little town, in which there are more workers in gold and silver than booksellers; a sign that the opulence of the people is employed more to ornament their bodies than their [I-255] minds. The only bookseller’s shop was kept by a widow, who dealt principally in psalm and prayer books, and also in matches and birch brooms. Nothing was to be learnt in her shop so curious as the strange mixture of her wares. Two or three trifles gave me a favourable idea of the good sense of the inhabitants. The steeple of the church scarcely rose above the roof. Nothing but the whim of ignorance, endeavouring to excite wonder, could have erected immense piles of bricks and stones till they almost reached the heavens, and nothing but the solemn feelings of religion which are connected with steeples, could now make people admire them. It was seven o’clock, and in every house the tables were ready for supper, or the people were collected round them, enjoying, in their own family, the evening repast.

Land Hadeln may contain about ninety-six square miles, and 15,000 inhabitants. The greater part of it is rich marsh land, very fertile and chiefly under the plough, though a large tract on the outer side of the Elbe dike is constantly used as grazing land. Hadeln is divided into farms of various sizes, but the largest seldom contains more than 300 acres, and the smallest seldom less than 50. They are cultivated by the proprietors, who having not only a fruitful soil, but a cheap conveyance by water to Hamburg for all their produce, are incited to industry and improvement, and they live in [I-256] affluence and splendour. Compared with the peasants of Germany, their freedom has made them licentious. They eat meat three or four times a day, and instead of being clad in coarse woollen which has been made by their wives, they wear fine English cloths, and look like gentlemen. Their sons go for soldier officers, and the daughters are said to study the Journal des Modes. The proprietors ride in to town, to take their coffee and play at billiards, and hear and tell the news, and at home they drink their wine out of cut glass, or tea out of china. Their houses are all surrounded by lofty trees and handsomely laid out gardens, the floors are carpeted and the windows of plate glass. The dwelling apartments, the barns and the places for the cattle, are all covered with one immense roof, and every house looks something like a palace surrounded with a little park. The proprietors direct the agriculture, without working a great deal themselves, and resemble very much in their hearty manners English farmers. In Hadeln, however, they are the principal people, while an English farmer is often of little importance, compared with the wealthy merchant, or titled land-owner.

The farm work is done by hired labourers, in other parts of Germany, the farmers and labourers are the same people. I am far from admiring a state of society, in which some are idle and opulent, and others industrious and poor, but though this [I-257] is the case in Hadeln, the farm servants seem all well fed and well clothed. They generally live in the house of their master, and, besides board, receive about 8d. per day; when they do not live in the house, their wages are about 14d. rye at the same time selling for 5s. 6d. per bushel, and they generally have enough ground for a garden, and to grow potatoes. They are active and clean; I saw them carrying out dung, and returning at a good smart trot. They ride, and at this work they take much care of their clothes; each one was provided with a little straw mat, which he threw on the dung or in the waggon, that he might sit clean. Both in France and England, I have seen the labourers throw themselves lazily on the putrifying heap. The Hadelers were formerly, with the exception of the Britons and the Friezlanders, perhaps the most free of any people in Europe, and they, like our countrymen, managed their own affairs themselves. The consequence has been, that there is no little spot where all the inhabitants appear more comfortable than in the Land Hadeln. I will not affirm that every advantage which their situation gives has been adequately improved,—that they might not add commerce and manufactures to agriculture, that no machinery might be employed with advantage, and that knowledge is cultivated as it ought to be. But I have seen no place on the Continent, with the exception of the mere neighbourhood of Hamburg, [I-258] that equals Land Hadeln in the apparent happiness and prosperity of its people. It is one of the happiest looking little spots I ever saw, and while every lover of British freedom must admire this last remains of the freedom of his German ancestors, he must lament over the number of similar little districts, which, in the course of years, have fallen under the dominion of one or other of the great nobles of Germany.

“Henry of Brunswick Wolfenbüttle formed in 1501 a treaty with the Count of Oldenburg, to reduce some lands to obedience, which were claimed by the Archbishop of Bremen, to whom the brother of Henry was coadjutor; the chief of these was a little district on the left side of the Weser, called Budjadinger land. The Duke of Brunswick and the Count of Oldenburg attacked it in the year 1513, when a severe frost allowed them to pass the morasses and water that had hitherto protected it; the inhabitants took refuge in a moor, they heaped masses of ice one on the other, and over the whole they poured water, which converted it into one solid wall of ice; but a traitor, Gerke Ubbeson, shewed the enemy a road round the wall and through the moor. The Budjadinger men were taken in the rear, and were at length totally defeated, 700 of them were left dead on the ice, and the remaining 400 surrendered themselves prisoners. The land was given to the Count [I-259] of Oldenburg, to whom it at present belongs.” [12]

Such was the end of the independence of this other Hadeln, and such has been the end of many separate independent communities, not only in this obscure quarter of the world, but in every other. By similar means of violence some few families have become the rulers of the human race, and now not to obey and reverence those whose ancestors acquired wealth and power, by destroying the independence of our fellow men, has become one of the greatest crimes we can commit, and can only be expiated by a shameful death.

Hadeln and the other lands have always had laws of their own, but they have not been able to secure themselves from the influence of the Roman laws, which have been grafted on the better institutions of a people who had more freedom than the Romans; and even the magistrate of the little town of Otterndorf must be learned in the institutes of Justinian. The introduction of this foreign law has been one means of rendering juries of little use, and of weakening the interest which the inhabitants of these countries once took in the administration of justice.

The manners of the opulent farmers are not in [I-260] general praised by the other Germans. There are no large towns, and no well polished society near them, and they have learnt neither the elegance nor the duplicity of cities. They have no pursuit but agriculture, no other ambition but to make and spend money, and they judge every man according to his possessions. I know not whether the fault belongs to their education, or to that of the rest of their countrymen, to their isolated life, or to the habitual dependence of the others; but what they call sincerity and plain dealing, their countrymen name vulgarity and rudeness; what they call independence, other people stigmatise as pride and contempt. They are certainly at present a distinct people from the rest of the Germans; they want all the softness and gentleness which distinguish them, but they are more energetic and more independent; they are less book read, but they have a more manly port and a greater vigour of mind. Formerly they were distinguished by the multitude and splendour of their clothes; they knew no other way to get rid of their superfluous wealth than in profusion to their backs or their bellies. They gave gluttonous feasts, and wore habits of silk with silver buttons. A more elegant taste is now spreading amongst them, and they may possibly preserve their own manly virtues, while they put on the polished surface of the rest of their countrymen.

A practice still exists in Land Hadeln, which is [I-261] also the law of some parts of England, and called Borough English. A practice which is so peculiar may be quoted as another proof of a common origin, though it was once the law in many parts of the north of Germany. By this law the farms which remain undivided descend to the youngest son. Admitting a necessity to keep the farms undivided, arising from the buildings which are necessary to the cultivation of the land being indivisible; the reasons assigned in favour of this law appear weighty and full of wisdom. The parents have more time to provide for their eldest than for their youngest son; according to the common course of events, the former is married and settled in the world, while the latter is yet under the parental roof. It should naturally be the latter who should contribute most to the minute comforts of his parents, and who should most need their assistance and favour. They can give the eldest a part of the stock from the farm, but they can only provide for the youngest by giving him their land. If the elder brother grows up as heir, he becomes in part possessed of all before the rest of the children can dispute it with him, and he generally gripes too hard to allow the younger ones to receive their proper portion. This law is not, however, invariably good. The eldest son may, from many circumstances, be more the [I-262] proper object of tenderness than the youngest, and the daughters of a family have, in general, more need to be provided for than any of the sons. This, and all other general regulations, however apparently wise, can never equal individual wisdom in judging of all the different circumstances which ought to influence its decision in the disposal of its property, nor supply its place when it may chance to fail.

I dined in the society of a few persons, principally officers of the army, who fed daily at the table of the landlord, and clean knives and forks, which is very unusual on the Continent, were given with every change of plates. In truth, this is a luxury common only in England and Hadeln. A considerable company was playing cards and billiards, with one of whom, who happened to be an advocate, I entered into conversation. We spoke of trial by jury, which he thought an evil, because the juries were not qualified to decide what is right. Lawyers introduce or make codes of laws filled with nice subtleties, with hair-breadth distinctions, with metaphysical definitions of words, not of things, and of these they are right in affirming common men cannot judge; for nobody can know any thing of them whose mind is not from youth upwards perverted to this sort of knowledge. They must retain the profits of interpreting these subtleties, and, if they acquire wealth and power by them, [I-263] they care not if the reason of man is debilitated, and his freedom destroyed. I mention this opinion because it is a common one amongst the lawyers of Germany, and is urged by them to prove that trial by jury is pernicious. In the course of our conversation, I remarked, that most of the inhabitants here read and talk politics much. The landlord had entertained me with a long economical discussion on the ill effects of the new tax on distillation. The lawyer had spoken of new constitutions, and two gentlemen who were sitting near us were discussing the propriety of allowing a free importation of English goods into Germany. Several newspapers were lying on a side-table, and the whole of the company seemed to retain a sufficient recollection of a former state of freedom, to make them discontented with their present state, and to censure, with much more boldness than I had before met in a promiscuous company, the actions of their government.

On the following day, I walked rather more than forty miles on my way to the town of Bremen, stopping to sleep at a village called Hagen, where a decent public-house was kept by a man who had been a serjeant in the German Legion.

At leaving Otterndorf, there was an agreeable foot-path on a bank at some distance from the road side. I had taken this, “was brushing with hasty steps the dew away,” and “crooning” o’er I hardly [I-264] knew what, but as I thought perfectly secure from any interruption. The people were not content, however, to pass without a salutation; they lustily called out good morning from the distant road, and I was often obliged to take off the half laid cable of my meditations to twist up the threads of compliment. This was not always pleasing, but I could easily forgive the interruption for the good will which it expressed.

Before leaving Land Hadeln, the country began to change to moor and morass. One large district in the neighbourhood of a village called Wanna, was inclosing and bringing under cultivation. The great difficulty was to drain it, and no adequate plan had been adopted. It was merely intersected by ditches, but the soil was sandy, and the ditches all filled up after heavy rain, and the whole again became a bog. After this my whole day’s walk was amongst sterile sands or morasses. The banks of the Weser at a distance looked well peopled, but my steps were in the midst of barrenness. The surface of the brown heaths or black bogs was only variegated with large patches of shining white from the tufted heads of the moor-grass ( Eriophorum angustifolium ). It was most abundant. The length of each filament may be an inch or two inches long; it wants tenacity, and might decay when gathered; but I know, from making the experiment, that it may be easily spun, [I-265] and I should suppose, that it might be improved by cultivation, and that this now useless substance might, in the manufactory of many articles, supply the place of a more costly material.

Bremerlehe is a little town on the Weser, which is remarkable as having no guilds but that of the fell-mongers. All other trades may be freely exercised there. This, however, had not made it flourishing, though its situation is good. It was once intended to have made a sort of port in the Weser, at a place called Carlsburg, a little distance from Bremerlehe, but storms and a change in the course of the Weser destroyed the works, and they have not since been resumed. After Bremerlehe I passed through a village which had been recently burnt; an accident that very often happens in Germany. There is hardly a week in which some newspaper does not mention the melancholy fact of a whole village being destroyed by fire, and I had heard of three such in the province of Bremen in eight weeks. Much of the mischief is caused by the houses being built close together, and by the large roofs being usually thatched with straw. Thirty houses had here been consumed, several were rebuilding, and also re-thatching. Workmen, I was informed, were so plentiful, that many had offered to work for nothing but food, and as many as fifty were employed at one building. Most of [I-266] the houses had been insured, which enabled the owners to build others, and without this they would have been in a most distressed state.

A saying, which is, I believe, a German proverb, and which I heard to-day, deserves to be recorded. It was, “Wo die Frau arbeitet nicht, da gibt kein brodt im Hause;”—When the wife does not work, there is no bread in the house;—which accurately expresses what the women of Germany are expected to perform, and what they actually do. The person who repeated the observation confessed that they laboured much more than the men.

This was a country destitute of any other roads than mere tracks, yet there were two royal tolls, and at these all travellers, even those on foot, are obliged to pay. At the first there was a small old wooden bridge, which might require some repairs, and it is better to pay for such an accommodation, than to wade through the stream; but at Stotel, where the other was situated, there was no road, nothing but a track over sand and heath. The toll was levied for permission to tread on the barren ground.

I reached the town of Bremen early on the next day, Sunday, June 14th.

The marsh lands of which I have here spoken form, in the geographical division of the kingdom of Hannover, a part of the provinces of Bremen [I-267] and Verden, and I shall subjoin a short description of the characteristics of these provinces.

With the exception of the strips of land lying on the shores of the Elbe and the Weser, and to which, particularly the former, nature has been remarkably bountiful, the greater part of these provinces are bogs and sand. The only use made of the former is to dig peat in them, though some successful attempts have been made, and others are making, to cultivate them. Some attempts, not yet completed, have also been made to drain them. The sand is fertile in places, but in general it produces, like Lüneburg, nothing but heather. Trees flourish well in some places, and fertility is found wherever there is running water. These provinces are not absolutely a flat level, but they are low, with little variations of altitude, and are, in general, black gloomy wastes. They are naturally sterile, and nothing but an increasing population, the fruits of whose labour shall all belong to themselves, can ever bring them under general cultivation.

CHAPTER VIII.
bremen—oldenburg—friezland.↩

Bremen.—Public walk.—Raths Keller.—Museum.—Town house.—Character of people.—Cultivation of wastes.—Oldenburg.—Government.—Corvees.—Friezland.—Canals.—Aurick.—Track-boat.—Company.—Embden.—Former size.—Superiority of the character of the Friezlanders.—Their origin.—Division of property.—Part they take in government.—United to Prussia.—Treatment of Prussia.—United to Hannover.—Public spirit proportionate to liberty.—Disasters.—Leave Embden.—An adventure.

There is nothing worth seeing in our town, said an elderly merchant of Bremen, but our public walk, and our museum, and our Raths Keller. I had lounged with great pleasure on the first, I had drank wine in the last, but for my knowledge of the other I was indebted to him. Bremen is built on both banks of the Weser, and the two parts are united by a wooden bridge. The greater part of the town is, however, situated on the right bank, and it is round this part that the public walk has been made. Trees have been planted throughout the whole length of the ancient wall, and the outer part has been sloped away and [I-269] ornamented with jessamines and honeysuckles and roses. Bowers, thickets, little forests, and tufts of sweet smelling shrubs, are now the only centinels. The bastions, which might once have frowned with cannon, are now smiling with beautiful flowers, the parapet has become a shady grove, and the former ditch is now a handsome little lake, the abode of stately swans. There are straight and serpentine walks, and walks on the top, and on the sides, and at the bottom. At the lower end of the town the walk terminates in a high mound, also well laid out, and planted with trees. From it there is a charming view of the Weser, of the town, and the whole adjoining country. To be situated at the very borders of a large town, it is a most elegant public promenade. Nature did nothing for it, it is indebted for its beauties to the old mound, which was raised for defence, and to the good taste of the inhabitants. It is admirably calculated to promote both their health and their enjoyment, and is a proof, that a sound mind and an elegant taste may be found in the small commercial cities of the north, as well as in the capitals of the south. In the flat country immediately outside of the walk are many of those houses of entertainment and Kegel Bahns, that must be dear to the Germans, for they pass there many calm and happy hours.

The Raths Keller is celebrated for containing a [I-270] great quantity of the best sort of Rhenish wines. Every stranger indulges in the best Hockheimer or Johannisberg when he visits Bremen; the inhabitants prefer French wines.

The museum is not one of those collections of butterflies to which this name is very often given, but such a club of the inhabitants as I have mentioned to be at Hamburg. Similar ones are, indeed, established in all the large towns of Germany. The merchant who described it to me thought it only remarkable for the convenience of its rooms, and for the quantity of journals and readers always found there. He admitted that it was not so splendid as the Börsen Halle at Hamburg. These clubs are worth mentioning, as a proof of sociability being a part of the German character, for which I believe it has rarely received full credit.

Travellers’ guides enumerate several other curiosities in Bremen, such as, a cellar in the cathedral, the Bley Keller, in which human bodies do not decay, a statue of Roland on the market place, the cathedral, and the town-house. The cathedral is by no means handsome, but the town-house is a magnificent old building, superior to any thing of the kind I have seen. Bremen is altogether better built than Hamburg. The streets are wider, the houses are more uniform, and the town is cleaner; but the country [I-271] about it, though pleasing, cannot vie with the delightful country about Hamburg. There is a greater stillness about Bremen. The inhabitants, amounting to 36,000, are only one-third of the number of the inhabitants of Hamburg; and half the bustle of a trading town is lost by the shipping not being able to come higher up the Weser than Braake, a town nearly 30 miles below Bremen. With this disadvantage, it is a curious fact, that Bremen still engrosses all the commerce of the Weser, to the exclusion of the inhabitants of Oldenburg and Hannover. Braake, where the ships unload, is in the territories of Oldenburg, and at present a steam-boat passes daily between the two places. The people of Bremen are more quiet and sedate than those of Hamburg; they mix less with foreigners. Their places of entertainment are less splendid. Their government is more aristocratical, their police stronger, and their religion more rigid. Matters are arranged in Bremen more methodically than in Hamburg. There is an air of reserve about the people, not common to Germans. They are careful and economical, the men wear old-fashioned clothes, and follow old-fashioned conduct. The women preserve the antiquated custom of going with their husbands to public places, and, dreading expence, they have made regular contracts with the owners of all the public gardens and Kegel Bahns about the town, to be [I-272] supplied with hot water, and the use of cups and saucers, at so much per head, while they use their own tea and cakes.

The merchant remarked to me, that the only nobles of Bremen were merchants, and that it would be good for the whole world if there were no others. I hardly joined in the opinion, particularly when I saw these nobles going in crowds to see their soldiers relieve guard, thus doing homage to their own mercenaries. The love for military foppery and glare seems, indeed, so common to the Germans, that even the citizens, both of Hamburg and Bremen, who are in all their pursuits so different from soldiers, admire, and in a manner worship them. The noble merchants of Italy certainly improved their country, but apparently only to reduce it to slavery. It is of little consequence what trade men follow, whether they are soldiers or merchants; if they have power they will abuse it, and the merchants of Genoa, of Venice, and, indeed, of Hamburg and Bremen, seem only to have acquired wealth, that they might riot in the fulness of arbitrary will. The former were more tyrannical and aristocratic than any mere nobles; and if the latter have not been so, it has been owing to their power having been much more limited.

The inhabitants of the mercantile town of Leipsic were less informed in polite literature than [I-273] those of Dresden. The same fact appeared true of those of Hamburg; and in Bremen, I could find only one decent bookseller, and but one circulating library. The mass of the people, in mercantile towns, have too many occupations to be enabled to read, while the idlers, who live in the train of a court, the minor artists, who are nourished by its wants and its rewards, often depend on reading not only for amusement, but for that improvement which is useful in their employments. Merchants are warmly interested in every change of other countries. It is of little consequence to those of Bremen, whether sculpture and painting, and poetry, flourish in Britain or not, but our custom-house regulations, our progress in the improvement of machinery, by which our cottons have almost superseded in the markets of the west the linens in which they deal, are of great importance to them. They care very little about either the magnetism or the theatres of Prussia and Bavaria, but they must know accurately the tariffs of the monarchs of these countries. They have no circulating libraries; but they have two or three clubs in which newspapers may be read. The difference between the literary attainments of the inhabitants of mere mercantile towns, and of towns which are the residence of courts, appear to be very strong in Germany. At the table d’hôte at Bremen, where between twenty and thirty people [I-274] dined every day, and who were mostly inhabitants of the town, there was no sort of conversation, but of their own trade or their amusements. At the theatre, two or three persons, of whom I asked the name of the author of a little musical piece I saw represented, knew nothing about it. Leisure is necessary for the cultivation of literature, men have recourse to it as an amusement, but the leisure, which is possessed by the dependants of a court, is purchased by condemning to severer toil the great mass of the society, and literature itself is not worth having at such a price; the graces it bestows are worthy of all admiration, but they are only the elegant coverings of a feeble frame, whenever they are thrown over it by the hands of sovereigns. There is, probably, a stronger mind altogether in mercantile towns than in the others. Both Hamburg and Bremen have been famous for astronomical observations, and for mathematics. Dr Olbers, so well known as an astronomer, lived in Bremen, and in Lilienthal, not far from the town, is the observatory of Mr Schröter, in which a celebrated professor at Göttingen, Mr Harding, acquired the principal part of his knowledge.

I left Bremen on Wednesday, and passing through a flat country, first marshy, then sandy, and at length boggy, reached Oldenburg, the principal town of the dukedom of the same name, at evening. Much of the country was uncultivated, [I-275] but an extensive tract of moor near the town was in part recently inclosed, and was then inclosing. The excellent appearance of the corn in those places which had been cultivated was a proof that the whole of the moor was fit for cultivation. It was evident, also, that it might be cultivated with a reasonable profit, that the labour and the seed were returned to man with an usurious interest. It was all claimed by the sovereign as his domanial property, and the cultivators were obliged to pay him a certain sum for permission to cultivate it. About eight shillings an acre was given as purchase money, and about three shillings per acre was to be given yearly as rent. The country had before this produced nothing but peat. It was a spongy elastic bog, which the industry of man might fertilize, but which of itself supplied nothing but fuel.

Oldenburg is a neat little town, with a good public walk, and a tolerable large palace, but it has no theatre, no university, no excellent situation, nothing to make it desirable as a residence. It contains 5000 inhabitants. The whole dukedom only contains 217,000, scattered over a surface of 1840 square geographical miles. The greater part of it is a flat sandy or moory country. A small part of it, where it borders on Osnabrück, is hilly, and the borders of the Weser and of the sea, particularly that portion called [I-276] Jever, are good fruitful marsh lands; but the remainder of the country, without being quite so barren as the sands of the province of Lüneburg, is a desolate neglected waste. How much this may be owing to nature, and how much to a very complicated government, which directs a large part of the capital and revenue of the country to the support of amtmen, consistorial counsellors, counsellors for the poor, and all the multiplied officers of a German government, and which directs all the talents and ingenuity of the country, to fit themselves for these offices, is somewhat difficult to decide; but there is reason to believe, had ingenuity and capital not been so misdirected, the whole land might have been brought under cultivation.

The revenue of Oldenburg is supposed to amount to 1,200,000 florins, or L. 120,000 per year. L. 3000 of this is raised by a royal toll on the land at Wildeshausen, and L. 6000 by a toll on the Weser at Elsfleth. The army amounts to 1650 men. The states of this country have been so long in disuse, that no public records remain of any having ever been summoned. According to the general principles which have been followed in all the countries of Germany, there can be no doubt that meetings of the states were formerly held in Oldenburg, but little or nothing is known concerning them. The country, separated [I-277] in a great measure from the more flourishing and enlightened parts of Germany, is yet sunk in apathy and ignorance. I could find but one bookseller in the town, and he had no works whatever relative to the country, more than an almanack, describing the court with all its officers. The schools of Oldenburg, and the manner of instruction which is followed in them, resemble those of the other parts of Germany; but in all other sorts of learning, particularly in all that relates to politics, it is much behind.

A dreary walk, on the following day, brought me into East Friezland. On the road some spots were now for the first time inclosing, and there were some marks of an increasing cultivation and improvement. The magistrates have the power, both in Oldenburg and Friezland, of ordering out all the owners of land, for twenty days in the year, to mend the roads. The evil of this practice is considerably greater in the former country, in which the magistrates are appointed by the crown, than in the latter, where they are elected by the land-owners. I saw a large party of men and women employed in this labour. Each owner of a spot of ground must send one person, or go himself. The opulent farmers send a maid servant; the poor man must leave his own work to go. The soil was sandy; there were no stones to mend the road with. All that the people did, or could do, was to clean out the ditches [I-278] on the sides, and throw the loose sand into the middle of the road, to be washed back by the next heavy shower of rain. It is evil enough to be compelled to do useful works, but it is rather too much to compel people to waste their time in doing what is at most but of very little service. The people of Holland, who were once free, and who still possess that spirit of enterprise which is given by freedom, have paved most of their roads with small bricks. The dukedom of Oldenburg has conveniences for making bricks, but there the peasants are still employed throwing loose sand out of the ditches to be washed back again by the next shower.

There are comparatively few nobles in Oldenburg, and the greater part of the land is held immediately from the grand duke. The good plan has been here followed of building the farm houses in the neighbourhood of the land which each farmer cultivates. The houses are, however, generally small, thatched, and very dirty. The few people I saw were ill dressed and ugly. The women wore, in general, hats like the men, and, dressed rather after the English manner, reminded me of the degraded females of our sea-ports.

Rather a large extent of moor separates Friezland from Oldenburg, and I was sensible of a great difference of appearance in the houses of the former immediately on entering it. They were, many [I-279] of them, built of brick, and the roofs were covered with tiles. They were larger, cleaner, and altogether better-conditioned than the houses of Oldenburg. At the house where I slept, which was a small one, fine gilded cupboards were filled with old-fashioned china. Two large coarse china vases stood on the table. The fire-place was lined with Dutch tiles. Plates, pans, and kettles, were all kept very clean and bright, and were ranged on the wall with great art and order. The whole of the house, even to the coffee, which was execrable, shewed that the manners of the Dutch had extended to the borders of Oldenburg, and had there stopped. On the whole, however, a great improvement was visible. It was immediately obvious that the people of Friezland had something more than the mere necessaries of life, while those of Oldenburg appeared confined to the gratification of its most simple wants.

Much of Friezland, particularly where it borders on Oldenburg, is sand and bog, but man is extending his empire over both. All the banks of the Ems, and the borders of the sea which belong to Friezland, are some of the finest marsh lands of the world. The ground is so good that it does not require all the manure the farmers have to give it, and those who live in the fertile part exchange manure for peat, which is chiefly dug in the Hoch Moor, a district bordering on Oldenburg. To [I-280] facilitate this exchange, canals have been dug from the Hoch Moor to the Ems. The manure is thus employed to improve the sterile, sandy, and moory districts, which are inclosing and cultivating, while the extensive market which has thus been opened for the peat, has given a value to what was before a desart. After the wastes I had passed of the provinces of Lüneburg, and Bremen, and of Oldenburg, in which the extent of improvement was the erection of a new sheep hut, or the inclosure of a few acres of ground, it was pleasing to see the spirit of enterprise of which the improvements of Friezland were evidence. The canals were made by a subscription company, a degree of exertion, which is not common in any country where departments of a ministry direct the course of trade, and where making canals and roads are numbered among the duties of the monarch.

Between where I slept and Aurich, I saw a small spot of ground newly inclosed. The garden was dug and planted, but the house was only half built. A man and a woman were sawing trees into timbers for the roof. The woman was beneath; they were a couple who were just fixing themselves here, and who were building their own house and cultivating their own land. Had they been young, many happy days might have awaited them, but they were at that season of life when man should think more of rest than of toil,—when his house [I-281] should have given protection to his children, instead of being then first to be roofed in for himself.

Aurich, though not so large as Embden, has always been the seat of government of East Friezland, and was formerly the residence of its counts. Their palace is now a barrack, though Aurich still remains the chief place, and is now the seat of the provincial government, and of the chief tribunal of this province. I saw nothing so curious here as an establishment for the poor. It was a house, to which a spot of ground belonged, on which three cows were fed. A sum of money was given the people to buy bread, but the younger ones, and those who were able to work, provided for the rest, and did all the work, such as milking the cows and cooking, which was necessary to nourish the rest, and keep the place clean. Forty-two old men, women, and children, were all huddled together, but the place, though small, was clean. A canal (not the one before mentioned) connects Aurich with Embden. It has also been made by subscription; but, in consequence of its not having been carried so far as was intended, it is said not to pay the share-holders. The changes which took place in the political situation of Friezland had hindered the original plan from being fully executed. The canal was to have extended to Witmund, and perhaps, ultimately, to the Weser, though this part of the execution would have depended [I-282] on the sovereign of Oldenburg. Had the plan been fully executed, there is little doubt it would have improved the country, and that the subscribers would have been paid a proper interest for their money.

I went in a track-boat, by this canal, to Embden. There was some company present that rather reminded me of England. It will not be asserted, I hope, that I wish to throw a stigma on my country by any unnecessary severity of remark, but I was reminded of England by the conduct of some women who occupied the fore part of the boat. They were half tipsy; they sang, and were riotous, and mocked at every traveller on the road. It is only when we see such conduct that we recollect we have before not seen it for a long time. In truth, a riotous and a drunken woman is almost an unknown character except in the sea-ports, and among the lower classes of Britain. There is something either in the greater inequality of the different classes of our people, or in the force of our moral opinions, which condemns the sinning part of our population to a state of rough brutality,—of profligate and boisterous licentiousness,—of active and devilish vice, which glances in rags, in filth, and drunkenness, on the eye, and sounds, in imprecations, on the ear, and which I have never seen in any other part of the world but in Britain. Single specimens of this sort of character may be [I-283] seen in Paris, but it is found in masses only in the neighbourhood of Wapping, of St Giles, and of our sea-ports. Our activity is conspicuous, not only in virtue, but in vice, and the latter is carried to loath-some excess. Licentiousness, and perhaps cruelty and revenge, may be the characteristics of other people, but it is only in our country that hard and disgusting brutality is combined with profligacy. This sort of character may be owing, in both countries, to commerce, or to activity of mind, but much of it is to be attributed to a severity of opinion, which not only condemns the sin, but has no charity for the sinner. Calvinism is the predominant religion of Friezland, and it too frequently classes enjoyment as vice, and pushes those who have made one false step into the abyss of misery. In other countries frailties are regarded with more tenderness, and those who are addicted to any one vice are not compelled to be utterly vicious. To whatever causes the difference of character which has been mentioned may be owing, it is, I think, certain, that one reprobated vice brings after it, in our country, many other vices, and more misery, than in other countries. This is worthy the attention of the moralist and the philosopher, as it may lead to some more accurate knowledge of the causes of crime, and the means of preventing it.

There was also a man in the boat who fully convinced [I-284] me that these women were strongly marked exceptions to the generality of the people. He was a tradesman who had been settled at Embden forty years, a calm sedate man, who had read the Bible and the history of his country very attentively,—who had laboured hard to rear his family, and had taken much pains to teach them morality. There was a carefulness and a self-denial about him, together with an ease and openness that shewed he sailed with the current of opinion, and that his virtue was also the virtue of most of his fellow citizens. He had accustomed his children, he said, to many little privations, that they might be better enabled to brave the evils of life. To submit, without necessity, to any privation, is in general no part of the character of the Germans. I saw one of his daughters at Embden, and she appeared to have done honour to her father’s precepts. She was a careful good wife.

There was another rather strange character, a Dutchman, who had long been an officer of the French armies, and had acquired all the confidence and presumption of French officers, without any of their graces or their gaiety. He had an affectation of being above decency, which shewed itself in indiscriminately talking nonsense to every person. He was a blackguard of another sort, differing from the women in outward polish, but not in sentiment. Both parties only served to make the old [I-285] tradesman more conspicuous, and, without their riotousness, his calmness would have attracted no observation.

It was evening when we reached Embden. The town-house is a fine old building. The inhabitants appeared mostly very good-looking, and were all very cleanly dressed. Short white or coloured jackets, with black petticoats and black silk aprons, a white clean cap, pinned close to the head, and ruffs about the neck, was in general the dress of the females, though many of the better sort were clad after the fashions of France or England. The older women wore a more ancient costume, of which the principal part was a hat that was as large as an umbrella.

Sunday in Embden was observed as Sunday is observed in England. No business was done. The people all went to church, and partook of no amusement but a walk.

The walls of the town inclose a much larger space than the houses at present occupy; formerly, also, the people were not so conveniently and spaciously lodged as at present, and it is, therefore, probable, as is asserted, that Embden once contained many more inhabitants than at present. In 1649, they were estimated at 20,000, and at present at 12,000. Embden was once a powerful member of the Hanseatic league, and was then an independent city, keeping sometimes the prince [I-286] prisoner, and always bidding him defiance. It retained the greater part of its power and privileges till 1749, and it only fully lost every shadow of freedom and independence when the government of Hannover gave it, in 1818, an entire new constitution.

Its trade was formerly much greater than at present; from the beginning of the seventeenth century it appears to have declined; under the prohibitive system of Buonaparte, it made a rapid progress, and its merchants rapidly made fortunes; the general peace had again very much diminished their trade, and made them at the moment full of discontent. The harbour of Embden is said to be growing shallower, and projects have been formed by the present government to remedy this. It has proceeded so far as to appoint an engineer, and to take into its own hands the tolls which formerly belonged to the town. Magnificent schemes have been talked of, but there is a want of funds to execute them. The trade of Embden will hardly recover under the fostering care of the Hannoverian government, but while its port remains large enough for a single vessel to enter, Embden has so favourable a situation, that it will always have a considerable trade.

The same extraordinary manner of building farmhouses, which I have mentioned, when speaking of Hadeln, also prevails in Friezland, and, from [I-287] the wealth of the farmers, is very conspicuous in the vicinity of Embden. That a common German bauer, whose corn is thrashed so soon as it is housed, who has perhaps only a pair of horses and cows, should find it convenient to cover all his worldly possessions with one roof, is not surprising; nor did I observe that their houses were enormously large. But, when I saw the same mode practised in Friezland by the largest farmers, I was astonished at the strangeness and the magnitude of the buildings. The rich farmers of Friezland, who have some of them fifty cows and sixteen horses, and whose dwellings are spacious, cover the whole with one roof. I have counted fifty windows in the dwelling part of the house, and attached to this, and under the same roof, were the stalls for fifty cows and twelve horses. The dwelling is at one end, at the other end is the stable; on the sides between the two ends are the stalls for the cows, the middle is the thrashing-floor, the barn, and the place where the carts and the farming instruments are kept. At the outside of the end farthest from the dwelling is the dunghill. In short, the whole farm-yard, and the dwelling of the family, with the exception of the dunghill, are brought under the same covering. The inhabitants say this is a cheaper and better plan of building than any other, that all their conveniences are at hand, and that, when built of bricks, [I-288] and covered with tiles, when the stalls are nicely paved, as they are in Friezland, it is a better mode than ours of having separate buildings for stables, barns, and cow-houses. The danger, however, to which the property is exposed in case of fire, seems a strong reason against it. From the specimens I saw of farm-houses in Friezland and Hadeln, there is no objection to it on account of cleanliness. The dwelling is far removed from the animals, it has always a separate entrance, and no people are more conspicuous for cleanliness than the Friezlanders. I have since seen, that the same plan is followed in some of the provinces of Holland, particularly in West Friezland, and there the houses are equally large.

The Friezlanders are more Dutch than German, and distinct in their manners and language from the latter, though East Friezland has always formed a part of the empire. Numerous mills for sawing, for making oil, and for spinning, stand on the walls of Embden, and in the neighbourhood of the town; they are all built after the Dutch manner, and are proofs of the industry and enterprise of the people. The dikes with which the greater part of Friezland is protected, and in a manner won from the sea and the river; the manner in which the inhabitants are obliged constantly to struggle against this element; the canals I have already mentioned, and numerous others which have been dug from Embden [I-289] to all the villages in its neighbourhood; are, all proofs of the same admirable qualities. The agriculture of the Friezlanders is excellent, and they are, in all respects, a more enterprising people than the greater part of the Germans. They are stouter and better-looking,—they are better clothed and better fed,—they hold themselves upright and manly, and they pride themselves on being superior to the Germans. After seeing something of both, I join in their opinion. One of the causes of this superiority has already been mentioned; the Friezlanders were originally a separate tribe, and were every where distinguished by the form of their government, and by the division of their landed property from the rest of the Germans. Friezland, like Hadeln, is divided into farms of from 400 to 50 acres, which are, in general, possessed in full property by the persons who cultivate them. The farmers owe no feudal services, and they have no labourers but those they hire. There are nobles in Friezland, but they are not numerous. That part of the feudal system which considered a certain class of men as the property of their lord has long been abolished, or never found its way into Friezland. Every man was his own master, or, as a respectable merchant of Embden said, a king in his own house, and if an action were to be done for the common good, and by general exertion, it could [I-290] only be done by the consent of all. The land owners, or the farmers, had a vote in the election of their own priests, of their own tax-gatherers, of the people who looked after the dikes, and they elected the persons who were to administer the taxes. There was a regular parliament for the management of public business, to which the towns sent fifteen deputies, and the owners of land, or third stand, 180. They were, therefore, adequately represented. At the head of the government was a Count of Friezland, and constant disputes between him, the nobles, the town of Embden, and the parliament, till the very last moment of the independent existence of Friezland, shew that no one party had obtained the possession of uncontrolled power.

In 1744 the family of the Counts became extinct, and Friezland then fell under the dominion of the sovereign of Prussia, who held it as a fief of the empire. It stood in the same relation to him as Hadeln did to Hannover. Under him the inhabitants preserved some of their privileges. A particular treaty regulated the number of men, and the sum of money Friezland was to pay its sovereign, but the manner of levying both was to be left to the states, and it was to remain free from the conscription of Frederick, and his arbitrary taxes. The sovereign appointed some of the principal officers, but the greater part of the inferior ones, particularly [I-291] all those connected with the administration of the revenue, were as formerly appointed by the states, or elected by the people. The monarch did not long respect the treaty which he had made with his subjects. In return for the money and the soldiers they were to give him, he sent a commissioner to administer the government, and take care of the interests of the crown. Notwithstanding the solemn assurances which had been given that all the privileges of the people should be secured to them, this commissioner told the states, when they refused to augment their tribute of men and money, “If you will not do as my master wishes, I will leave you tomorrow, and he will send in my place a few regiments of soldiers, to facilitate giving a subsidy, and sending recruits.” Such was the exchange. The Friezlanders gave their wealth and blood for such protection as a royal commissioner could afford, and they were only employed to exact still more wealth and blood. Common men can easily appreciate such governments, but by some people they are called paternal. Under their own Counts, the freedom of the Friezlanders was preserved; it was much diminished when the mighty sovereigns of Prussia became the masters of the country; it was entirely destroyed by the occupation of the French; and is only very partially restored since the country has been added to the dominions of Hannover. The full property of the soil still remains to the farmer. [I-292] The inhabitants still preserve some minor privileges, such as those of electing local magistrates, and of appointing their own clergymen; but the former parliament has been amalgamated in the parliament for the kingdom of Hannover, and the government has taken the whole direction of the affairs of Friezland on itself.

The public spirit of this people is visible in the construction of canals and dikes, and their prosperity in the extent of their commerce, and the goodness of their agriculture; and we see their morality and happiness in their general comforts and appearance. Friezland, after Hadeln, is the most prosperous looking part of Germany, and here, as there, the people have always managed their own affairs. They have erected works of public utility, superior to any which have been erected in the much governed lands of Germany. When the canals of Friezland, which extend every where, are compared to a single one which the government of Hannover attempted to cut in Bremen sixty years ago, we may conclude that the real business of men, what promotes their prosperity, is always better done by themselves than by any few separate and distinct individuals, acting as a government in the name of the whole.

The minds of the inhabitants of Friezland have been chastened by disasters, and ennobled by a [I-293] continued independent national existence. Every other country of Germany has been bought and sold, or bequeathed as an inheritance: but Friezland has always been nearly of its present extent, and the people have always lived and fought as Friezlanders. They have a regular and a continued history of their exploits, and are ennobled by knowing that they are the descendants of men who have always been independent. But their pride has been humbled and chastened, while their minds have been strung to new toils by disasters which were inflicted by the hand of God. Their country is on a level with the sea, and it requires constant care, and great labour, to preserve it from being overwhelmed. Their history is full of sufferings, but none equals that which was occasioned by the great flood of Christmas 1717, when a large part of the land was inundated. The farm-houses were swept away, and the people whom the water spared perished from cold. [13]

I left Embden on Tuesday, June 23d, crossed the Ems at Petkum to visit a large district that was embanked during the time the country belonged to Prussia, and therefore called the Prussian [I-294] Polder. It is celebrated for its very great fertility. Unfortunately it came on to rain, and continued to rain the whole day. I recrossed the river at Weener, and reached Papenburg to sleep.

The roads are very often made on the top of the dikes, which exposes the traveller to all the fury of the tempest. In the midst of a very heavy shower, and when the wind was so strong that it was with difficulty I could keep my umbrella spread, and nothing was heard but the rain blowing against it, I was surprised by a voice close to my ear, and, turning my head rather frightened, was still more surprised to see close to my shoulder a pair of bright eyes, and rosy cheeks, speaking health, animation, and the pleasure of exertion. It was a lovely looking young woman, who, laughing, told me we might go together. I embraced the offer with great pleasure, as I measured a tall and graceful form; and, clasping my arm round her that I might shelter her better, I blessed the storm that had forced so handsome a companion to seek the shelter of my cotton roof. We walked two miles together, and before we parted, the rain, which had driven every other person within doors, had made us quite intimate. She was well dressed, as the Friezlanders generally are, and full of animation as a French woman. I have seen nothing in the character of a countrywoman half so [I-295] amiable in all Germany, and I was sorry when she arrived at the farm-house to which she was going, and when I was again obliged to pursue my walk alone.

CHAPTER IX.
papenburg—schauenburg lippe.↩

Celebrity of Papenburg.—Origin.—Meppen.—Nature of the country.—Increase of inhabitants.—Dirtiness of women.—Meddling of government.—Lingen.—Westphalia.—Osnabrück.—Ancient abode of the Saxons.—Memorials.—A linen hall.—Gardens.—A triumphal arch.—Relics of Charlemagne.—Literature of small towns.—Justus Möser.—Tolerance.—Penitentiary.—Soil of Osnabrück.—Suhlingen.—Nienburg.—Prison.—Counties of Hoya and Diepholz.—Loccum.—Mineral waters of Rehburg.—Schauenburg.—Lippe.—Arrive at Hannover.

There was perhaps no town of Europe that grew more suddenly into notice and eminence, during the late war, than Papenburg: Its flag flew on every sea, and protected the property of every nation; but naval officers often looked in vain in their gazetteers and charts, or hunted over their geographies, for the name of the mighty place whose trade then appeared to be greater than that of all the rest of the world. Papenburg has not yet been a century in existence; and its flag only became known to the world, because the ministry [I-297] of Great Britain was pleased to allow of its neutrality. It is not one of the least of the evils of modern war that thousands of men have been constrained by it, for the protection of their property, to be guilty of perjury, and that this perjury has often been sanctioned by courts of justice and the ruling powers of several nations. The inhabitants of Papenburg amount to 3000, and they may possess at most 200 small vessels, which may enable the reader faintly to imagine the quantity of perjury which must have been necessary to swear to those papers which made some thousands of vessels, during the late war, into Papenburgers. On this account Papenburg is famous in history, and in the records of the courts of admiralty of Great Britain. It ought, however, to be known from the nature of its origin, and from its prosperity.

All around Papenburg the country is a complete bog, and the peat is in places many feet thick; it seemed to render cultivation hopeless, and to condemn the neighbourhood to perpetual sterility. There was, however, no difficulty in digging a canal from this storehouse of fuel to the Ems, and the peat then found a market in Embden and Holland. Towards the latter end of the seventeenth century, the proprietor of the country, Frey heer von Landsberg-Veelen, made a canal of about seven miles in length, from the Ems to the moor where the peat was abundant, and encouraged [I-298] people to settle there, by allowing them to dig peat and build houses without paying him any thing more than a nominal rent, and a certain sum for the goods they sent by the canal. There are now several canals, large enough for vessels of 150 tons burthen, and their whole length may amount to eighteen miles. Without any other encouragement from the proprietor than that he assisted to make these canals, and allowed the people to profit by their own industry, and without any streams of royal bounty, Papenburg grew up from such beginnings, and increased to its present size. It has been one of the most prosperous little towns of Europe, and now contains more than 3000 inhabitants. It is an instance of what the unfettered industry of man can effect. By the sides of these canals there are now several ship-yards where vessels are built and fully equipped. Without having any natural products whatever but peat, the Papenburgers have become a carrying people, so far as their means extend, to the rest of Europe. Their houses are in general neat and well built, and I have seen no little town, where there was altogether a greater appearance of comfort and prosperity. When this has been accomplished in a waste, what might we not expect throughout Europe, if all its inhabitants enjoyed, as the Papenburgers did, the privilege of freely exercising their industry, and of having all its fruits for themselves? Papenburg was [I-299] formerly in the dominions of the bishopric of Munster, and it now forms a part of the kingdom of Hannover.

I walked on the following day to Meppen, the principal town in the circle of the same name, and which is the most desolate part of the dominions of Hannover, and perhaps of Germany. The greater part of the circle is either morass or sand, fertility being only found in the vicinity of some little streams. Much of my day’s walk was through a country wholly of sand. It was loose, and in some places in motion, and in others blown together in hills. It was sometimes collected in fantastical forms, and had the appearance of snow after a heavy storm. In many places, where the sand had recently been again dispersed by the wind, turf and heath could be discovered, which shews, in some measure, that the waste is of modern formation. It is said to increase, and sometimes to carry barrenness over cultivated fields, compelling the farmer to change his residence, and reducing him from affluence to wretchedness.

Barren as Meppen naturally is, the number of the inhabitants has increased one third within thirty years. All the moors, particularly the Burtanger moor, on the west side of the Ems, reward the labour which is employed in cultivating them. Within thirty years many new villages have been built, and much of these moors brought under cultivation. [I-300] Many people have settled on them, and there can be no doubt, if the same system be pursued, that, in the course of a few years, a great part of these wastes, particularly the moors, may be made subservient to the nourishment of man.

The system is a very simple one, and very similar to that which made Papenburg a flourishing town. There is far less of the cunning of ruling craft wanted than is supposed to make men prosperous. Meppen formerly belonged to the bishop of Munster, and he allowed any persons who chose to fix a habitation on these moors, and cultivate any part of them, on condition of paying, at the end of ten years from the time of their first settling, a small rent. The first ten years they were to pay nothing. Two thirds of the rent which they were then to pay was to be devoted to public services, such as making roads, drains, constructing parish churches, and other works of utility. From tithes they were to be entirely free, but each settler was to contribute a small quantity of corn, and a small sum of money, for the support of the parish priest. There was one oversight committed. The moor touches on Holland, and the best channel by which its superfluous water could be drained passes through that country. No agreement had been entered into with the Dutchmen as to the manner in which this was to be done, nor were any measures taken to ensure them from damage. Disputes [I-301] between them and the new settlers were the consequence, and the latter had broken the dikes down which the former had erected to keep the water from coming into their land. This was a fruitful source of quarrels, which foresight, and the common interest of the two parties, could easily have prevented.

I have recently brought under the notice of the reader three instances of increasing cultivation; the two latter of which, where the people had no rents, no tithes, and few government expences to pay, may almost equal the increase of population in some parts of America. It is an extra-ordinary fact, that, with thousands and millions of acres of ground yet uncultivated in Europe, in the neighbourhood of a good market, with implements, and capital, and manure, at hand, that people should be enabled to transport themselves to America or to Russia, and there grow rich by cultivating land not better than that which lies waste in the countries they leave. The German peasants go in thousands to the Black Sea, and from there send corn to Italy, France, and Britain, when there are whole counties of waste acres in their own country, that might be easily cultivated. I believe this arises from no natural advantages belonging to Russia or America, but from the artificial disadvantages under which the labouring classes of all the old and multiplied governments of Europe live. The settlers [I-302] in Russia and America enjoy nothing more than the inhabitants of Europe but freedom, at least for a season, from the expences of government, and of maintaining idle people. There are few spots which, like Meppen and Papenburg, can be cultivated without paying rent and tithes, and when these are combined with interest of capital, the expences of government, and the increased price of the articles consumed, which is occasioned by pre-existing rents and tithes, nothing is left to the labourer to reward him for his industry. The clear fact is, without sifting it from its first concoction to its last fineness, that in Europe there are so many unproductive persons who are supported at the expence of the productive ones, that those latter never receive the tithe of those fruits which nature bestows on them. It is a sad feature of society, that he who produces every thing receives almost nothing, while those persons who produce nothing revel in superfluity. Industry is the slave of idleness, and, from being constantly associated with poverty and contempt, it has become more shunned and abhorred than crime. There can be no rational hope for the permanent improvement of society, no dependence on gaols and gibbets, to prevent all the crimes which now arise from a violation of artificial property, till individual industry shall form the basis of property,—till labour shall be opulent and idleness have nothing;—till this principle be so fully [I-303] established in society as it is in nature, we shall expect in vain that men should prefer labour to idleness, to cheating, or to thieving.

This was St John’s day, and as the people here are Catholics, they all went to church. The women were all clothed in a coarse red woollen cloth, with large gipsey straw hats. It rained, and the whole of them had made a sort of umbrella of their outer petticoat, by throwing it over their shoulders and heads. When they were abroad, and the air blew on them, they looked tolerably clean and fresh, but within doors, when they had resumed their working dresses, they were dirty and disgusting. I have seldom seen European women who appeared more negligent than they appeared to be. I had occasion, from its raining, to enter one or two cottages for shelter, and the women, whether young or elderly, were half undressed. They wore no stays; their linen was dirty; their gowns only half tied; their bosoms were naked, and two or three ragged aprons covered one another; they wore no shoes; their skins were unwashed, and their hair dishevelled. One amused herself with that species of hunting which is so common in Italy, and with which Laura, according to Petrarch, appears sometime to have amused herself. [14] Another [I-304] took snuff, and wiped herself with her woollen apron. Their houses resemble their persons. They have holes instead of windows; in the brightest day darkness is in them. The furniture consists in a table, a loom, two or three wooden stools, a few pewter plates and basins, with one or two kettles. Dirty as they are, the females wear on gala days gold ear-rings and silver clasps, that go over the head and keep the hair together. Vanity provides ornaments for a dirty person before necessaries for the house. Cleanliness makes both mind and body healthy, and perhaps there is nothing which can give a greater degree of permanent pleasure to the individuals of both sexes than the cleanliness of each. To introduce so much luxury among these people as would make them attend to their persons and dress, would be rendering them the most essential service. They are not idle. They are merely negligent, slovenly, and dirty. When I recollected the clean inhabitants of Embden, the contrast appeared great, and I had again reason to praise wealth and freedom. Yet in this country, where every body is poor, there are no beggars, no alms houses, no paupers, and few persons who are fed by the bounties of others.

At Meppen I heard rather a curious instance of the care of the magistracy for the morality of the people. It had been customary, on feast days and [I-305] Sundays, for the poorer sort of people to meet and dance and amuse themselves, in what manner, and so long as they pleased; but the magistrates thought it would be better for their health and morality, if they were to separate at an early hour, and they consequently forbade these assemblies to be continued beyond ten o’clock. The people, who had been accustomed to remain longer together, in some measure resisted, and the whole town had been thrown into disturbance by the officiousness of the magistrates. This is a minor example of governing folly. To prevent one man from getting tipsey, or one woman from enjoying a stolen embrace, which, after all this interference, may happen, and which might not happen without it, dissension and discord are introduced through a whole town, and the community suffers more from the irritation of opposition and the punishments inflicted, than it could by any possibility have suffered if things had been left to themselves. Magistrates and laws very often make those crimes, to repress and punish which they afterwards derive most of their importance and utility.

I shall say nothing of a walk for two days through such a desolate country as I had recently passed, till I reached Osnabrück. Lingen is the only town worth mentioning that lies between the towns of Osnabrück and Meppen. It is built on the Ems, and formerly boasted a university, which is at [I-306] present gone to decay. It is a clean town. The houses were rather built after the Dutch manner than the German. The farm-houses and windmills, which resemble a huge box, placed on its end, made me thoroughly sensible how much the Friez-landers have surpassed the scattered inhabitants of Westphalia. Notwithstanding the remarks of the Germans, the satirical description of Voltaire is still tolerably correct. He says, “Dans des grandes huttes qu’on appelle maisons, on voit des animaux qu’on appelle hommes, qui vivent le plus cordialement du monde, pêle mêle avec d’autres animaux domestiques. Une certaine pierre dure, noire et gluant, composée à ce qu’on dit d’une espèce de seigle, est la nourriture des maitres de la maison.” This “pierre dure et noire” is the celebrated pumpernickel, a black bread made of rye, with nothing separated from it but the husks of the grain. Each loaf is made of a bushel of meal; it requires twenty-four hours to bake, and it keeps good a month or six weeks. The houses are somewhat as Voltaire describes them, and of the people I have already spoken. In the neighbourhood of the town of Osnabrück the soil is a good clay, the land rises into hills, and is diversified with wood and water, but a great part of Westphalia is sand or moor. The houses are thinly scattered over it, and the inhabitants, yet devoted to the Catholic religion, are some of the least cultivated [I-307] of the Germans. Their general food after black bread is pancakes made of the grits of buck-wheat, and meats, particularly pork and sausages of all kinds, dried amidst the smoke that hovers in the upper part of the house. The pancakes are generally eaten for supper. The customs of Holland are, however, advancing. Tea or weak coffee is very often used twice a day. One or other is the usual breakfast.

Many of the poorer inhabitants of Westphalia make a summer excursion into Holland, where they find employment as labourers. They return to their homes in winter, and then chiefly employ themselves in knitting or weaving. Though they are absolutely poor, yet they are probably content. There are no lordly castles, or splendid houses to excite desire, or to provoke envy. All are equal in poverty. Inequality of condition, and not a want of mere luxuries, renders men harsh, uncivil, and sometimes brutal. In this sandy desolate country I had frequent occasion to apply to the peasants for direction to find my way, and their assistance sometimes went beyond the bounds of common civility. They more than once accompanied me a considerable distance to put me in the right road, and always in a cheerful kind manner.

The town of Osnabrück and its neighbourhood was one of the principal seats of the most ancient [I-308] inhabitants of this country. Here lived Herman, the conqueror of Varus, and here he sacrificed the captive Romans on the altars of the Saxon Gods. And here Wittelkind, six centuries later, fought the last of the battles of independence. He was conquered, and Westphalia added to the empire of the Franks, and brought under the dominion of the church. It is to this part of the country that all the recollections of early national independence attach, and Herman and Wittelkind are the great heroes of early Saxon history. The country about Osnabrück seems to have been well calculated for the residence of an independent people; and even now there is something in its wood covered and broken hills, and in the deep shade of the forests, that recalls the supersitions of the ancient inhabitants. The country hilly, rugged, and yet fertile, and surrounded on all sides by sands or morasses, offered a secure retreat and a sufficiency of nourishment to a savage people. It was one of the last civilized parts of Germany, and still retains many of those peculiar privileges and usages which were common to the ancient Saxons.

There are several piles of stones, or rude masses of granite, yet in the neighbourhood, which are thought to be monuments of the ancient Druids. Those which I saw appeared to have been washed to their place by some extraordinary convulsion of nature. They were on the top of a hill, called the [I-309] Piesberg, close to the town of Osnabrück, and there so placed as to form a sort of cave in the hill. Two masses of granite lie partly buried in the earth, and on the top of them lies another mass, that may be nine feet square, and three feet thick. Neither of them bear the least mark of the labour of man, yet it is possible man might have placed them there; at least the present generation loves to lend to the rude monuments, whether of art or of nature, the fables of superstition, and stones and blocks become hallowed to the mind from being associated in its imaginations with the practices, and deeds, and sufferings of past generations. It spreads its own poetical feelings over inanimate objects, converts a rude stone to an altar, a knoll of trees to a sacred grove, and peoples the wild with beings of its own creation. No place could be better fitted for such imaginations than the country around these stones. They were on the top of a wood-covered hill, other hills equally covered with wood surrounded and rose above it. When I visited it, the last rays of the setting sun glowed among the trembling twigs of the white birch-trees that covered the hills. The perfect seclusion, and the mossy bed at the foot of the stones, tempted to repose, and to indulge in indolent imaginations. The noise of a distant forge was heard, and sometimes of waggons passing on a road not far beneath. Some of the changes which had taken place in society since this [I-310] was the favourite seat of the Saxons, passed through my mind. I contrasted the present with what I knew of the past situation of man. I could not doubt that his mechanical ingenuity, and with that his comforts and conveniences, were wonderfully improved, but they were combined with a loss of individual independence, with a sort of political degradation in the mass of the society, that almost made me give the praise of superiority to the barbarous equality and rude freedom of the ancient Saxons.

Osnabrück contains 9000 people, situated on a small river called the Hase; the palace, the townhouse, the court of justice, the cathedral, are all good buildings, and there are a great many good-looking private houses belonging to merchants. Though not the largest, it is undoubtedly the best situated, and the handsomest town of his Majesty’s German dominions. It is a place of considerable trade, from being in the centre of a country where a great quantity of linen is made, and which is brought here for inspection and sale. The coarse linen called Osnabrück was formerly very much in use, but its place is now in a great measure supplied by cheaper articles made from cotton. The hall in which the linen is measured, stamped, and sold, is called a linen legge. There are persons appointed by the government to inspect the linen brought for sale, to stamp it, and to declare to what class it [I-311] belongs as to fineness and size. Their marks are so much relied on, that it is said the linen is afterwards bought and sold without being further inspected. The merchants at Bremen and Hamburg, and the West Indies, who deal in it, buy it according to these marks, and not according to any opinion they form of its value. Some instances have, however, lately been discovered, in which they have been forged, and which may bring the whole into disrepute.

A great number of peasants, all cleanly dressed, had brought their webs on Saturday for inspection and sale. Some waited the selling rather anxiously, but most of them were free and full of speech. They were happy to see one another, and they overflowed with words. Two men measured every web, it was then rolled up, its quantity marked on it, and the inspector decided to what class it belonged. When a sufficient number of bolts had been collected, the inspector turned auctioneer, and sold them to three merchants who were assembled to buy, he sometimes bidding himself. There was little competition; the merchants appeared to buy at their own prices. They gave from sixty pfennige the ell for the coarse linen to eighty-two pfennige, for the finest which was sold, that is, from 8d. to 10d. per ell; formerly the price was 3d. or 4d. more per ell. This diminution of sale price, while the cost of production remains the [I-312] same, all of which is suffered by the peasantry, who are generally the growers of the flax, the spinners, and the weavers, combined with a general rise in the price of most commodities, makes it appear true what the peasants said, “That linen does not now pay them for their labour.” The peasantry, who are obliged to have their linen stamped, find no other market for it but in the same hall; they are entirely at the mercy of the inspector and the capitalists, and I was not surprised to learn that most of the good houses of Osnabrück had been built by linen merchants. The peasants have the power of taking the linen away if they do not like the price, but they said they should then find nobody to purchase it, and its sale is necessary to their subsistence. The capitalist has an advantage against which they cannot contend, and he grows rich by merely buying and selling, while the manufacturers remain poor. The establishment of such linen-halls in most of the towns in the neighbourhood of which much linen is made, is thought a measure of great wisdom, and is proportionally praised by most German authors. Westphalia, which is itself so barren, formerly owed much of its prosperity to the manufactory of linen, but the present price barely pays the labour, and there can be little doubt unless a cheaper method is found out of making it, that cotton will ultimately banish it entirely from the market. The machinery of England has injured [I-313] the Continent by enabling us to undersell its inhabitants, but their indolence is to blame, and not our energy. The inhabitants of Westphalia deserve our pity, for it will be long before they can find any other species of industry by which they so profitably occupy their time in winter as making linen.

I do not know how to express my notion of the quietness, amiableness, and general content of the German character, in any other manner than by repeating the facts on which it is founded. One of the most conspicuous of these is the numerous little gardens, with arbours, and hills, and walks, and flowers, that surround all German towns, and in which the greater part of the inhabitants may be seen every afternoon smoking their pipes, and cultivating their flowers and fruits, or reposing in their summer houses, sewing or reading, or more lovingly with their arms encircling each other, walking to and fro, and communing, though undisturbed, not unseen, or taking their evening meal under the trees, or singing as if all were happy. All round the walls of Osnabrück, such images as these of peace and amiableness were to be seen. At one place, however, they were rather disturbed by a new gate having been erected in the form of a triumphal arch to the honour of the Landwehr of Osnabrück, who were at the battle of Waterloo. A Herr von Gurlich had [I-314] erected this, and had inscribed his name on it, that, by honouring others, he himself may be known to posterity. It is a pity that a remembrance of war and deeds of carnage should have been allowed to be reared amidst such scenes of domestic bliss. But the respect and reverence which the Germans entertain for the military is one of the worst features of their character. If a man have served as an officer, no matter whom, he is honoured, while an honest tradesman is the object of contempt. Their love of gardens, and of flowers, and of domestic bliss, is their natural character; their respect for soldiers is the result of the medals and fictitious honours by which men are still bribed to be the instruments of death in the hands of ambition. I looked at the enjoyments of others, and then sojourned with my host into his garden. The evening was calm, and the whole scene one of content and peace.

I have rarely beheld the gardens which surround the towns of Germany without wishing the environs of our own masses of bricks, and clouds of smoke of our manufacturing towns, might also be divided into gardens, where those who pleased might find a healthy amusement in the cultivation of their own cabbages. It is at least a pity that those who might be disposed to spare some hours from the alehouse, cannot have an opportunity of devoting them to so pleasing and softening an occupation [I-315] as rearing a few flowers and fruits. Such a division of the lands in the neighbourhood of large towns might not add to the quantity of productions, but it would to the health and the morality of the people. There is one great hindrance to the completion of such a wish. In our country, unhappily, every little spot must be protected from depredation by walls or hedges, or man-traps and spring-guns; in Germany, they are often unenclosed, and yet they who plant the cabbages, or sow the potatoes, have the pleasure of consuming them.

For the gratification of the curious reader, I must mention, that in the cathedral at Osnabrück an ivory comb and staff, and a crown, said to have belonged to Charlemagne, are preserved as religious relics.

Osnabrück is an instance of what I have before met with in Germany, that is, a small town which, without either having a university, or being a royal residence, is yet in some sort celebrated for its literature. It was formerly the residence of the Prince Bishop, but no court has been kept to bring with it polish and refinement since the days of Ernest Augustus, the father of George the First. The nobility of the province have in general resided here, and it has always been the seat of the government, and tribunal for the province. The last has had an influence on the reputation of Osnabrück, [I-316] for Justus Möser, who is celebrated for his apothegms, as the Franklin of Germany, and who was one of its classical historians, was president of this tribunal. He is known among his countrymen as the noble Herrliche Justus Möser, and we must allow them to be the best judges of his merit. His political writings are praised, but it is the advice which, as a man of rank, and many occupations, he gave in small sentences to the peasant and the citizen in the “Weekly Intelligence” of Osnabrück relative to education, to clothing, to diet, to managing their houses, that have gained him the most credit, and that did him the most honour. Literary men so seldom bend their minds to any useful thing of this kind, and the literary men of Germany so seldom trouble themselves with any of the affairs of life, that this example to the contrary merits to be recorded. This gentleman was one of that numerous class of enlightened men who improved the language and literature of Germany between the years 1760 and 1790. Most of his works were written between these two epochs. Till lately, a periodical work on agriculture was published at Osnabrück, which is now suspended, but which, it was hoped, quiet would allow to be again resumed. Three or four tolerable booksellers’ shops, two Latin schools, and the conversation of its people, shewed that Osnabrück has not yet lost all its claim to literary reputation. This love [I-317] of literature in small towns where there are neither universities nor courts, is an evidence of its general diffusion.

The half of the inhabitants, both of the town and province of Osnabrück, are Catholics, but they live in such harmony, that it is necessary to make inquiries to learn that they follow different religions. The people are themselves ignorant if one sect has more privileges than another. The judges are half Catholics and half Protestants. The cathedral is Catholic, and there is a Catholic bishop, who has united himself with a Bible society, composed chiefly of Protestants. The bishop must not be confounded with the Prince Bishop of Osnabrück. The revenues of the country belong to the latter, or rather at present to the government of Hannover, but the real consecrated bishop is chosen by his own prebends, subject to the approval of the government, and enjoys a fixed and not a very large income.

There is a Zucht-house, or penitentiary, also at Osnabrück, but because Monday was a feast day, I was not permitted to see it. It is an airy spacious building, in which the prisoners were confined in rooms, each containing sixteen or twenty persons. The only work they do is spinning; they are nourished independently of what they earn, and their labour has little value. To compel them to work, while their nourishment does not depend on [I-318] what they gain, is one means of reducing the price which is paid for the labour of people who have to nourish themselves. There can be no question that the forced and cheap labour of prisoners helps to reduce the rewards of the free labourer, and to enrich the merchant at his expence. Condemning criminals to labour, therefore, produces poverty among honest labourers, multiplies pauperism, increases inequalities of condition, and remotely augments crime. The earnings of the people thus shut up were as nothing. They do not pay the apothecary, said the keeper.

The northern part of the province of Osnabrück is moor, or a sandy soil, that naturally produces little more than heath. The southern part is hilly, and has a good clay soil on limestone. Coals are found and worked in one or two places in the province, but more are worked in the territories of Prussia, a little distance from Osnabrück. Lime is burnt in several places. The greater part of the hills seem to be an aggregate of loose stones, and similar ones appear at one time to have covered the whole country. As they are removed, a good stiff clay soil, approaching, in its colour, to red, remains. It is easy of culture, and fruitful, and, though much of Osnabrück is barren, it is far from being the worst part of the dominions of Hannover.

From Osnabrück I turned my face again towards [I-319] the town of Hannover, and, passing through part of the county of Diepholz, and the little town of the same name, I reached Suhlingen on the evening of Monday, June 29.

The name of the county of Diepholz is known as the title which the Duke of Cambridge generally uses in travelling. The long straggling village, or town of the same name, is rather famous for a manufactory of coarse cloth. About eighty persons, each for himself, are employed in this manufactory. They complained much also of the decay of trade, but men complain from disappointed hope, and, while hope outruns reality, there will always be a subject of complaint. Suhlingen is celebrated for the convention concluded there in 1803, between the Hannoverian army under Count Wallmoden and the French army under Marshal Mortier, and which conferred no honour on the former. The king refused to ratify it. It is also famous in the statistical accounts of Hannover, as a town where much iron is manufactured. I had heard of prodigious manufactories of sickles, scythes, and knives, and deemed it a sort of Carron. There are four master smiths, who, besides working themselves, employ each of them four or five journeymen. They do the common work of the place, such as shoeing horses, mending ploughshares, &c. and may, moreover, make about 6000 scythes in a year. This is one of the great iron manufactories [I-320] of Hannover. The journeymen live with the family of the master, and earn also eight pistoles, about L. 6, 13s. 4d. per year. This was not the first time I had been deluded by statistical writers, and it is only when we have seen with our own eyes that we know what is meant by their exaggerated language. A few weavers who make a little coarse linen form an extensive manufactory. Four common forges make a town into a Carron or a Birmingham, and catching a few trout and sending them to Hamburg, which we should regard as a precarious means of procuring a miserable subsistence, is called a flourishing commerce.

Nienburg is a decent town, situated on the Weser, and on the road between Bremen and Hannover; but, though its situation is thus advantageous, it has very little trade, from the greater part of the country about it being thinly inhabited and badly cultivated. The inhabitants are generally so poor that they have nothing to give for superfluities, and, consequently, can buy nothing. I met a gentleman at the inn who was going to the sea for the benefit of bathing, but who was obliged to wait several hours for post horses. The posts are not better regulated, therefore, when monopolized by the crown, and when under its control, than when they are conducted by individuals, who establish them for the sake of profit.

I visited another prison, in which men are confined [I-321] who have been condemned to labour and imprisonment for a certain term of years. If the two previously mentioned at Celle and Osnabrück had some advantages of situation and appearance, this was a wretched place. It is an old tower, which was once a part of the fortifications, and, as they have been destroyed, it stands isolated, and is, as it looks to be, a ruin. There were four apartments, one over the other. One of them was occupied by the keeper; in the other three 117 persons were confined. A great part of them were at the moment out at work. The sick, and some who had been at work, were in the house. The irregular form of the building made the rooms of a strange three-cornered sort of shape. In every apartment was a wooden bench, like those in guard-houses, on which some beds were strewed, and a few of the sick and lazy were lying on them. All sorts of filth were lying on the floor, and clothes of various kinds were hanging from the ceiling, or against the walls. A few miserable half-clothed beings mourned rather than cursed their fate. They complained of want of medicines and food, and of a want of medical attendance. One was writing; some were reading; some were calmly talking with one another, or anxious to address me. It was altogether a miserable habitation, but there was no noise, nor confusion, nor imprecations. The only keeper I saw was a woman, who took no precaution to lock the door behind [I-322] her when she entered, and who spoke to the prisoners like familiar acquaintance. From not knowing her subjects so well as she knew them, I was afraid of an insurrection, but they wanted courage to attempt an escape. There was no classification of prisoners; those who had been detected in their first essay at guilt, and old hardened offenders, were shut up together. The depraved might not only teach vice to the innocent, but encourage them to commit it, by pointing out the methods by which they might escape the vengeance of the law. All distinction of crime also appeared likely to be obliterated by indiscriminate punishments. The soldier for desertion, and the profligate thief, were condemned to the same gaol and the same labour. There was no place for the prisoners to take exercise; they never breathed the fresh air but when they went abroad to work, and every one but the sick wore shackles.

The torture was not at this time abolished in Hannover, but none of the prisoners would confess that it had been inflicted on them; they all said their crimes were too trifling, though they all knew what it was. They complained, however, of the arbitrary will of the magistrates, to which they attributed their punishments much more than to their own crimes. Such assertions cannot be disproved where the trials are secret, but they may be by publicity of procedure. I am far from pitying [I-323] the man who suffers in consequence of his own crimes, but I doubt if the criminal is rightly punished by being condemned to a gaol; and when I have sometimes seen the misery it incloses from the world, and have for a moment extended my thoughts to all the sufferings of our race, I have doubted if more be not inflicted on us by the pride or vanity of what is called Reason than by our own most violent and degrading lusts.

Nienburg is in the county of Hoya, which, with the county of Diepholz, through which I had just passed, are usually spoken of and described together in statistical accounts of Hannover, and I shall, therefore, here add a short description of them. They are generally flat, without being absolutely level. The soil is chiefly sand, sometimes coarse, approaching to gravel; heather covers the greater part, morasses and bogs are numerous, and much peat is dug for fuel. On the Weser and on the Aller there is good marsh land and meadows. In Diepholz there is a lake called Dummer See, Dull Lake, which name it deserves. It is surrounded with swamps, and looks something like the poet’s description of Lethe. A great part of these provinces are waste and uncultivated. From brick earth being found in several places beneath the surface, from trees growing luxuriantly, there is reason to think a moderate portion of labour might so improve the soil, as to render it productive. [I-324] Habitations are thinly scattered, and the people have the character of being the most boorish, ignorant, and guzzling of all the inhabitants of Hannover. My own experience allows me to say nothing on this point. The houses which I saw were invariably badly built, the people badly clothed, and shewing several signs of poverty and wretchedness.

From Nienburg I walked, by the banks of the Weser, to a village called Leese. Much tobacco was cultivated in this neighbourhood, though, owing to very dry weather, neither it nor any other plant or herb was looking well. The soil was sandy. A due proportion of water is a desideratum in all agricultural undertakings, and it may be hoped this will, at some future time, be absolutely at the command of the agriculturist. In this neighbourhood was one of those very large royal farms which will afterwards be described, the tenant of which was riding about in a sort of wicker carriage to inspect his workmen. The landlord at Leese hired the tithes of the village. He also was an agriculturist.

There was formerly a monastery at Loccum, to where I walked from Leese. It is now secularized. The buildings, however, remain. Some prebends still enjoy emoluments from its revenues, and the abbot of Loccum is the highest and only dignitary of the Hannoverian church. The abbey [I-325] is situated in a fruitful and pleasant country. While the good fathers who once possessed it were careful to promise the joys of heaven to the people, they took those vulgar ones which the earth could bestow to themselves.

In the course of my walk, though there was here no high-road, I had two or three peasants for my companions. With one I walked, and with another I rode in his waggon. One I found glad that the services he used to pay his lord had been commuted into money. He knew, and described very well, in what manner both tenant and lord were injured by the former being obliged to do the work of the latter. It was badly done, and the teams, and servants, and people who did it, got into slovenly habits, that they afterwards carried into their own occupations, and thus idleness and negligence were the consequences of compelling some men to labour for others. Another peasant was the enemy of improvement; he liked things as they were, and thought no good would come from dividing and inclosing commons; he was a loyal good subject, who loved the taxes and the conscription for the landwehr, and the king and his ministers, and all which they commanded.

Rehburg, through which I passed, is one of the most famous and fashionable watering-places of Hannover. The Germans seem to have a greater taste to visit such places in the summer than [I-326] we have. There is hardly a person of respectability who does not go to some mineral-well every year, and those who cannot go have the water brought to them in bottles, that they may at least drink the precious beverage. The waters of Rehburg are of sovereign efficacy against the gout. The situation of the place is probably more efficacious. It commands an extensive view over a large lake, Steinhuder Meer, and an interesting country. The wooded hill at the foot of which it stands is laid out in agreeable walks, all planned by the architect of the crown, and the buildings, which are also under his care and superintendence, are neat and convenient. The government monopolizes the mineral waters, and only allows them to be used under the direction of the physicians it appoints. Its subjects are deeply indebted to it for the care it takes of their health.

The little principality of Schauenburg-Lippe intervenes here between one part of the dominions of Hannover and another, and it was necessary, on leaving Rehburg, to traverse a part of this to arrive at Wunstorf, which is also Hannoverian. This independent principality lies in the midst of the territories of Hannover, Prussia, and Hesse Cassel. But its sovereigns have long had a reputation of being equally free from ambition and servility. Their dominions have not been enlarged, neither have they been incorporated by any larger state. [I-327] They amount only to 120 square miles, and contain 30,000 inhabitants. The revenue may amount to L. 20,000 Sterling. It is a fruitful and well cultivated little district. States, or a parliament, have always been in use here. They are composed of deputies from the nobility— Rittershaft, —and deputies from the towns; and their servants, not the servants of the sovereign, receive and dispose of the produce of the taxes. United with Lippe, Detmold, and the principalities of Hohenzollern, Liechtenstein, and Waldeck, it has a seat in the diet of Germany.

Near Wunstorf stands a monument erected to the memory of the Danish General Obentraut, who was killed in that neighbourhood in the year 1625, in the thirty years which ravaged the whole of Germany. After having hastily traversed most of the provinces which compose the north-western part of the kingdom of Hannover in five weeks, I again reached the town of Hannover on Wednesday, July 1. I had had friendly salutations at parting, and I was kindly welcomed back.

CHAPTER X.
kalenberg—the harz.↩

Frey schiessen.—A national amusement.—When introduced.—Opinions of electioneering squabbles.—Mr Malchus.—Alfeld.—Eimbeck beer.—Italian and German manners.—Göttingen.—Sudden prosperity.—Situation.—Walks.—Club.—Schwarzberg-Sondershausen.—The Harz.—Osterode.—Clausthal.—Mint.—Washing and smelting houses.—A mine.—Inhabitants of the Harz.—Goslar.—Ilsenberg.—A monument.—The Brochen.—Extensive view—Lauterberg.—Manufactory of iron ornaments.—Herzberg.—Münden.—Tomb in garden.

Few persons except those who are whirled along at the will of postillions and their horses, and who, with the aid of fur caps, comfortable cloaks, and an easy carriage, enjoy the inestimable advantage of performing their journey asleep, can have travelled in the north of Germany without having sometimes seen targets nailed up over the doors of farm-houses. They indeed do not so much need occupation as the solitary pedestrian, who is constantly casting about for a moment’s amusement, or an extraordinary sight, and he has, consequently, no right to suppose that what the slowness of his weary steps [I-329] allowed him to see at every village, ever glanced on the eye, or caught the notice of travellers in carriages. I can only affirm, therefore, strictly, that I frequently saw them, and on asking what they were, I was told they were like the fox’s brush or outstretched buzzard, which sometimes ornaments the barn-doors in England, memorials of the skill, the victory, and pride of the owners. The Germans have a national amusement called Scheiben schiessen, shooting at a mark, or Frey schiessen, free shooting, which most generally takes place about the month of June or July, and is attended with so much carousing as to deserve mentioning here. The people collect in bodies, and march in a military and triumphant manner to some particular spot, at a distance from the town or village, and every man who chooses to buy the privilege with a florin, lays his rifle on a rest fixed for that purpose, and shoots at a mark. The mark is sometimes a fixed target, but it is sometimes made to move quickly past a small opening. The marksman is placed at a convenient distance, his rifle is loaded for him, at a signal given, the Scheibe, as it is called, is put in motion, and he hits it if he can. Sometimes the mark is a stag chased by dogs; indeed, an instance was mentioned to me of the valour of the Germans being called on to shoot at a wooden representation of Buonaparte, followed by a Cossack. He who misses the stag [I-330] or Buonaparte has a proportionate fine to pay, and woe to him if he hit the faithful dog, or the valiant Cossack. He who hits the mark has a due share of honour, and he who is so skilful as to drive his ball through the centre, receives the wooden image itself as the reward of his skill. This is then nailed up over his door, or placed at some conspicuous part of his mansion, and is very often its brightest and only ornament. It remains year after year, more similar trophies are sometimes added, and the front of the house then becomes covered with the memorials of village war.

Frey schiessen was introduced in the year 1450, soon after gunpowder came into general use, in order to learn how to shoot steadily at men. It was first practised in the North of Germany by the citizens of Brunswick, who, in all matters of discipline, and in the formation of troops, are said to have set the princes of that period a good example. Before then, similar practices with other arms appear to have been common, but then, for the first time, shooting with muskets was introduced amongst the people. It has now, however, degenerated into a mere amusement, which, though very national, is permitted only once a-year. The Germans display in it, as in other things, their great characteristic of shunning bodily exertion. When we compare it with cricket, or golf, or boxing, or any of the manly pastimes of our country youth, we laugh [I-331] at that revelry which accompanies it, which was originally intended to congratulate the victor, or soothe him after his toils. It is now a sort of saturnalia, when those who have been sober and sparing all the year indulge in licentiousness. It is to the Germans what Greenwich fair is to the citizens of London, or the fête of St Cloud to the Parisians. Every body must partake of its festivities. Those who never go abroad through the rest of the year go to this feast. The pennies which poverty can save are hoarded for a debauch, and those whose profligacy has spared nothing pawn their furniture, their clothes, or their ornaments, that they may say, like their neighbours, “I too was at the feast; I swilled in the same room with the herr von,—and I destroyed a certain portion of viands better than ordinary, and I was filled both with joy and with meat.”

Every village has its own schiessen. I had seen several, and heard of more in my route, but it would have occasioned repetition to have mentioned them, and I deferred it till my return to Hannover, where I knew I should see one in its greatest perfection. It was the 19th of July, in the morning, that the citizens of the new town of Hannover, in an appropriate costume, with music and flags, marched in gay procession from the town to Herrenhausen, a palace of the sovereign about one mile and a half distant; booths were [I-332] erected, and a proper place made for the shooting. The orangery was cleared out, one end of it was fitted up as a ball-room, and the other as a tavern, the fountains of the royal gardens were made to play, and great importance was given to the whole by one of the cabinet ministers, who is the chief of all that relates to the royal domains, taking the direction on himself. For this attention, however, the citizens with their music go at the end of the three days which the shooting lasts, in solemn procession, to return him their thanks, and “bring him a vivat.” Even this amusement is under the direction of the government.

I visited Herrenhausen on each day the shooting lasted, and partook of the feasting and revelry. The gay ball-room in the orange house was for the dancers of a better condition, and sundry other places were fitted up for the poorer citizens and peasants to hop and whirl in at a cheaper rate. Refreshments of all kinds were abundant, and there was a great deal of guzzling. People of all distinctions go, and carry their families with them. I saw a judge smoking his segar, and swallowing the wing of a fowl,—the master of the horse drinking punch,—the secretary to the consistorium enjoying a pasty with his wife,—nobles, gentlemen, tradesmen, musicians, were all mixed together, and there were no distinctions recognized or preserved.

I witnessed neither riot nor disturbance, neither [I-333] quarrelling nor abusive language. There was much licentiousness, but there were neither disputes nor fighting. No fair in England, in which the people had a full swing for their gluttony, could have lasted three days without many hard knocks and broken heads. I am far, however, from attributing this in the one case, as is usually done, to the care of the police, and in the other to the want of a police. It is more to be ascribed to the natural character of the two people, which is visible in children so well as in men;—to the gentleness and general quietness of the Germans, and to the boisterous, perhaps turbulent, energies of our countrymen. In fact, we have a police whose character has been written in the blood of innocent men, for it sold them to death and the infamy of the gallows. Nor do I believe any extension of its powers would prevent one crime, or hinder one disturbance. It is certain that every policeman must be paid from the produce of the labourer, and because his occupation is disgraceful, he must be well paid, and in proportion as a police is numerous, so is the labourer reduced to poverty; the inequality of his condition is farther augmented, and this causes more crimes than the best organized police can suppress.

About this period the general election was going on in England, and I was rather surprised at the opinions I heard expressed on the subject. The Hannoverians were quite shocked at reading of our [I-334] riots; they spoke of them as disgraceful to a Christian country. “What, did the government do nothing to stop such barbarities? Where was our police?” “Such scenes were a shame to civilized man.” Nothing excited severer remarks than the practice of spitting on candidates. It was so odious in their estimation, that they were “surprised every vagabond who did it was not apprehended, and most severely punished.” It is good to hear and to record the opinions of foreigners on such things, and we perhaps regard them with too little attention when they thus sink us, in the estimation of other people, to a level with barbarians. Some of the practices of that time were the insults of the meanest and most dastardly souls, of a poor spirit that was fretted and vexed, that was more like a passionate spoiled child than like a man. They were odious, and excited abhorrence in the minds of all the quiet, orderly, well disposed Germans. They and other people attribute, wrongly perhaps, all such outrages to our political liberty; it would still be worth having, though it did cause them; but, calm and contented as they are, they do not think so, and they would rather continue to support a system of political degradation, than incur the possibility of being exposed to similar outrages. It would not be an easy task to ascertain what portion of such outrages are caused by liberty, and what portion by inequality of condition; by our practices being in [I-335] opposition to our principles; by our preaching liberty, and by our condemning a part of the society to political degradation, but it would be an important one from its results. It would probably rescue liberty from the odium that is now thrown on her, and endear her more to all men, by proving that the vices which are called her offspring are in truth the children of oppression and of slavery.

I finally quitted Hannover on Monday, July 27, and, again passing the town of Hildesheim, before mentioned, I reached Göttingen in two days. In the province of Hildesheim there is a nobleman’s seat, which is considered as a phenomenon in this country for its elegance. In fact, country seats, except the palaces of the monarchs, are very rare. The nobles are too poor to support them. A Count Brabeck had, however, fitted up one at Soeder, which is said to unite all sorts of elegancies. It was rather out of my road, and I merely mention what I learnt from others. It is at present in a dilapidated state. It was in Hildesheim that Mr Malchus, who is celebrated in Germany as a financier, and who now is, or was recently, the chief minister at the court of Wirtemberg, first distinguished himself. Hildesheim was then in possession of Prussia. Some disputes arose between that power and the nobility, and Mr Malchus, who then filled a subordinate office in the province, wrote a work on the subject, which got [I-336] him great credit, and laid the foundation of his future fortune.

At Alfeld a party of women were beating flax to separate the husk from the fibres. The instrument employed was a sort of block, with a deep groove, or a box. A wooden chopper was fixed, by one end, to this block, in such a manner that the other end could be lifted up, and it fell into the groove. The flax was held in the left hand, and thrown across the block and the groove; the chopper was worked by the right hand, and, constantly falling into the groove, bruised the flax against its edges. The women sat. A similar method was long followed in Britain: A man threw the flax over the edge of a stool, and, as he turned it with one hand, beat it with the other, with a sort of wooden sword. The man, however, stood. The instrument was simple and rude, but I believe there was no other till the invention of Mr Lee. It will be long, very long, before his invention is adopted in Germany. There are so many prejudices there against machinery, that, in some places, it has been forbidden to mow corn, because reaping it requires more labour and employs more people.

Eimbeck, a little dirty black town on the road, deserves to be mentioned as having been once celebrated for its beer. It was the Burton of Germany, and its beer, like London porter, was sent all [I-337] over the empire. A barrel was, in the fifteenth century, what a few bottles of real Tokai are now,—a present for a prince. The affairs of Germany were then settled at Speirs or Worms, by the princes of the empire, over foaming draughts of true Eimbeck. It was the beloved drink of the sovereigns. The citizens shewed their admiration of the doctrines of Luther by sending him some of their best, and, as he could not himself go to Eimbeck, to give the words of salvation for the liquor of earthly life, he is said to have deputed two of his most faithful and thirsty disciples. One of the very largest houses in Hamburg, and still called the Eimbeckischen-Haus, was built on purpose to sell this beer. If what I drank might be taken as a specimen, the princes must have had execrable tastes, and very strong stomachs. It resembled the other wash in use in Germany denominated beer, and which is only adapted to the powerless smoke-dried palates, throats, and tastes, of the Germans. In the neighbourhood of Eimbeck much tobacco is cultivated.

The whole of the dominions of Hannover which lie to the southward of the capital are hilly, and even mountainous. Some parts of the road to Göttingen are amidst craggy and well wooded hills. The vallies are well cultivated, and the country and the travelling were much more agreeable than in the flat sands of Lüneburg, or the moors of Bremen. [I-338] The province of Kalenberg, in which the town of Hannover is situated, lies between the flat sands and the hills, and partakes of the characteristics of both. Where it borders on Lüneburg it is sandy, and contains several bogs, but its south and western parts are hilly and fertile. The soil is a light-coloured loam or clay, very easy of culture. Fine forests of beech or oak cover the hills, and they abound in limestone and coal. Both are worked in several places. On the Leine are excellent meadows. The peasants have long enjoyed some advantages similar to those enjoyed by the peasants of Brunswick, and they are reputed to be more polished, better fed and housed than those of Hoya or Bremen. The soil of Hildesheim resembles that of Kalenberg, but is in general stiffer, it approaches a red colour, and is more productive. It is an irregular and beautiful country. One of the principal rivers from the Harz, the Innerste, which is there employed to cleanse the metallic ores from the earth, by the well-known process of washing, passes through the province of Hildesheim, and is said to desolate the land in its vicinity by depositing, in its progress, the separated earth and sand. These dry, and are afterwards blown over the surrounding country. The provinces of Göttingen and Grubenhagen, including all that part of the mountain of the Harz and the Eichsfeld which belong to Hannover, form the most southern part of the kingdom. They are [I-339] rich in minerals and forests. The soil in the vallies is a stiff clay, and they are watered by an abundance of little streams. These are some of the most picturesque and productive provinces of the monarchy. With the exception of Hildesheim and the Eichsfeld, they have long formed part of the German dominions of our sovereign, which are not so entirely a flat and desolate sand, as they have usually been described to be.

As a specimen of the occupations of the people, I may mention meeting on my way an old man, who told me he owned about eight acres of land, which he cultivated in the summer; in winter he wove; and he was, moreover, the butcher of the village.

The poetical imaginations of the Italians, for which they are so much praised, never allow them to speak of things as they are, and the poor beings, whose greatest pride is that their forefathers performed great deeds, deluded by the admiration of unreflecting strangers, take credit to themselves for a disposition that makes them despicable as men. The vivacity of their imaginations, which is, however, seldom shewn at the present time by any proud specimens either of eloquence or of art, justifies to the whole of them their disregard of truth. An individual of this nation, whom I met on my way, was a good specimen of his countrymen. He betrayed his origin by his falsities so well as by his pronunciation. He had not spoken [I-340] five minutes before he said what I knew to be untrue, and I left him to grope forward as he could, with his weary and sore feet. The Munchausen family are distinguished nobles of Hannover, and the Memoirs of the baron were originally written and published in Germany; yet the Germans do not resemble the Italians. They rather deserve the names they generally give themselves, of “Aechte, Biedere Deutscher,”—Honest true Germans.

Göttingen contains 10,000 inhabitants. The streets are well paved. Two thirds of the houses are modern; the remainder have been altered and improved to resemble the others. Without having any very good buildings, it is altogether a neat clean-looking town. The Lying-in hospital, though handsome, cannot be called more than a very second-rate sort of building; but the Observatory, which is out of the town, and which was designed by an architect of the name of Müller, seemed to me to be a model of good taste. It is extremely well adapted to its purposes; it is remarkably simple and chaste, and is not disfigured by a multitude of ornaments, which, in architecture, whenever they are useless, are absolutely ugly.

Unfortunately I have too often had occasion to speak of decaying towns, and it is with pleasure I now have to mention one, which has rapidly increased, and which owes the greater part of its [I-341] neatness to its prosperity. It would be more pleasant could I trace the increase of Göttingen to natural causes, which having a permanent existence, might ensure a continuance of prosperity. But it has been occasioned by the patronage of the sovereign,—by a capricious feeling in an individual, which his predecessor may not inherit, or which circumstances may not allow him to follow. Göttingen had been lying in a state of ruin ever since the thirty years’ war, when George II. and his minister, Munchausen, selected it, in 1733, as a proper place to establish a university. It was its fallen and ruined state, and its favourable situation, which made them think it deserved the fattening stream of royal bounty. Of so little consequence was Göttingen before that period, that many of the professors who were invited to it are said hardly to have known in what quarter of Germany it was situated. The first instruction was given in store-houses, and the inhabitants are said to have regarded the first anatomical professor with great horror. They nicknamed him a man-flayer, and could not be bribed to light his fire, or to bring him wood and water. Since then the town has constantly improved, and the university has constantly, till 1818, increased in the number of its students, and in the reputation of its professors.

Sovereigns, in Germany, change their residence, or the direction of their bounties, and cities follow [I-342] or grow up at their command. It is beautiful to see new and comfortable houses rising at the royal will; and that song of praise, which promises immortality for the magnificence, is most sweet; but it is deplorable to see neglected fields, houses sinking in ruin, and subjects living in poverty and filth, all to gratify the vanity of their guardians. While Göttingen has grown in size, its manufactories of cloth, of leather, and of beer, have all gone to decay. As an independent town, it appears to have enjoyed, prior to the sixteenth century, a degree of comparative importance, greater than it at present enjoys.

It is situated at one end of a very long valley. The little river Leine flows through it. The neighbourhood is fruitful; the hills offer some delightful walks, and many picturesque views. The ruins called Hardenberg, the Plesse, the Gleichen, Hanstein, and Berlepsch, are all the remains of old castles, and all objects of the visits and curiosity of the students. They each afford a delightful summer excursion, which serves to give both health and knowledge by exciting the mind to learn the state of society when these castles flourished, and to trace the events which are connected with them. There are many other pleasant walks about Göttingen, and the town is altogether a retired quiet place, well adapted for study. It is its unsiversity, however, the Georgia Augusta, as it is called, for [I-343] which it is famous. At this moment it was threatened with ruin. The students had withdrawn themselves from the town; they had declared no foreign student should go there to study without being infamous. A royal commissioner, supported by troops, was examining the conduct of the students, and, for the first few days after my arrival, all study was suspended.

There is at Göttingen one of those clubs which I have frequently mentioned as a common feature of German society, and, a day or two after my arrival, I received a very polite invitation to frequent it during my stay. It was a pleasant society, composed of professors, clergymen, lawyers, soldier officers, and merchants, all mixing indiscriminately with each other. There were the usual amusements, and the usual reading resources, and I daily profited by the politeness of the members. One of them deserves to be mentioned. He was of the medical profession, but lived much more on a small fortune he possessed than by his practice. He was regularly at the club after dinner, though he seldom joined in any of the games either of billiards, chess, or cards. His dear delight was to smoke his pipe, look over the play, and say a few soft and placid things to every body near him. Another of his delights was to befriend every stranger,—to point out the journals they wanted; to get any books for them which belonged [I-344] to the society; to inform them how they might amuse themselves; to introduce them to persons to make up a party; to suggest taking refreshment. In short, he delighted to do acts of kindness, in a gentle, quiet, unassuming way. He was a neighbour of mine, and every morning, as soon as it was day-light, he was leaning out of his window and smoking. He remained there regularly several hours. These morning hours, he said, were “the solace of his life. He was then more pleased than he could express. The tobacco was so balmy in the fresh air. He would not give up his peaceful contemplative morning pipe for any other pleasure that could be offered him.” Let not the boisterousand the turbulent despise such placid and such homely joys. Those persons are happy who can find pleasure in such trifles, and who can look with philosophic ease on all the cares, and turmoils, and affections of life. Many of the sorrows of more bustling men scarcely deserve commiseration, for they are occasioned by the restlessness of their own passions, and not by some natural causes which they themselves have no power to avert.

From Göttingen I made an excursion with some friends into the territories Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, another of those little independent principalities which were once so much more numerous than at present in Germany. This is a fruitful fine country. A great part of it comprises what is [I-345] called la Campagne d’Or; but the people are probably as rude and as ignorant as in any part of Germany. The princes are said once to have been celebrated for learning. At present they are known only as good huntsmen. The court is not polished, and the country, removed from any of the great roads, seems left to itself. It has always been governed by the will of the prince. The police, particularly the police of the forests, is extremely rigid, but the roads, the villages, the houses, are rather in a shameful state. Where men are governed by an individual, he sets bounds to their improvements, and stamps a character on the whole. The adjoining state of Saxe-Weimar, which is only twice as large as Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, is one of the most polished of Germany, while this latter is one of the most unpolished. It contains 368 square geographical miles, and 45,000 inhabitants. The revenue amounts to L. 27,000 per year. The prince is an independent sovereign, and a member of the Diet of Germany.

I made also an excursion from Göttingen to the Harzberg, the highest mountain of the north of Germany. It appears to form no part of any of the great chains of Alps, but it can only be regarded as the northern point of those which extend through Europe, and it appears isolated, from its highest point being much higher than any of the [I-346] surrounding hills. Streams flow from it in every direction, but the whole of its waters unite with the Elbe or the Weser. The Brocken is the highest point. This is granite. The hills around its sides and base are of a later formation, and they abound in iron, lead, silver, copper, and some gold. A large part of this mountain, containing its richest minerals, is within the territories of Hannover. The remainder belongs to Brunswick, Wernigerode, Stolberg, and Auhalt Bernburg. It is a great gratification to the inhabitants of the flat and sandy country to climb this mountain, and enjoy the extensive view; and there is no one point of the north of Germany which is more visited in summer than the Brocken. It is the holiday excursion for many a professor and student, and the summer jaunt for many a family. There are various roads to the top, each of which may be equally good, according as either can be profited by. There are various objects to be kept in view in visiting the Harz. To see its mines and manufactures is one; to explore its minerals is another; and to enjoy its picturesque scenery is a third. They may all be combined, but properly to investigate them all requires much time and much previous knowledge. My only object was to see the principal mines and manufactories which belong to Hannover. I was five days absent from Göttingen, and [I-347] visited Osterode, Clausthal, Goslar, the Brocken, Andreasberg, and Herzberg.

At Osterode is a large granary to supply the inhabitants of the Harz with corn when it is scarce and dear. In some countries labour is so ill paid, that parish assistance must be given to the labourer, and here a royal granary, perhaps a not less costly expedient than workhouses and overseers, supplies the deficiency of wages. On an average, this granary gives corn to the value of 2500 Thalers, L. 400 a year, to the miners and other labourers on the Harz. Most of them work for the king, and it would be better that his majesty should give them the 2500 Thalers as greater wages, rather than as a bounty, and he might add the expence he now incurs for the large building, and for half a dozen persons employed at the granary. But this sort is a part of that individual wisdom, to me inscrutable, which so benevolently undertakes to provide for the welfare and happiness of the race.

It rained on the following day, and I was glad to join a mercantile traveller from Bremen, who was seeking orders, and collecting debts, in a carriage to Clausthal. This is the principal town of the Harz. There is a department of the Hannoverian ministry for the affairs of the Harz. A Berg-hauptman, chief of the mines, who is a nobleman, visits them occasionally, but transacts the business concerning them with the ministry, and [I-348] he, therefore, generally resides in the town of Hannover. There is a vice Berg-hauptman, also a nobleman, who is the chief managing person resident on the Harz. He has to administer justice to the miners, and to preside over the whole of the different departments. He resides at Clausthal, and his permission must be obtained before the mint, the washing and smelting houses can be visited; it is always readily and politely given. The silver which is dug from the mines of the Harz is made into money at Clausthal, and it comes immediately into circulation by being employed to pay the workmen, and other necessary expences. At the mint the silver, which is still mixed with a small portion of lead, is first refined, it is then cast into bars, which, after passing through four series of rollers, become of the thickness requisite for the coin. They are then cut into round pieces by a hand machine, then weighed, the light pieces, if there be any, are rejected, and the heavy ones filed to a proper weight. The stamping is done by a machine that is worked by four men. Some dexterity was required to give the edge of the coin its ornament. Perhaps four series of rollers was more than were requisite, but, on the whole, the machinery was simple, and very good.

From the mint I visited the washing-house, which is well adapted, but the process of washing the earth is so well known, and has been so often described, [I-349] that I shall say nothing about it, more than to confirm what has been frequently said of the washing house at Clausthal, that it is a very complete one. The earth, as it is obtained from the mine, is a sulphuret of lead, mixed with silver, and commonly contains in one hundred parts sixty of lead, and from six to eight of silver. After the earth has been separated by washing, the ore is carried to the smelting-house, mixed with a quantity of ironstone, and thrown into a furnace with charcoal. The iron combines with the sulphur in a state of fusion, the lead unites with the silver, and being heavier than the others, they sink to the bottom, and flow out of the furnace. The lead is afterwards separated from the silver by being exposed to a strong flame, when it becomes oxidated, and is removed as the oxidation goes on. Again thrown into a furnace, with charcoal, the lead is reduced to its metallic state, and is cast into those pigs in which it is met with in commerce. I saw this process; the furnaces, and the machine driven by water, which worked the bellows, appeared to me also to be good.

After dinner I visited one of the mines. All the mines of the Harz are worked at a great expence, owing to the rock in which the ores are found being of a soft and friable nature, that requires to be supported as the ore is extracted. All the galleries and shafts are accordingly built up [I-350] with wood, which needs frequent repair, and can only be repaired at a very great expence. The galleries were the most spacious I ever saw in mines, and one chamber had been fitted up as a breakfast place for the Duke of Cambridge when he had visited them. We descended by ladders. The ore is drawn up by buckets. The machine which performs this office is driven by water. Two water wheels, each having a different movement, are connected together, and fixed on the same axis; and as the buckets are required to be let down or brought up, a man directs the water on one of the wheels, which sends one bucket down, and brings the other up; when this is performed, the water is directed on the other wheel, which turning the contrary way, brings the bucket which was sent down back, and sends the other down. To perform this, however, it is necessary a man should watch when to apply the water, and the whole machine appeared to me clumsy compared to machines employed for similar purposes in Britain.

Many of the officers connected with the mines supped at the inn, and I had the pleasure of a long conversation with Mr Vice Berg-hauptman von Reding, who usually, with most of the officers of the mines, spent their evenings in a social manner. I found him, as I have found every person filling respectable offices in Hannover, a gentlemanly well-informed man, and when I least expected to [I-351] meet any society whatever, I passed a very pleasant evening. At Clausthal there is a school, where mining as a science, and all that is connected with it, as chemistry and mineralogy, are taught to those young men who are afterwards to fill offices in the mines.

The people of the Harz are different from the rest of the inhabitants of Hannover; their sole employments are mining, or working metals, or making the quantity of charcoal which is necessary for the thousand fires that are for ever burning. The Harz itself supplies wood, and the people look only to their mines for support. When, from any cause, their produce is deficient in quantity, or a sale cannot be found for it, they are reduced to extreme distress. All the people are exclusively miners, which renders them utterly dependant. Some little attention is paid to meadow land, and potatoes are partially cultivated, but in general agriculture is not so much attended to as it ought to be. “Laws,” whose wisdom I cannot discover, though they are said to be wise, “limit the culture of oats to Clausthal.” [15] The monarch who directs the labour of the miners and enjoys its produce, however, takes care of them. It is said that the various mines of the Harz have not for [I-352] many years defrayed the expences incurred in working them. Placed as they generally are under the inspection of a host of Berg-hauptmen, and Forest-masters, and servants of the “quill,” and servants of the “leather,” so the two classes who keep the accounts, and who inspect the out-door works, are distinguished, it is probably true that they do not pay for working them. This cannot, however, be known with certainty, because they are a part of the royal estates. Whether they do or not, the miners have been organized for the service of the crown, and they look to it for their pay, though their labour may produce nothing. Within a few years loud complaints have been made of the heavy expences of this district; the inhabitants have wanted employment so much, that many projects have been suggested to find them some other work than mining. At present the sale of the metals is better. There were more beggars about Clausthal than I had seen in all the rest of Hannover, and their importunity was only equalled by the familiarity of their address. Every body is called cousin. You are reminded of your relationship to those who solicit your charity.

From Clausthal I went by the Oker Thal to Goslar. The valley is full of fine views. At Oker I saw a machine which had recently been erected to roll lead and copper into sheets. The whole machinery had been cast at the Koings-hutte at [I-353] Lauterberg, on the Harz, but the men understood its management so ill, or it was made so imperfect, that they could not set the rollers parallel to each other, and every sheet of copper or lead came through crooked, from being more pressed on one side than on the other.

Goslar, like the other towns on the Harz, has several forges, smelting-houses, and other works connected with the mines. But it is celebrated in history as having been frequently the residence of those emperors who were of Saxon origin, and the seat of more than one solemn assembly of the princes of Germany. It is seated at the foot of the Rammelsberg, and overlooks an extensive plain. Its glittering towers and steeples still give it the air of an imperial town, but all delusion vanishes when you enter it, and find the streets narrow, crooked, and ill paved, and the churches and buildings in ruins. After being the residence of the emperor, Goslar became a powerful free city, and domineered over the Harz. It is now in the possession of Hannover, is a small town of 5670 inhabitants, and has no other claim to be noticed than its former historical importance. It possesses many antiquities, memorials of the imperial residence, some of which were thought worthy of being carried to Paris, but are now restored. The antiquaries differ in opinion relative to the origin and use of some of these, particularly a small metallic altar; and it [I-354] is not for me, who took a very cursory view of it, to decide whether it be an altar of the Saxon god Krodo, or a piece of the household furniture of the Christian emperors. It may be of some consequence to the lovers of black letter and old print to be informed, their taste may be gratified in the little and old town of Goslar. In the Markt-Kirche there is a great collection of old books, and, among the rest, the first editions of most of the works, even the smallest, of Luther.

I ascended the Brochen from Ilsenburg, in company with two Silesian gentlemen, whom I had previously met at Clausthal. Ilsenburg is a cheerful large village in the county of Wernigerode. From it to the Brochen the road leads through the Ilsenthal, one of the most beautiful of all the vallies of the Harz. A small stream tumbles down among rude masses of granite that have been shook from the high surrounding rocks. From one of these, the Ilsenstein, there is a most delightful view of the village, and of the ironworks in the valley beneath, of many adjacent rude masses of rocks, and of a wide plain, through which the Ilse winds its way. On its summit the Count of Stolberg-Wernigerode has erected a cross made of cast-iron to the memory of some of his fellow soldiers who fell in 1813, fighting for the freedom and rights of Germany. This is like the warriors of old, who planted their memorials to valour on the [I-355] highest peaks of the wilderness. The cross is unfortunately not seen till it is reached, and it is more likely to be taken for the sign of a hermitage, or of a place where a murder had been committed, than for a memorial to departed friends.

We reached the Brocken, from where nothing higher but the heavens can be seen, about noon. Fortunately the weather was clear, and the view extensive and grand. There is nothing pretty, no beautiful little scene in the immediate neighbourhood of the Brocken, it is far too high above all the surrounding country, but there is nothing on any side to impede a most extensive view. The sight rather fails to distinguish objects, than is stopped. The horizon is every where lost in a light blue obscurity. The Brocken is said to be 3480 or 3500 Paris feet above the level of the sea. From its top a circle of the earth is seen, the diameter of which is 140 geographical miles. This circle contains the 200th part of Europe, and is inhabited by 5,000,000 people. More than 300 towns and villages, and the territories of eleven different princes, lie within it. It may be doubted if there be such another view in Europe, or indeed in the world. When higher mountains are accessible, some still higher ones in their neighbourhood generally limit the view. Such prospects are, however, more astonishing than beautiful; they make a much more powerful impression when the enumerations [I-356] of the geographical arithmetician are read, than when they are beheld. A white cottage at the foot of a steep crag, with meadows and corn-fields, and a rivulet running past it, is much more beautiful than the eye-straining view from the summit of the earth. We toil, however, to the top from the ambition of being equal or superior to our neighbours, and if shame would allow us, we should confess when we had descended that there was more enjoyment in remaining below. It is the ambition of seeing what has been pronounced beautiful by others, that often excites a degree of toil of which the object itself is utterly unworthy.

There is a single public-house on the top of the Brochen, the inhabitants of which are cut off from all communication from the rest of the world during winter. Here accommodations of all kinds, and tolerably good ones, may be procured. We dined there, and then taking leave of my companions, who were going back to Ilsenburg, I descended to Andreasburg.

My companions had travelled through a great part of Europe, one was an agriculturist, the other a merchant, and both were the advocates of that servitude of the peasantry which has made them so stupid and indolent, that they can be no longer, according to common opinion, safely entrusted with their own interest. There never will [I-357] be an end to the excuses which are made for one man usurping power over another. They had seen the peasantry of Silesia bowed down under the yoke of their task-masters, and had known them in that state indolent and stupid; and they affirmed, if they were released from their yoke, they would still retain these characteristics, and that it was better that the ground should be half tilled by compulsion than utterly neglected, as they affirmed it would be if the peasantry were their own masters. Such opinions, however false, are an evidence of what is yet thought on this subject in Germany. They would not be worth mentioning if they were merely the opinions of two people, but they are espoused by some very clever and celebrated professors. Truth comes not in floods, and many extensive spots in Germany have never yet been reached by its waters.

Andreasburg is the second most important town of that part of the Harz which belongs to Hannover, and its neighbourhood is celebrated for several mines, in which silver, copper, lead, and arsenic, are dug. Six miles above Andreasburg I passed a large reservoir, called the Oder-Teich, which is there formed, that the various works below may always have a supply of water. A large mound built of blocks of granite is thrown across a valley, and stops the little river Oder in its course. It is 54 feet high, the length is 300. It [I-358] is 72 feet thick below, and 54 above. It was eight years building, being finished in 1722. It cost 12,000 Thalers. It is a solid wall of large granite blocks, fastened together with iron clamps, and the interstices filled with sand and moss. The whole work is massive and good. I had a delightful walk through the Oder Thal to Lauterberg, though the beauty of nature was somewhat obscured by the smoke from making charcoal, and from various forges and smelting-houses. Throughout this country man was at work, but nature seemed still.

The village of Lauterberg is full of industry. Not only the common work of the Harz is performed, but the agriculture is of some importance. Some linen is made, which, in general, the women on the Harz have little time or inclination to make. Near Lauterberg is a copper mine, which is said to be worked at a constant loss, and only to be worked on account of the very superior quality of the metal, which is useful in making brass. I visited the smelting-houses, and saw both the smelting and roasting; as there was nothing peculiar in either, they are not worth describing. Near Lauterberg stands Konigs-hütte, the largest of all the works on the Harz belonging to Hannover, for refining, casting, and forging iron. The ore is converted to metal. Four forges are employed to make bar iron, and there is a complete establishment for making wire. The melting-furnace [I-359] is well constructed, and has been constantly employed for nine years, without being ever once suffered to cool. Iron pots, and such stoves as the Germans use to heat their rooms, are constantly cast, though other things are cast when they are in demand, or are applied for. The work was well and skilfully performed. Medallions of celebrated men, such as Goethe, Winkelmann, and Wieland, are cast in iron with a degree of art and accuracy that I almost thought above human skill. Very fine chains, to be worn about the neck as ornaments, are made from iron wire. The cross erected by Count Stolberg, which has been mentioned, and a much larger monument, in the form of a pyramid, which has been erected at Magdesprung by the Duke of Anhalt Bernburg to the memory of his father, are both of iron, and both were cast on the Harz. The shaft of the pyramid is forty feet high. A great progress in casting iron, particularly in casting ornaments, and things of taste, has, therefore, been made in Northern Germany. The progress which has been made in works of more utility has been less; there is no iron bridge in the country, there are no steam-engines made here. There are some few iron railways at Clausthal, but they are not used. There is no good machinery cast; the rolling machine at Oker, and a boring machine at Konigs-hütte itself, are the only machines of importance. With facilities equal to what are to be [I-360] found in Britain, and with their casting works probably longer established, they equal us in making ornaments, but are far behind us in making useful articles. The source of this difference may be easily traced. The whole of the mines, and of the casting-houses and forges on the Harz, belong to some one of the princes under whose dominions the Harz is divided; while in Britain, all such works belong to individuals. On the Harz, the progress of the manufacturer is directed by salaried servants of the crown, whose chief aim is to gratify the whim of their royal master. In Britain, individual interest, sharpened by competition, animates and directs the whole. It begins in making what is useful to the multitude, but the demands of that multitude increase in proportion to the ingenuity displayed in gratifying them, and those improvements which were first made in scissors and knives, lead ultimately to throw an iron bridge over the Thames, which is a monument of skill superior to what the rest of the world can boast. In none of the countries where these manufactories have been long nursed by royal patronage, is there either skill or power to erect such a noble and useful public work. The sovereign of Prussia, to whom a part of this mineral country belongs, and who possesses in Silesia and Westphalia many mines of iron, forges, and furnaces, brought a steam-engine from Britain. When a nation suffers its [I-361] skill and ingenuity to be directed by one individual, it never attains any thing beyond an excellence in trifling, but when each individual of a nation follows his own interest, it begins with cultivating trifling, and what are to many persons mean improvements, but it at length fabricates every thing that is useful and grand.

The bar, or hammered iron, which is made here, is not equal to Swedish iron, which may be owing to the ore, or to the manner of hammering it. Charcoal is used for smelting both, but that of the Harz is neither equally nor sufficiently hammered. There are five forges for making it, and it is supposed the whole five make 13,000 hundred weight per year. The men who cast are paid weekly, without any reference to the quantity of work they perform. Their wages are about six shillings per week, or about one shilling per day. The men who make bar iron are paid at the rate of 4 groschen and 6 pfennige per hundred weight, and on average, the five men who work at each forge may prepare 50 hundred weight per week, which makes their wages about 5s. 9¼d. per week.

A boring and turning machine, the model of which was brought from England, has been recently erected here. It was not at work at the moment. The whole of the establishment, including casting, bar making, boring, and wire making, employs altogether 130 people. Fifty are employed [I-362] about the forges and furnaces, the remainder cut wood, and make charcoal, and bring it to the forges. The whole is placed under the inspection of an ober Factor, who renders an account to the chief of the smelting-houses, who communicates directly with the vice-berg Hauptman. However the system which is here pursued may, on account of unprofitableness, be open to objections, I have abundant reason to praise the politeness of the individuals connected with it. A most intelligent and well-informed young man accompanied me throughout, and gave me every information I asked. The systematic and extensive education which all the persons receive who are to be employed in such places, ensures to them a degree of communicative knowledge which is very valuable to those who visit the places under their charge.

I have not here mentioned the tithe of all the manufactures in metals and mines which belong to Hannover, and which are situated on the Harz. Twenty-three thousand people live on that part of this mountain which belongs to our sovereign, and the greater part of all these are employed either in the mines, in burning charcoal, or in melting and working in metals. At Herzberg, which was the last place I visited before returning to Göttingen, there is a manufactory of arms, such as muskets, swords, &c. This also was royal, but it was sold during the government of Jerome Bonaparte, and [I-363] is now left in the quiet possession of the purchaser. My excursion to the Harz was short, but it gave me great pleasure. A longer and more minute examination of the whole would have amply rewarded me, had circumstances at the moment not compelled me to return to Göttingen. I know scarcely any pursuit of common travellers, except the fine arts, which may not be promoted by a visit to this part of Germany. The hills abound with geological phenomena, and with beautiful minerals. The chemist may see a large part of his science in daily practice, and the man of general knowledge may here find some parts of every thing which he loves and cultivates. The lover of nature may delight in the beautiful scenery, and the poet may be amused by some of those thousand legends, fairy tales, and tales of goblins, which are still recounted and believed by the superstitious inhabitants. In this point they form an exception to the generality of the Germans. Their imaginations are said to be vivid. They have probably been improved by employments that bring them together, and subject them to danger. They are not, like the peasants, the slaves of a feudal lord; they have always enjoyed a species of distinction and freedom as Bergmänner, and they are distinguished from their countrymen by greater liveliness and ingenuity of fancy.

I finally left Göttingen and the territories of [I-364] Hannover at the beginning of September. Münden, a town of 5000 inhabitants, beautifully situated at the confluence of the Fulda and the Werra, which, united, receive the name of the Weser, was the last town belonging to Hannover. I reached it on the evening of the day I had left Göttingen. I had exchanged memorials with my friends, and we had written compliments and good wishes for each other, as is customary among the Germans. I had been compelled by my host to do justice to his home-made sausages and brandy, and injustice to my stomach, and thus, after having gratified friends and acquaintance, their hospitality allowed me to depart. The impression on my mind at the moment was,—and time has not altered it,—that these are a kind people. Some I had become acquainted with by chance, to others I had been introduced, and I found every one kindly attentive, ready to promote my wishes and my happiness.

In the evening I strolled into a public garden there is at Münden, and which is situated on the point where the two rivers meet. The neighbouring hills are precipitous and well wooded. The garden was well laid out, and neatly kept. The town was behind. The two streams were rushing rapidly together, and, when united, they flowed more quietly on before me. On the right the high-road from Hannover wound down a steep and well-wooded hill. The evening was [I-365] still, but man was filling the air with the noise of his labours. Carriages and carts were rattling on the road, and thundering over a bridge at the entrance of the garden. Boats were loading or unloading at the little quay, and close to me were several parties smoking, talking, and playing bowls. The garden formerly belonged to a merchant of Münden, who built a very elegant house here, and laid out the ground in a handsome style. He had partaken of the commercial spirit of Frankfort and Hamburg, and had used his wealth in enjoyment. He had been, however, either too extravagant or too speculative, had failed, and his house and garden had been sold, and converted into a place of public entertainment.

It is rather a common German custom to place some memorial to departed friends in the gardens where the living take their daily exercise. I have heard of many instances of this custom, but I have seen only the one mentioned at Celle and one which was in this garden. The former owner had erected a monument in it to his wife, which was still standing. It deserved no praise for its beauty, but it was sculptured, and recorded the names and virtues of her to whom it was erected. The custom is an amiable one. It is better to place a memorial of this sort amidst our daily walks than among a promiscuous heap of corrupting mortality. We may not choose that the bodies of our friends [I-366] should be buried beneath our tread, but the memorials which are erected to them by affection, ought assuredly to be placed amidst our daily walks, and exposed only to the eye of our friends. It is only vanity that displays them in the public square.

During my residence in Hannover, and in my various excursions through the country, I endeavoured to acquire some information on the government, laws, agriculture, and education of Hannover, and the remainder of the work will be principally employed in laying before the reader the little I obtained.

CHAPTER XI.
hannover—statistical and historical view.↩

Different provinces of Hannover.—Names and size.—Population.—Boundaries.—Historical view.—Thirty years’ war.—Union of territories.—Their extent when the Elector was called to the throne of Great Britain.—Act of settlement gave a ninth elector to Germany.—Acquisition of Bremen and Verden.—Of territory at the Congress of Vienna.

There is no land properly called Hannover, and this is the only monarchy in Europe whose title is borrowed from the chief city of its territories. This title was first used when Ernest Augustus, the father of George I. obtained the dignity of an elector of the empire, and it is now applied both to the newly acquired and to the long-possessed German dominions of his majesty. The history of this part of Germany prior to the above period, mentions the Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, or Lüneburg, or the Prince of Kalenberg, or the Archbishop of Bremen, but the name Hannover was then used only to designate an almost independent city, which often refused obedience to its nominal sovereigns, and never obeyed them but on stipulated conditions.

[I-368]

The kingdom of Hannover is now composed of several provinces, each of which enjoyed, at no very distant period, a separate independent existence. Several of them have been already mentioned and described, and the following is a correct list of their names, size, and population. The most northern part of the kingdom is placed first. The information is taken from Erd Beschreibung des Königreichs Hannover. Von K. D. A. Sonne. Sondershausen, 1817.

[I-369]

The whole number of inhabitants in Hannover was, in 1816—1817, 1,314,124, and, on an average of the whole, 120 persons are found living on each square mile of territory. The inhabitants are, however, very unequally divided. In the fertile bishoprick of Hildesheim, there are 250 persons; in the sandy Lüneburg, 77; and in the small, and still more desolate Meppen, only 51 persons to each square mile. Seventy-three cities and 5311 market towns and villages are enumerated as belonging to Hannover. In the whole kingdom there were, from 1816 to 1817, 43,317 births, 33,254 deaths, and 13,786 marriages. On an average, there were more than three children to each marriage. The excess of births over deaths is accounted for more by emigration than by an increase of population. The number of births and deaths for 1817—1818 will be found in an appendix, which is also valuable as shewing the number of children born out of marriage in each part of Hannover.

Hannover contains, in all, 11,045 square geographical miles, but its circumference can by no means be expressed, because, after all the efforts which have been made to “round states,” it is still intersected by the whole dukedom of Oldenburg. The free city of Bremen, the principality of Lippe-Schauenburg, and the Amt Ritzebüttel, belonging to Hamburg, lie within its circumference, and [I-370] a portion of territory belonging to Brunswick completely separates one of its provinces from all the others: with these exceptions, its northern boundary, including the mouths of the three great rivers, the Ems, the Weser, and the Elbe, is the sea. The eastern boundary is the Elbe, with the exception of a small portion of territory which lies on the eastern side of that river; West Friezland, belonging to the king of the Netherlands, bounds it on the west; that portion of Westphalia which belongs to Prussia, and the principality of Lippe-Detmold, lie on the south-west; Hesse Cassel on the south; Brunswick and Magdeburg, belonging to Prussia, on the south-east side.

Germany differs from the other countries of Europe, inasmuch as all the inhabitants, with the exception of the Sclavonic race, speak the same, or dialects of the same language. The Germans are truly a nation or people, but have never been united under one government, so as to form a power. Most of the powers of Europe are composed of different nations, but have long had a bond of union in a common government. As it is this latter circumstance which makes up that idea which is expressed by the words,—our country,—much more than mere geographical limits, the Germans have necessarily wanted that ardent attachment to Germany which Frenchmen have to France, and Britons to their native island. “Il n’y [I-371] point,” says Mad. De Stael, “un grand amour pour la patrie dans un empire divisé depuis plusieurs siècles, où les Allemands combattoient contre les Allemands, presque toujours excités par une impulsion étrangère.” Feuds and broils, rather than national wars, have ever made up the military history of Germany. Many of the feats which military history holds up to us as worthy of our admiration, ought to be regarded with abhorrence, yet the pride of belonging to a race long superior in honourable feats of arms may be an ennobling feeling. The sons of those men who have been distinguished in the field of blood, will shine in the better pursuits of science, when the growing knowledge of mankind shall make the arts of peace more honourable than those of war: and nothing but the practice of giving superiority to the children of superior men, prevents the former from surpassing the latter. Thus the very means which are taken by those giant men who occasionally win the empire of the world to transmit it to their posterity, cause it to pass away from their enfeebled descendants. Hannover is in a great measure in miniature what Germany is in the full sized portrait.

At the earliest periods of the history of the north of Germany, the present dominions of Hannover were the dwellings of those nations who, under the command of Herrman, or the general, or Arminius, defeated the Romans under Varus, and [I-372] appear to have completely excluded the Roman armies and Roman civilization. The name of Cherushers has not, however, descended to their posterity, and the present generation having justly learned to despise the ferociousness of their ancestors, seem also to have no claim to their glory of loving and courageously struggling for independence. This is the first great event in their history, and from this period till Charlemagne sent his army to conquer and baptize them, in the eighth century, they appear to have made few approaches to civilization. The change from paganism to Christianity was encircled with that glory which belongs to a just, though unsuccessful national resistance. They became Christians, and both the sagacity and the magnanimity of the conqueror appear conspicuous in his allowing his unsuccessful opponent, Wittekind, to take with his new religion the new title of Duke of Saxony, and thus to preserve the government of his dominions.

The new dukedom must not, however, be confounded with what we at present call Saxony. The former appears to have extended from the Elbe to the Ems, and to have inclosed, with the mountains of the Harz, all the land that lay between them and the sea. It became, from the valour of the Saxons, one of the most extensive and mighty powers of Germany, and, in the year 918, one of its dukes was elected Emperor of Germany. It [I-373] remained a powerful dukedom till the twelfth century, when Henry the Lion (the duke) was put to the ban of the empire, and all his extensive territories were divided into parcels, never again to be united, and never more to be conspicuous till one of his descendants was called to the British throne. It was the armies of Charlemagne, who, carrying with them the arts and religion of the south, first introduced improvements amongst the Saxons. A more extensive government was established, and it put a stop to most of those petty wars which had formerly desolated the country. It was, however, one of the last civilized parts of Europe. Towns appear to have been first built in the tenth century, but then their progress was rapid, and, in the thirteenth century, some of them, as Brunswick and Goslar, formed part of the Hanseatic league.

The thirty years’ war, the most conspicuous event which intervened between the time of putting Henry to the ban of the empire, and the accession of one of his descendants to the throne of Great Britain, is rather to be considered as a religious broil, and as a struggle of many petty chiefs for power, than as a national contest. He who could do most mischief,—who could work the greatest cruelty,—appears to have been the greatest man. The changes of party in the chiefs, the numerous mercenaries, the pillaging, destruction, and wanton [I-374] murders, give this contest the character of a war of banditti. Hannover shared in its crimes and punishments. The policy of its chiefs was changeable, and the country was more than once desolated. [16]

It was only in 1680 that the right of primogeniture was fully established in our royal family, [17] and it was George I. who, in consequence of this right, first united a considerable portion of the ancient territories of Henry the Lion under one sovereign. Before that period, government was an attribute of property, and never distinguished from it; the land was divided as an inheritance, and the people often fought to decide to whom they were to belong. Since that period, whenever the people of Hannover have appeared in history, it has been rather as the allies of Britain than as an independent nation. Their country then came to be considered as an appanage of their sovereign’s crown, and the [I-375] dignity of the elector and of his people was lost in the greater dignity of another nation, to none of whose ancient glories they could lay any claim. Few people, therefore, have fewer ennobling historical recollections than the inhabitants of the different provinces of Hannover. This fact, which deserves to be remembered, from the influence it may have had on their national character, accounts, probably, for their wanting that lofty port for which they are sometimes reproached.

Sophia, the mother of George I. of England, appears to have been a woman of talent. She was honoured by the assistance and friendship of Leibnitz, and devoted herself to the aggrandisement of her family. Through her exertions, and the exertions of the celebrated minister, Grote; through the timely assistance which they gave to the Emperor, and through much solicitation, they wrung from him in the year 1692, the dignity of an elector of the empire, for Ernest Augustus, the husband of Sophia. Three of the electors, however, and most of the princes of the empire who were not electors, opposed this grant, and he never possessed more than the mere nominal dignity. William III. of England exerted all his influence to soften the princes of the empire. In the year 1700 [18] Sophia was declared heiress to the British throne, with succession [I-376] to her heirs, and an immediate alteration was observed in the opinions of the German princes. When this was confirmed, in 1705, the most sturdy opponent of the new dignity, Anton Ulrich, Duke of Wolfenbüttle, ceased his opposition, and, in 1708, George I. was for the first time fully invested with the dignities of archtreasurer and elector of the empire. [19] The ennobling of our royal family was therefore effected by British influence, and our Act of Settlement gave a ninth elector to Germany.

When George I. succeeded his father, in the year 1698, his whole dominions probably did not contain more than 2120 square geographical miles, and 354,000 inhabitants. He united the dutchy of Lüneburg to these at the death of his uncle, in 1705, and these, making together 6200 square miles of territory, and containing, at most, 600,000 inhabitants, were all the dominions of our royal family when it was called to the throne of Great Britain.

In 1715, George I. purchased of Denmark the dutchies of Bremen and Verden. They were the last remains of the conquests which Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden had made in Germany. They were conquered by Denmark from Sweden in 1712, and in 1715 sold by the former power to the Elector [I-377] of Hannover, for the sum of 900,000 florins, about L. 90,000 Sterling. This, however, displeased Sweden, and she was only induced formally to resign her claim to them by the terror inspired by an English fleet, and by George giving to her the sum of 1,500,000 florins, L. 150,000 Sterling.

In 1753, Bentheim was taken in pawn, by the Elector of Hannover, for a sum of money, and the dominions of Hannover consisted only of these provinces, till they were occupied by the French. The alterations which then took place, the manner in which the territory was divided and despoiled, till it again returned under the dominion of its former sovereign, are events which, from their recency, must be too well known to make it necessary for me to repeat them.

According to the geographer, Busching, and the historian, Spittler, the territories of Hannover contained, in 1797, and from that time till the occupation of the country by the French, no alteration took place, 8560 square miles, and 800,000 inhabitants. At the same time the alternate sovereignty of Osnabrück belonged to the elector of Hannover; its full sovereignty was only given to him by the Congress of Vienna; and it was not included by these authors in their estimate of the dominions of Hannover. [20] It may therefore be included in [I-378] the territory acquired by the decisions of that Congress. It has before been stated what is the present extent of these territories, viz. 11,044 square miles, containing 1,314,124 inhabitants. They are now, therefore, greater than they were before the occupation of the country by the French, by 2484 square miles; and now contain 464,124 people more than they did then; or our sovereign acquired, by the decisions and treaties made at the Congress of Vienna, (though, for a purpose it is easy to imagine, they were not immediately carried into execution,) an increase of territory amounting to more than one-fourth of what he before possessed in Germany, and an increase of people amounting to more than one-half of the former number of his German subjects. The minister of Great Britain at that celebrated Congress did not forget that his master was also sovereign of Hannover.

According to the progress of population in long peopled countries, a part of the increase of people might be owing to an increase in the number inhabiting the old territories of Hannover. There is, however, reason to think, from the general want [I-379] of improvement in the country from the decay of some towns, as Lüneburg, and many manufactories, that if any of this increase be owing to this cause, it must be a very small proportion.

Prussia gave East Friezland, with the much desired port of Embden, Hildesheim, and some other small districts, to Hannover, and the prayers of the Saxons were not heard by our ministry. When the sovereign of Great Britain added to his foreign dominions, the British nation was degraded to assist in severing the Saxons from the paternal rule of a monarch whom they highly loved. They are not far surpassed by any other nation in Europe for an attachment to literature and the sciences, and they are equal to any one in the lighter graces of the mind, and in the charities of the heart. We owe most of our improvements in religion to the Saxons, yet we allowed a large part of them, for the gratification of ambition, clothed with the delusive names of political expediency, to be torn from under the gentle sway of a monarch to whom they were fondly attached, and we united them to the most military despotism of Europe. No person who has not seen the Saxons, and mixed with the middling classes of that people, can duly appreciate the sufferings which were inflicted on thousands of men to gratify the ambition of one.

Hannover has, therefore, grown to its present size from the same causes which have enabled most [I-380] of the other monarchies of Europe to embrace in their dominions people who formerly lived under different governments, who possessed different laws, and who still speak different languages. Some parts of these dominions have fallen to the chiefs as an inheritance, others have been conquered, and others have been the gifts of Congresses, which have usurped with more subtlety of arrogance than conquerors, a right to make a property of the human race. We censure and reproach justly the barbarians who still traffic with individual men, and we cannot discover the greater iniquity of buying and selling whole nations.

CHAPTER XII.
hannover—government.↩

Passive obedience characteristic of the Germans.—Former chief minister of Hannover.—Present ministry.—The chamber.—Provincial governments.—Prevent the practice of animal magnetism.—Magistracy of towns.—Power of the sovereign over them.—Character of city magistrates.—Amts what.—Police.—Government of the church.—Pastors.—Superintendents.—Consistoriums.—An anecdote.—Appointment of clergymen.—Revenues of the church.—Secularized convents.—Appointment of an abbot.—Character of the government.

Till a very recent period, it seems as if each generation had thought its own institutions the best which the wit of man could plan, and that they ought to be and would be the institutions of their posterity for ever. At present, however, men begin to doubt even their own wisdom on this point, and because every thing has changed, they argue that every thing must continue changing, that the institutions of to-day will want the wisdom which will only be acquired to-morrow, and that none can [I-382] remain unchanged till the full completion of knowledge, and the perfection of reason.

Governments depend on opinion, and thus, notwithstanding the many efforts which have been made to preserve them in one and the same form, they have always varied in their spirit, at least so much as any of the sciences which have been subjected to investigation by a large body of inquirers. From these general facts, it is probable now that the sovereigns of Germany have very generally succeeded in abolishing most or all of the separate privileges of towns, and of the nobles, in beating down all other organized power but their own, in reducing all men to one uniform measure of submission, that they will be obliged to recede by the invisible but overwhelming power of opinion. Though passive obedience has long been one characteristic of the inhabitants of Germany, there is a few persons amongst them who are beginning an inquiry into the principle of obedience, and who are laying in a change of opinion a foundation for a change of government. It is a remark of one of their own authors, that “they fear every authority even when it does wrong, much more than they fear the reproaches of their own consciences for regarding public oppression with indifference.’ This is, in truth, their present character, but while one person is found with spirit to remark it, there is a [I-383] hope it will improve. It is proper to warn the reader of the probability of the improvement.

The chief minister of most of the sovereigns of Germany, and of the members of the house of Brunswick, at a period somewhat before they became kings of Great Britain, was a person called a Chancellor, who was generally not a nobleman, and was always a man cunning in the law, attached to no particular country of Germany, pledged to no system of politics, except as he was a Protestant or a Catholic, and bent on nothing but to increase his own and his employers’ power. Such persons, by their knowledge of that foreign law which had then recently spread itself from the universities over Germany, were the great instruments of quietly taking from the nobles, and other superior classes, their exclusive privileges, of substituting their own beloved studies for the ancient laws of Germany, and of giving to their masters a species of power resembling that possessed by the great object of their admiration, the Emperor Justinian. Some few years before the accession of George the First to the throne of Great Britain, the ministry was formed rather more after the model of the French. The monarch appointed a cabinet-council, and ministers to different departments of the public service. The nobles had now learned how to conduct business, they alone were appointed to all these places, they have filled them ever since, and the [I-384] chancellor sunk to be merely the chief of the administration of justice.

Since the accession of the elector to the throne of Great Britain, Hannover has always been governed by a council, now called the States and Cabinet Ministry. In important matters, it only executes the will of the sovereign; in matters of less moment, it has the power of acting from itself. With an absent sovereign, whom the subjects cannot approach even with a petition, but through the ministry, it is the actual sovereign. Munchausen, who was the chief of the cabinet under George the Second, is the only minister who seems to have at all merited the notice of the writers of history. Much of his fame arises from his having been the actual founder, under his master, of the University of Göttingen. Learned men are exposed to the influence of wealth like other men, and they praise and honour whatever they think promotes the advantages of their sect. The monarch who now wishes for most glory, should probably establish many Universities.

The Duke of Cambridge is at present the president of the Cabinet Ministry; and, with the title of Governor-General, he is the chief of the government. The members of this cabinet ministry have all the titles of excellence. Claus. von der Decken, Count Munster, who resides in London, as the minister of Hannover, [I-385] Frans Dieterich Bremer, Count Hardenberg; Charles Fred. Alex. von Arnswaldt, are the chief ministers; and there are some subordinate ones. The ministry is divided into several departments, each of which has a secretary, who is not, however, always for each one a different person; and these secretaries are to be considered as the efficient men of business. At present finances are the most difficult and most important part of government; and the secretary of that department, Dr Rehberg, is usually spoken of as the most capable man of the government. He receives most of the praise and most of the censure which different people bestow on its acts. He has long been a conspicuous man, both as a statesman and as an author; and so far as regards political matters, he is more spoken of than the governor-general himself.

There is a branch of government to which we have nothing precisely similar in England, called the Kammer, Chamber; and which, to give a proper idea of its complexity, must be noticed. Its duty is to manage and administer the whole of that property belonging to the crown which is called domains. Under this is included regalia, certain rights to forests, to salt, to metals, to levy tolls, and some other privileges, together with rather more than one-sixth of the whole land of the [I-386] ancient dominions, without including that which did belong to religious corporations, and which is now under the control of the monarch.

The Duke of Cambridge presides over the Chamber also; it is further under the control of one of the ministers, and has, as the active men of business, a vice-president and six councillors, with a great many assistants called cameralen, secretaries, writers, and other people. It possesses subordinate officers, composing sorts of colleges for the local government of the royal property in most of the provinces. The greater part of the persons employed in the administration of justice in the country are appointed by it. A large body of officers for the mines and for the forests, regularly organised into account-keeping and superintending, into riding and walking, with all the persons who superintend the buildings on the royal property, or who look after bridges and roads, are appointed by the Chamber. It is also a court for the decision of such causes as involve complaints against the tenants of royal property, relative to that property. It decides on any complaints made against its subordinate servants for the improper use of their power. It is an extensive branch of government separate and distinct from the ministry, though in some measure under its superior control. It employs a great number of persons. The great utility which is generally ascribed, not [I-387] only to it, but to the crown, possessing so much property, is, that it is thereby enabled to provide for a large number of meritorious men.

There are five provincial governments. The first has its seat at the town of Hannover; and its jurisdiction extends over Kalenberg, Göttingen, Grubenhagen, Lüneburg, Hildesheim, Lauenburg, and some other districts. It is composed of a president and eight councillors, including a medical gentleman; and it has several secretaries and messengers.

The second has its seat at Stade; and its power extends over Bremen, Verden, and Land Hadeln. It is composed of a president and two councillors, with secretaries, and other officers.

The third is at Osnabrück, and governs Osnabrück, Meppen, and Lingen. It consists of a president, four councillors, and other subordinates.

The fourth has its seat at Aurich, and governs East Friezland. It is composed of a president and four councillors, with other persons.

The fifth is for Bentheim, and consists of one councillor and a secretary.

These provincial governments were first established when the country was recovered by the present government. It appears to have then formed the resolution to give to Hannover a general assembly of the several provincial states which it formerly possessed, and some of whose functions [I-388] the provincial governments appear to have assumed. They are what may be called scientific governments, in which a unity of design and of purpose pervades the whole. Frederick the Great was the first, I believe, to introduce them into Europe. Revolutionary France followed his example, and her jacobinical steps have been followed by all the legitimate sovereigns, whenever they led to an augmentation or confirmation of their own power.

The powers of these provincial governments extend to every thing that can well be subjected to regulation; and they issue, in consequence, an abundance of orders. I have seen directions from them for the people to kill sparrows, how many pigeons a man may keep, not to steal trees, to preserve deer, forbidding straw to be exported out of the province; they order midwives to be placed, and sworn in faithfully to discharge their duties; they fix the sum to be given them for their service; they tell the farmers they ought to extirpate weeds; they direct agricultural operations; they ascertain the yearly produce of the land, that measures may be taken, by limiting appetite, in time, to prevent famine. In short, there is hardly an action of human beings capable of being prescribed, in which no regulation has been issued by one or other of the provincial governments of Hannover. There are some medical men connected [I-389] with all and each of these provincial governments, who form a medical police for the whole kingdom. A similar medical police is established in most parts of Germany. There are general and sub-inspectors of apothecaries, physicians for the country and for the towns, all of whom are either members of this medical police, or under its control. The following is an instance of the manner in which its authority, and the authority of these provincial governments, are exerted:—

The chief of the medical police of the town of Hannover, and a member of the provincial government, is a Dr Stieglitz, who is rather a celebrated man, and an avowed and determined opponent of the doctrines of animal magnetism. This circumstance might possibly have had an influence on his determination, and on the conduct of the provincial government. In 1818 a Dr Ziermann, after having served in our armies, wanted to establish himself in practice in the town of Hannover. He obtained the necessary permission. It was his intention to follow the Mesmerian method of cure, and he is said to have noticed it to Dr Stieglitz, who had no objections. Some time afterwards, he wished to insert an advertisement in the Advertising Paper, which is, like every thing else, under the administration and control of government, but it was forbidden. He shortly afterwards received a notice from the provincial government, that he [I-390] must state to it explicitly the manner in which he intended to magnetise and cure the sick; and that, before he carried his plan into execution, particularly, in assembling several sick to be magnetised at one time, he must wait for a particular permission. He explained, in a rational, clear manner, what his intentions were; particularly, “that he had the greatest faith in the use of the baquet, a large wooden vessel, somewhat less than a brewer’s vat, filled with water mixed with iron, glass, and other materials which is known from experience to be a powerful instrument for magnetising; that he intended to collect his patients, to the number of 12 or 16, sitting on little stools round this tub, for one or two hours at a time, to remain by them himself, to mark its effects on them, to wake them at the proper period of their somnambulism, and to be ready to help them on any particular occasion.” He was allowed by the government to employ what other methods he thought proper for healing the sick, but he was forbid to use the baquet, or to dispense health to numbers of people collected together.

Dr Ziermann is a regular bred practitioner, a man of good character, and of science; and in proposing to use magnetism as a means of curing many disorders, he followed the opinions of many learned and clever men in Germany, who affirm, with great truth, that it is equally possible for a [I-391] baquet to produce powerful effects on people, as that plates of copper and zinc fixed in a wooden trough filled with an acid liquor, should have the effect of melting the hardest substances, and of destroying life. Though many persons, notwithstanding the premiums offered by learned bodies for the best classification of the phenomena of the magnetism of life, as it is now called, and the appointment of professors to teach it, doubt if there be any phenomena whatever, and amongst them, Dr Stieglitz, and the provincial government of Hannover, this is surely not a sufficient reason to prohibit its being practised. The believers are loud in asserting its wonderful and efficacious effects, which can neither be verified nor disproved, by forbidding respectable men to practise it. If it be a means of cure, why not let its benefits be given to the world? If it be a delusion, why prevent its exposure by prohibiting it? What evil can ensue from collecting a few fanciful women, or nervous men, round a large tub, which each imagines is to impart health and vigour? They who have only imagined themselves sick, may have their attention attracted from themselves to the apparatus of magnetism, and may become sound, from their curiosity being excited. I do not pretend to decide, if the use of the baquet is so beneficial as the physician standing amidst his patients, and imparting to them, by moving an iron [I-392] rod before them, with a perpendicular motion, the vital and living principle; or if it be better that he should give this principle to them, by making circular motions with his flat hand, parallel to their bellies. The initiated indeed say, that the baquet answers the purposes of cure better, as it saves the practitioner from that exhaustion which is occasioned when the other methods are used, by the vital magnetism being abstracted from him, and thus supplied to his patients. Dr Ziermann was allowed to magnetise with his hand, and with iron rods, but he was forbidden to use the tub.

It was allowed to cure people by fanciful motions, but not by collecting them round a tub. The government was afraid the latter would work too powerfully on their imagination, and might disease instead of cure them. The duty of governments to take care of their subjects is extended too far when it wishes to shield them from the consequences of their own follies. Those who believed in the baquet, and in Dr Ziermann, might either have been killed or cured without the interference of government. If men be, as learned doctors say, “born to evil,” the ambition of protecting them from it far surpasses in madness the mad ambition of conquerors, and they who undertake it make themselves responsible for all the imbecility, immorality, and misery which are found in the world.

Hannover has not so scientific a plan for the government [I-393] of its towns as Prussia. The number of the magistrates for every town, and sometimes their titles of office, are various. Generally, however, they are called bürgermeisters, syndicii, secretaries, and senators. In that part of Hannover, for example, which is denominated the old town, which contains about 12,000 inhabitants, there are two bürgermeisters, one syndicus, four secretaries, five senators, and one auditor, making in all thirteen persons, with a competent number of clerks and messengers. For the town of Lüneburg there are four bürgermeisters, and ten senators, one medical man, one protosyndicus, one syndicus, and four secretaries. These persons select the whole of the members and servants; they are called a college of magistrates, and the term magistracy will here be used to signify them. Their office in general lasts for life.

It is of importance to remark, that the bürgermeisters of all the large towns, the syndicii, secretaries, and auditors, are always jurisconsults. Thus there are not less than eight such persons in the magistracy of the town of Hannover, and not less than eleven in that of the town of Lüneburg. This class of men have had as powerful an influence in Germany as in other countries of Europe.

Almost all the towns have landed property, and as all have some funds or other to administer, the magistracy is generally divided into two parts, one [I-394] of which is charged with the administration of the property, the other with the administration of justice. The two bürgermeisters take alternately the presidency of these two departments.

The towns of Germany were originally places of security and defence against the nobles. They were independent little states, and each had a magistracy of its own, appointed in general by the whole mass of the citizens assembled in their respective guilds. At present the appointment of the magistrates has either fallen into the hands of the magistrates themselves, or into those of some few of the citizens, and either directly or indirectly into those of the government. There is no town of any consequence whose superior magistrates must not be approved of and confirmed in their office by the cabinet ministry.

The sovereign of Hannover has, like the other sovereigns of Germany, given new constitutions or charters to many of the towns, and in doing this, he has not departed from the rules they have generally followed, of appropriating to themselves as much power as possible. It is at present the fashion for monarchs to make many professions of liberality; they promise to their subjects “constitutions suitable to the circumstances of the times.” They are probably earnest and sincere in these professions, but what they understand as suitable to the circumstances of the [I-395] times, can only be known from their actions. To judge from some instances of their conduct in Germany, they appear to think that the growing desire for freedom amongst men, requires to be met by increased power and influence in their possession. It cannot certainly be desired that the sovereigns should restore the towns to that state of political independence in which they formerly existed, but while they contribute their share to the support of the general government, their local governments ought to be appointed by the citizens, and dependant on them. The following are examples of the new charters which the sovereign of Hannover has given to some of the towns of his dominions:

For the town of Hildesheim he decreed that the whole body of the magistracy, bürgermeisters, syndicii, town-judge, in all eight persons, with a number of assistants and secretaries, should always be appointed by him or his ministry. The town is divided into nine districts, and the citizens living in each of these districts elect one deputy, who holds his place for life. These nine deputies have each a seat and a vote in that division of the magistracy which has the administration of revenue. They are called on to examine the accounts for each quarter’s expenditure, and this is all the power over their own concerns which has been left to the inhabitants of [I-396] Hildesheim. Deputies for life are like no deputies at all. Such people can seldom have any other motive but to turn the deputation so much to their own profit as possible.

The constitution which has been given to the town of Osnabrück has been made more complicated, but perhaps not less favourable to the power of the crown. The town is divided into four districts, and the magistrates select from each district four citizens, in all sixteen, and these sixteen citizens elect four persons, who are called representatives of the citizens. Their office lasts two years, when the election is repeated after the same manner. When a vacancy occurs in the magistracy, two of these representatives, with one person belonging to the magistracy, selected by it, in all three persons, elect twelve of the citizens, who, with the eldest of the four representatives, nominate three persons as proper to fill the vacant place; one of these three is presented by the magistracy to the government, which may either accept or reject him as it pleases. The four representatives have also a seat, and a vote in the chamber for the administration of the revenue, and they elect six other citizens every year to inspect with them the accounts of the city.

In the town of Embden, in the once free province of Friezland, the members of sixteen different guilds formerly elected from amongst [I-397] themselves forty deputies, who were removable at the will of a majority of the electors. These forty deputies formed a sort of permanent council, without whose advice and consent the magistrates could not levy new assessments nor taxes, nor take one step of importance. These forty, with the magistrates, were also the persons who were appointed to the vacancies in the magistracy. As the limits of a town do not allow any thing to be done in it which affects the right of the people without its being immediately known to them all, and as the inhabitants of Embden had the power to remove their deputies at pleasure, the greater part of the power remained in the hands of the people. With such a constitution Embden had risen to a considerable degree of prosperity.

By the new constitution which the government of Hannover has given it, the whole of the magistracy, in all fourteen persons, was for that time appointed by the government, and at its head was placed a royal commissioner, who is always to be appointed by the government. He possesses a complete power of controlling the magistracy, and is placed solely to look after the interests of the crown. Five of these persons must be jurisconsults, but if there be a person found extremely learned in the administration of the town, that is, in the business of the citizens, he may, with the express permission of the government, fill one of these five [I-398] places; but his functions are to be entirely confined to the administration of the finances. The forty deputies of the people were entirely swept away. In their place twenty-four persons were ordered to be elected for life. Every citizen who has a house, or 3000 Thalers property, who is of age, and belongs to one of the Christian confessions of faith, has a vote in this election. The day and the hour of the election are appointed by the royal commissioner. The town is divided into six districts, each district electing four representatives, and the commissioner deputes some one of the magistracy to preside at the election over each of these districts. The twenty-four persons so elected represent the whole citizens, of whom, however, they are declared to be perfectly independent, and whose affairs they may regulate without consulting them.

It seems a most curious proceeding to call some men the representatives of others, and, at the same time, to give them the power to manage the affairs of their constituents without consulting them. The order in the original is, “Sie sind berechtigt alle Angelegenheiten wozu sie nach, § 4 und § 33, herbei gezogen werden, ohne Rücksprache mit der Bürger-schaft abzuthun.” [21] Had the citizens [I-399] themselves given their representatives the power to manage their affairs without consulting them, it would have been rather silly, but, on the part of the government, it was appointing tutors to the citizens, not allowing them to have representatives. These mockeries of representatives are not allowed to meet without the sanction of the royal commissioner, and their functions are entirely confined to the administration of the revenues of the town.

To fill up the future vacancies in the magistracy, these twenty-four representatives elect three persons, who are presented to the provincial government, which notices the fact to the cabinet ministry, which may either appoint one of the three or not, as it pleases. If it decides for the latter, a new election must take place. Such are some of the particulars of the new constitution which the government of Hannover has given to its newly acquired city of Embden. [22]

The power of the crown, in Hannover, over the magistracy of the towns, is still further augmented by the members of the latter very often filling other [I-400] offices immediately dependent on the will of the crown. They are commissaries for the army, or members of the consistoriums, who are the servants of the crown. I had an opportunity of knowing some of these magistrates, and always found them amiable well-informed gentlemen, only so thoroughly convinced of the excellencies of law, that they thought the world could do nothing without it, and without them. One of them I might hold up as the pattern of a very estimable old man. He was bürgermeister of a small town, with an income, possibly, of 600 Thalers a-year, and, of course, so paid he could live in no great state. He united to his knowledge of law, in which he was said to be eminently skilled, an acquaintance with most of the languages of Europe. He was a very good practical gardener and farmer, and might shew his flowers and fruit trees,—which he did,—with just pride, for they were all nursed into excellence by his own labours; and he might, with equal exultation, shew his collection of pipe-stems, for they were all turned by himself. He was seventy years of age, calm, sedate, but full of engaging anecdote and knowledge. Before meals, he pulled off his white night-cap and silently prayed, and, in the whole of his deportment, except the extent of his knowledge, he reminded me strongly of an aged Scots peasant. The air of the magistrate, however, when he slid his cap over the side of his head, [I-401] till it descended to his knees, was full of humility, while the bonnet of the Scotsman was lifted off and held up with pride.

The first part of this portrait may recall to those who are acquainted with Aus meinem Leben of Goethe, either in the original or the Edinburgh Review, “the worthy Schultheiss, also a magistrate, at Frankfort on the Maine, and the grandfather of Goethe, who passed much of his time in his garden, sorting tulip roots, pruning, planting, or grafting, dressed in a long night-gown, and a full velvet cap.” This is a coincidence in manners in two distinct parts of Germany, though the nightgown is converted into a greatcoat, and the velvet cap changed for a cotton one. The portrait which Goethe has given of his grandfather, of his taciturnity, his equability of temper, and his employments, seems to me an accurate representation of the class of men to which he belonged.

That portion of the land which is the property of the crown is divided into what are called Amts, each of which in general comprises several parishes. Over the Amt, an amtman, who is a jurisconsult, is placed as magistrate. Land not under the government of some Amtman, or of some towns, belongs to the nobles, and they exercise the powers of government over it. The amtmen are appointed by the Chamber, and when they are noblemen, as they sometimes are, they [I-402] take the title of Landdrost. When the latter are not themselves learned in the law, they have a jurisconsult, who is then called Amt’s assessor, placed under them. These persons have the power of enforcing the orders of government in their respective districts. They correspond strictly to no magistrates of our country, but resemble justices of the peace more than any other. The police of their districts is under their control. They have certain servants, or Vogts, who may be considered as the instruments of this police. They communicate frequently with the governments, both of the provinces and the general government, which are consequently well informed of every occurrence.

Each village, again, has what is called a Vorsteher, or Baumeister, who is the organ to expound the will of the superiors to his fellow-parishioners, and to forward the reclamations or complaints of the whole parish to these superiors. He is generally chosen by the inhabitants yearly; he is a farmer, or some other inhabitant of the parish; he has something to do with the administration of the church, and of the poor, and, on the whole, exercises functions somewhat similar to our churchwardens and overseers combined. As, however, the great portion of the land belongs either to the nobles or to the sovereign, this person, except in the marsh lands, is always whom they please.

[I-403]

Prior to the occupation of this country by the French, the police of the towns, which included the regulations of the market, fixing prices, giving passports, apprehending vagrants, and determining a great variety of small causes, and punishing a great many small offences, was exercised by the magistrates of the towns. It is now, however, regulated by three commissioners appointed by the crown, who have subordinate officers, with a regular corps of Gens d’armes. It is one of the new establishments, by which the expences of the government, and its influence, are very much increased.

The Protestant church of Hannover, and, generally, of Germany, is administered by parish priests, ( Pastors, ) superintendents, and consistoriums. Each parish has a pastor. The parishes of some of the towns, and some large ones in the country, have two. Both a clerk, Cantor, and sacristan, Kuster, are appointed in extensive parishes; in smaller ones these offices are united in one person, who is also very often the schoolmaster. The larger churches of the towns have organs and organists. The court has a chapel and chaplains. Some of the towns have clergymen more than the pastors, but, in general, each parish has its pastor, its clerk, and its sacristan, and these are all the minor officers of the church.

The superintendents are of two kinds, special [I-404] and general. The former are also pastors whom the government selects from their having superior talents, or from any other motive it pleases. Their name accurately expresses their office. They superintend the conduct of the clergymen, and the discipline of the church, within a certain district. They communicate with the general superintendents, and are the organs for making known the orders of the superior powers to the pastors. Each one of their districts includes, on an average, ten parishes. There are ten general superintendents for the kingdom of Hannover, who are also very often the eldest pastor of some town, or they are court chaplains, or professors of theology at the university, and they are also generally councillors of the consistoriums.

There are seven consistoriums for the whole kingdom, all the members of which are nominated by the crown. They are composed of a portion of clergymen and of laity. Generally the provincial consistoriums are presided by some person who is in other respects a servant of the crown. That of Hannover is, however, presided by the abbot of Loccum, who is no otherwise dependant on it than as he may be made so by this appointment. The laity are generally jurisconsults. Of the consistorium of Hannover, one of the bürgermeisters, and a magistrate of the new town, are members. The consistoriums have also secretaries, who are jurisconsults. [I-405] The secretary for that of Hannover is a brother of the celebrated Schlegel’s.

The consistoriums regulate all matters relative to the discipline of the church. They are the trustees of all the funds which yet belong to it. They superintend the business of education; they very often appoint schoolmasters; they have the examination of all candidates for clerical offices; and they lend their aid to the well government of the people. They give orders relative to marriage, in so far as to the restrictions under which the priests are to celebrate it, relative to baptism and confirmation, and they do what they can to convince the rising generation that there are many advantages and honours in becoming soldiers. When any person reflects what a German soldier is, there can be no want of words to designate the actions which the sacred name of religion is here employed to produce.

The consistoriums are also ecclesiastical courts, which decide in cases of divorce. Those of Celle and Hannover pronounced the divorce between George I. and his wife some few years before he was called to the throne of Great Britain. They are the judges in all complaints made against the morals of the clergy.

As an instance of their power and practice in such cases, the following anecdote may serve: The wife of a clergyman was delivered of a child [I-406] some few months earlier than was consistent with the date of her marriage. The parishioners complained of their pastor. The affair was examined by the consistorium, and, in spite of his observing that the fault of his wife was not his fault, he was removed to another parish, of which the emoluments were less. As the character of his wife was known, there was some truth, as well as wit, in the observation of a lady, who, when this story was told her, said, It was a shame to punish the poor man for what he had not occasioned.

In all cases not strictly appertaining to the discipline of the church, an appeal may be made from their decision to a chief court of appeal, which is at Celle. The consistoriums are the censors for all works on theological subjects.

The inhabitants of some parishes have the power of electing their own pastor; in some the appointment belongs to nobles; in others to the monarch, as proprietor of land; some are in the gift of the consistoriums, and invariably the magistracy of the towns appoint the pastors of the towns. When there is a vacant place they advertise for candidates. All these appointments must, however, have the approbation of the consistoriums, as they are appointed to examine and ordain all the clergymen. The superintendents and members of the consistoriums are all appointed by the crown, and as these are nearly all the promotions [I-407] to which the inferior clergy can aspire. The whole government of the church, with the disposal of many of its emoluments, and a great influence over the minds of the clergy, all center in the crown.

In the marsh lands on the Elbe, where the glebe is extensive, and the land of great value, the parish priests may possess an income of 2500 Thalers, or about L. 416 per year; but in general their incomes, with a portion of glebe land, house, &c. are between 300 and 1000 Thalers per year. The clergymen of the towns and the superintendents may have from 1200 to 1500 Thalers, or, at most, L. 230 per year. The richest member of the church, the Abbot of Loccum, who was formerly a prince of the empire, is said not to enjoy, including all his little privileges, such as the inhabitants of Loccum being obliged to maintain his horses, and wash his linen, more than 6000 Thalers, or L. 1000 per year.

The clergymen of all the towns are paid out of the funds of the towns; those of the country out of some land formerly ecclesiastical property, and now devoted to this purpose. Many of their emoluments consist in their glebe, which the people are bound to cultivate for them, but which they very often let for a sum of money, because they have found many inconveniences attending this forced labour. Fees are given them at baptism, marriage, and confirmation. Tithes are the property [I-408] of the crown, of particular nobles, or are levied in the name of some town or religious corporation. In the houses of the clergymen which I have entered, both in the towns and in the country, I saw no marks of wealth, nothing of opulence to excite envy, and make the doctrine of content under poverty which they preach, less efficacious from their example. In truth, though the tradesmen and farmers of this country are poor, they seem to have so much wealth as the clergy. The country clergymen are said to possess considerable influence over the inhabitants of their parishes, but this is entirely owing to their superior knowledge, and not to superior wealth.

In other countries it is thought necessary to support the dignity of the church, by much larger emoluments than are possessed by the members of the church of Hannover, and of the north of Germany. But the duties of the pastors, notwithstanding their poverty, are not neglected. Every person speaks with great praise of their conduct. They are described as a very learned body of men, who would not shrink from a competition with the clergy of any church of Europe. There are neither archbishoprics nor bishoprics in the Hannoverian church; there are no great prizes to fight for, and there are very few sectaries; there is no immense wealth to be preserved by intolerance, and the priesthood is liberal, tolerant, and enlightened. The simplicity [I-409] of the form of this church government, when united with its efficacy, and with its poor rewards, as to wealth, compared with the hierarchies of the church of Rome and of England, may teach us the accurate value, for the purposes of religion and good government, of numerous and proud hierarchies.

All that has been hitherto said relates to the Protestant church of Hannover. An eighth part, probably, of the people are Catholics, who live principally in Hildesheim and Osnabrück, in both of which provinces they have a bishop, called a weih (consecrated) Bishop, who must not be confounded with the Prince Bishop, who is, whether ecclesiastic or layman, the temporal governor. It was only at the congress of Vienna these two provinces came fully under the government of Hannover, and, as a concordat is at present negociating at Rome, it is impossible to say what influence the crown will have over the appointment of these bishops. It is a matter of less consequence now than formerly, because the Catholic church no longer possesses much wealth. In both these countries the church property has been secularised, and the priests are allowed to have only such a part as is necessary for the support of a very small establishment.

The secularised convents, or religious corporations of Hannover, must be here mentioned, although [I-410] they are anomalies belonging much more to the crown than to the church.

The religious corporation of Loccum must be excepted from this latter assertion. This was an abbey of the empire, whose independence was secured by the treaty of Westphalia, and whose members must be persons who have studied theology. They fill up vacancies in their own body themselves. The abbot is alternately elected by the chapter and by the crown. The living abbot has almost the power of procuring the election of his successor; and the last incumbent is said to have offended her late Majesty, by refusing to nominate the chaplain of some German chapel in London to be his successor.

This place is so valuable that the nobles have desired to possess it, although, in general, no nobleman has ever filled a situation in the Protestant church. Some individuals, however, of a sort of Patrician families, who possess the inestimable privilege of having the monosyllable von, the title of nobility, prefixed to their names, have been clergymen. The nobles of Hannover are said to have resolved on the death of the late abbot, who, to avoid as much as possible offending her late Majesty, never nominated any successor, to procure this place for some clergyman with a von; and then it would always have been considered as a place belonging to nobility.

[I-411]

So soon, however, as the abbot was dead, the prior and two members repaired to Hannover, and there choosing the present abbot, notified their choice to the government, and asked its ratification. It was refused, as all the members were not present. It was replied, the prior and two members constituted a chapter, and that they had already applied to Prussia, who was bound, by the treaty of Westphalia, to protect the corporation, for assistance. This convinced the ministry; and the abbot chosen by the prior, to the exclusion of a noble, was appointed.

There are 25 secularised religious corporations for both sexes in Hannover, exclusive of Hildesheim, in which the whole were abolished by the French, and are not yet reinstated. A portion of the former revenues of these corporations is given to certain persons under the titles of priors, or conventualists. Sometimes they are clergymen who are considered not well enough paid, but more generally they are nobles, or members of the government. The elected presidents of the nobility of Bremen and Lüneburg are, by virtue of their office, the former, abbot of Neuenwalde, the latter, of St Michael’s in the town of Luneburg. These are the sinecures of Hannover. Many of the places in the female convents are given to the daughters of the nobility; they amount to a small pension, and sometimes to a [I-412] dwelling and nourishment. Nearly the whole of them are in the gift of the crown. That portion of the funds of these religious corporations not employed to support the conventualists, is given for the support of institutions for charity and education. The whole is administered by a particular chamber, called the Kloster Kammer, whose members are appointed by the crown.

Such is a rough outline of the executive part of the government of Hannover. The mass of the people have no where any thing to do with it. The clergy, as a separate corporate body, possessed of power and influence, has ceased to exist; and as individuals, its members have become, in a great measure, dependant on the crown. The influence of the nobility, and of jurisconsults, may be traced in the college form of all the institutions, and in the multiplication of offices to which they alone are eligible. Because the chief of the government has not for many years resided in the country, and has therefore necessarily seen, and heard, and ordered every thing through the nobles, and because they fill all the superior offices of the government, there has not been, for many years, any other power than their’s. The case would be different were the monarch to reside in the country. Then there would be no power that could oppose him; and when the customs of the people did not prescribe otherwise, he might be an absolute monarch. [I-413] Whatever form and name a government may have, it is by its own acts, and by the customs and spirit of the nation, that its character can be determined. Hannover is in every respect a favourable specimen of what German governments were and are. It has long been celebrated for mildness, and attention to what governments call the welfare of their subjects. Spittler says, in speaking of the alterations which had been been made in administering the governments of Germany, “Thanks to the British sense of freedom; thanks to the praise-worthy Georges, that the writer of the history of the principality of Hannover must seek in other German lands for the perfect completion of that un-German revolution, which was first begun under the government of John Frederick and Ernest Augustus.”

John Frederick reigned in the year 1665. From looking at the history of the government of Hannover, I must give it, for the last century, the credit of great mildness. More instances may be found of its having attended to the wishes of individuals, than of its having been guilty of arbitrary oppression; but its college form is bad, and the government officers have been so multiplied, that they now form a large proportion of the numerical strength of the society.

There is a much greater evil in this than the mere employment of a great portion of the community [I-414] in unproductive labour. Each of the individuals composing these governments is highly impressed with a notion of the importance of his functions, and constantly does something that he may convince himself, and other persons, that he has a vast deal to do. Each strives to outdo the other by the subtlety, and acuteness, and number of his regulations. It would be more beneficial to the community if every one of these persons were to be paid for doing nothing, than as they are now paid for multiplying regulations, and for extending them and the power of government to every trifling business of life. On this subject, however, the opinions entertained in Germany seem much at variance with those entertained in Britain. If there be only Zählreiche Anstalten, numerous institutions, multiplied regulations, and a continued watchfulness and interference on the part of the government, the Germans are satisfied that all is correct. Political economy means with them the knowledge of promoting the prosperity of the people by means of governments. If that general opinion which supposes governments to be beneficial be accurate, it can scarcely be possible that we can have too much of them. The conduct of the Germans is perfectly consistent with this opinion, and those nations only are inconsequent who, acknowledging governments to be beneficial, seek, [I-415] at the same time, to limit their power as much as possible.

In its general features, in its numerous subordinate governments, in its minute regulations, in its extensive interference, in all the concerns of life, in its control over education and the press, the government of Hannover resembles the other governments of Germany. It may be taken as an example of the whole; some are a little more modernized, have fewer mixed regulations of ancient and present times, but in their principles, in their never-ending regulations, in their minuteness of interference, they all resemble one another. Their leading characteristic is, that they trust nothing to individual interest, or individual wisdom.

“No where,” says a respectable German political writer, “has the true difference between England and other countries been set in that strong light it merits. In England, the government neither can nor dare interfere in all things. There the people in the subordinate parts govern themselves. The king and the parliament have a superior power for occasions of necessity, but many duties of government that are on the Continent easily performed, are there totally impossible, because there is not in England such a host of officers and of governments as we have on the Continent.” [23] This is, in truth, the great difference [I-416] between our country and the Continent. There every thing is regulated by a class of men set apart for that purpose, and who have no other duties to perform. But our subordinate governments are composed of gentlemen and tradesmen, who do not make governing their business. Not only are our local or provincial governments much cheaper than those on the Continent, but they are more beneficial, because they govern less.

There are some truths of much importance which may be learned from these facts. It is taken for granted, that the affairs of Great Britain have been better managed than those of the Continent, and it may then be affirmed, that the government which has grown up with our people, and in which they participate, is better and more useful than that which has been given to the Continent by the wisdom of legislators; and it may be inferred, that the affairs of every society can never be well managed by a class of men set apart for that purpose. I believe the administrators of most of the governments of Germany to be learned and accomplished men, who have endeavoured with good will to make their country prosperous. I believe also that, in general, they have been supported in extending the power of government by all the wise and thinking men of their country, yet it is now acknowledged that they have impeded the prosperity of the subjects, from governing too much. From this failure [I-417] of wisdom, it is clear that the limits within which the power of government ought to be confined, and beyond which it becomes pernicious, are yet absolutely unknown; and when it is remarked, that the prosperity of every nation is in an inverse proportion to the power and to the interference of its government, we may be almost tempted to believe the common opinion, that governments are necessary and beneficial, is one of those general prejudices which men have inherited from an ignorant and a barbarous age, and which more extensive knowledge and greater civilization will shew to be an error full of evil.

CHAPTER XIII.
hannover—former states.↩

Six different states in Hannover.—Composition of those of Kalenberg; of Grubenhagen; of Lüneburg; of Bremen and Verden; of Hoya and Diepholz; of Hildesheim; of Friezland.—Their powers and privileges; in the fourteenth century; in the eighteenth century.—Alterations.—Causes.—Destruction of the clergy.—The dependence of the nobles.—The servility of magistrates of towns.—Resemblance to Scotland.—The power of the sovereign increased.—Points of difference between the parliament of Great Britain and the states of Germany.

We have been so long accustomed to speak of ourselves as the only free people of Europe, that it was rather with astonishment the following passage in an historian before quoted was read. Spittler nearly begins his work by saying, “When King George III. wishes to lay a new general tax on the whole of his German subjects, who, at most, do not exceed the tenth part of his islanders, he is obliged previously to discuss the affair with six different parliaments; and each of these parliaments is composed of several classes of members, who have equally important rights, and equally secured privileges. [I-419] The consent of all these parliaments, how different soever may be their rights, must on this point be demanded, and at last the people of the Land Hadeln must also be particularly solicited.” Six different parliaments for such a territory and population as belonged to Hannover when the quotation was written, 1786, must have formed so numerous an aristocracy as to be at least half way to a democracy.

Numerous legislative assemblies do not, however, ensure wise laws. Many instances may be found amongst the acts of legislative bodies, which they made for their own interest, and which have been to it immensely pernicious, even according to the narrow view which estimates good and evil by greater or less wealth, power, or influence. All the laws, for example, which have been made by the nobles of Hannover to secure to themselves alone the possession of certain offices, have only damped the general spirit of enterprise in their countrymen; have prevented them from joining in commerce; have promoted the poverty of the whole; and have degraded the nobles themselves, from being high-spirited independent gentlemen, to be the dependent servants of the sovereign.

The states of Hannover continued to meet and to act till the occupation of the country by the French, and I shall here endeavour to describe [I-420] how they were composed, and explain what was the extent of their powers.

The states of Kalenberg and Göttingen were united into one body, and they consisted of three distinct orders; 1 st, The clergy, consisting of nine members; 2 d, The nobility, one hundred and sixtythree members; 3 d, Deputies of the towns, twenty members. The whole of these numbers rarely met together, but they were all regarded as having a right to assemble. The right belonged to the nobles from their possessing certain properties, and to the clergy and towns from custom. All these three bodies were, each of them, at one time, stronger than the sovereign, and they would give him nothing but just what they pleased. For some years, however, prior to the occupation of the country by the French, two permanent committees, Ausschusse, of the states, managed the whole of their business.

The first was composed of three deputies from the clergy; nine from the nobles, and eight from the towns. Three of the noble members of this committee were called land and treasury councillors; the other six were named deputies from the nobles. The smaller committee consisted of seven members, all of whom were also members of the larger. It was composed of one deputy from the clergy, three from the nobility, and three from the towns. And this smaller committee, [I-421] excluding the deputy from the town of Hannover, formed what was called the Treasury College. It nowhere appears distinctly what were the particular duties of these committees and this college, further than that the larger committee exercised all the rights, to be afterwards described, attributed to the states, and that the treasury college had the possession and the management of the monies levied as taxes. These committees were both permanent, and had the power of meeting whenever they thought it right to meet.

The three orders deliberated and voted each separately, and the vote of each order was equal. In fact, the deputies from the towns frequently made conditions for themselves apart from the other orders. They decided what portion of any certain tax they would take on themselves. The consent of all these three orders was necessary, rigidly speaking, to levy new taxes, but the consent of two was often regarded as enough. Latterly all the deputies of the clergy and of the towns were members of the states by virtue of the offices they held. Thus the Abbot of Loccum and the first or second bürgermeister of the towns were members, by virtue of their offices. The deputies from the nobles were, however, elected by the whole body of the nobles divided into districts. All held their places for life.

[I-422]

The states of Grubenhagen were also composed of three orders, but they had no committees, and they voted according to numbers, not according to orders. The clergy were two in number, the nobles nine, and the deputies from the towns four. One of the noble properties, and, consequently, one vote, belonged to the crown, and was always in possession of an officer appointed by it. When the owner of one of the noble properties was a minor, he was not allowed to vote. In 1802 these states were united to those of Kalenberg, and then they deputed a certain number of members to the two committees, which have been mentioned, namely, to the larger committee, one member from the clergy, one from the nobility, and two from the towns. The towns alone sent one deputy to the smaller committee and treasury college.

The deputies from three religious corporations, from three towns, and the owners of one hundred and ninety-five noble properties, composed the states of the province of Lüneburg. The noble properties were divided into old and new, the latter having had, since records were kept, the privileges of nobility given to them. The nobles had most power. They were divided into four districts, and all the owners of noble property in each district, whether they themselves were noble or not, had the right of voting for the election of two members for each district. There was in this province a [I-423] permanent college of what may be called provincial councillors, Landraths Collegium. It consisted of nine members, one of whom was president, and had the title of Lands-schaft Director. When a vacancy took place in this college, the eight remaining persons and the eight deputies from the nobility together, elected a person to fill the vacancy. If there were two vacancies, one of the deputies selected by lot went away, so that the numbers both of the deputies and the members of the college might be equal. When the place of director was vacant, the members of the college elected from amongst themselves three persons, whom they presented to the sovereign, and he appointed which of those three he pleased to the office of director. He became, by virtue of this appointment, possessed of the title and emoluments of Abbot of St Michael’s in Lüneburg. The eight deputies from the nobles and the college of provincial councillors elected also four noble deputies and two treasury councillors. It was a rule that the whole of these persons, the deputies of the nobles, the members of the college, and the treasury councillors, must be noblemen, and possessed of a noble property in the province. The treasury college consisted of two deputies of the nobles and one from the towns. After these preliminary remarks, the reader may comprehend what is meant by saying, that when the states of Lüneburg met to grant taxes, or for other business, [I-424] they consisted of the college of provincial councillors, of four deputies from the nobility, and the three members of the treasury college. The deputies from two religious corporations, and those from the three towns of Lüneburg, Uelzen, and Celle, sat at a separate table. But the votes were given according to numbers, and the votes of all were equal.

When Bremen and Verden were secularized for Sweden in the seventeenth century, the states of these provinces, which formerly consisted of the prebends and chapters of the towns of Bremen and Hamburg, of members from several other religious corporations, of nobility and of deputies from the towns, were reduced to the two latter only. The town of Bremen was separated from the province, and the other clergy ceased to be of importance. Before the peace of Westphalia, the states had regular meetings in both provinces, in which their votes were given according to numbers, and not according to orders. Since that period, they have been united together, and till the occupation of the country by the French, the business of the states was conducted by what was called a permanent college of provincial councillors. It consisted of a nobleman president, who was also director of the convent of Neuen-Walde, of six deputies from the nobility of Bremen, of one from the nobility of Verden, and of five learned deputies, [I-425] or jurisconsults, who were sent by the towns of Stade, Buxtehude, and Verden. The number of properties in the two provinces, which were noble or gave a right to vote, was seventy-five. In former times, the owners of free property not noble, situated in the marsh lands on the Elbe, claimed and exercised the right of sending deputies to these states; but this right was latterly refused to them, though they were allowed to have a sort of representative who might appeal for them to the government against any taxes levied by the states.

The states of the provinces of Hoya and Diepholz had long been formed, like those of Kalenberg, into two committees, the greater was composed of three noble provincial councillors, and five deputies from the nobles, of two deputies from the owners of free property not noble, and of four deputies from the towns. There were, therefore, eight noble persons, and six persons not noble. The smaller committee was composed of the three noble provincial councillors, two deputies from the nobles, one from the free people, and four from the towns. The treasury college was composed of the three noble provincial councillors, and two deputies from the towns, or, as they were called, learned treasury deputies.

Five only of the provincial states or parliaments have here been described; the sixth province was Lauenburg, but a very small part of which now [I-426] belongs to Hannover. Its states resembled in their leading points those of the other provinces.

The new provinces which Hannover has acquired seem, like the old possessions, to have had something also like parliaments. The sovereign of Hildesheim was a Catholic prince-bishop, and the states were composed of deputies from seven clerical corporations, of the nobility, and of deputies from four cities. From the differences and disputes which took place between the states of this province and Prussia, when this latter power, in its grasping ambition, seized Hildesheim, there is reason to believe they had always maintained much consideration; and that the power of the prince-bishop had not exceeded their own. A German proverb says, “Es lasse sich unter dem Krumm-stab gut wohnen.” “It is good living under the crozier;” and the general populousness of this province, a perfectly free corn trade, which the inhabitants always enjoyed till the occupation of the country by the Prussians, and the power of the states, prove that the government of the bishop of Hildesheim had been mild like that of his brother prince-bishops. At Magdeburg I left it to others to decide whether the dominion of the crozier or that of the sword was the greatest evil, but I may now affirm, from this proverb, and from a glance of countries which have long been governed by the sword, that it is by far the greatest evil.

[I-427]

Friezland had a parliament, or states, in which the third order, the possessors of property not noble, had a very great influence. This order had one hundred and eighty deputies, and the towns fifteen. They gave only such taxes as they pleased, and they kept the management of those which they did give in their own hands.

Such were the former states; they appear in general to have had the following power and privileges.

As individuals, the clergy and nobility possessed the power of nominating, and the sovereign of confirming, the persons who were to administer justice in those districts in which the courts belonged, either to a clerical corporation, or a nobleman. The power of these courts, and consequently of the individual clergy and nobles, extended not only to the administration of justice, but to all things connected with police, with the military, or with the government, or with the church. It was their business to make known and carry into execution all the laws and all the orders from the sovereign. They were free from most taxes. The nobles alone had the right to sport, and to them alone were secured many of the most important and wealthy offices in the country.

When assembled as a parliament, or in their legislative capacity, they had no control over the taxes levied for the empire, Reichs-steuer, for the [I-428] circle, Kreis-steuer, and for the dowry of the monarch’s daughters, Prinzessin-steuer. But over all other taxes they held complete control. None could be levied without their approbation. They presented, but it belonged to the sovereign to confirm the presentation, to all places connected either with the collection or the expenditure of the taxes, and they took them into their custody when they were collected. Few alterations could be made in the administration of justice without the approbation of the states; but on this subject there is nothing precise; there being regulations extant issued by the government alone without the consent of the states, that had all the effects of laws, without the name. [24]

Before the existence of standing armies, the states were consulted as to levying and disciplining the troops. Since then, however, they have had nothing to do with any thing relative to war. At a former period, no alteration was made in any thing relative to the church without the consent of the states, and they possessed the presentation to many appointments connected with the administration [I-429] of justice. They appointed, for example, to some of the judges’ places in the Court of Appeals at Celle, and to many others.

They appear to have had stated times of coming together, but might be also assembled at other times by the necessities, or by the will of the sovereign. When the whole states met, they generally separated when they had finished the business for which they had assembled, or they were dismissed at the pleasure of the Crown. It was only at the conclusion or dissolution of the assembly that what it had done became known, which was then published under the name of Landtags-abschied, dismissal, or leave-taking of the states; so named, because it was customary for them to present their report when they took their leave of their sovereign. In later times, it appears that at least one of the committees and the treasury college remained always assembled.

The powers of all the states of the different provinces were in some measure different from one another, and all were different from themselves at different times. The following passage shews their power in the year 1392.

“Out of the nobles living between the Deister and the Leine, and from those dwelling on the Aller, five were elected; three came from Lüneburg and the country about the Jetze, the town-council of Lüneburg sent four councillors, and four were sent from the towns of Hannover and Uelzen. The times and [I-430] place where this committee of the states should assemble were prescribed, and the meeting was to divide itself, a part in Hannover, a part in Lüneburg, in order that complaints out of every district might be more easily brought before the two divided parts. This committee was the inexorable guarantee of all the conditions of the treaty between the prince and his subjects, the judge between him and any complaining party, and when the fulfilment of their sentence was postponed they executed it themselves.”

“If any one of the prelates, nobles, or citizens, believed himself injured by the prince, and the prince’s officer, or even the prince himself, did not do him justice, the injured party, when he did not choose to wait for the half yearly meeting of this committee, applied to the nearest nobleman or city which belonged to the committee, and this person or city was by law obliged, after an examination with the next nearest member of the committee, to make known the complaint before fourteen days to the prince, who must give satisfaction within fourteen days, or he ought to go without farther notice to Hannover, and there remain till the hardship was removed.

“If, in this period, neither the complainant was satisfied, nor the promised residence of the prince in Hannover took place, the town-council of Lüneburg and this committee were authorized to sequester all the revenues of the prince till the complaint [I-431] was removed, or the money repaid which the states had granted the prince. Should the prince however refuse, or prevent this satisfaction from being made, the committee were authorized to call to arms all the persons who had contributed to this money, to guard against injustice, and to protect all whom the prince oppressed. Eight nobles, therefore, and eight deputies of the towns, were endowed with the character of judges between the prince and the people.” [25]

It must be remarked, that these observations apply only to a portion of the present dominions of Hannover, but they also give a picture of the general character and power of the states in the fourteenth century. They shew clearly enough that the practice of governing which has lately been followed in Germany by the mere will of the prince, then had no existence whatever. He was merely endowed with a little more authority than any other individual nobleman, but not with so much as the whole people.

The above quotation shews, that the states had a power equal or superior to the power of the English parliament at the same period. At that same period, and even down to the seventeenth century, all the towns of any importance, such as Hannover, [I-432] Lüneburg, Göttingen, and Brunswick, were in a great measure independent of the sovereign. They owed him obedience as their superior liege-lord, but they were often more powerful than he, and openly set him at defiance. They exercised absolute sovereignty; they did all sorts of acts which would now be called rebellion, and which would now be classed and punished as the most heinous crimes. Such is the changeable character of that morality of our race, which is attempted to be made unchangeable by positive laws. The towns coined their own money; they levied and disbursed their own taxes; they made treaties with one another, and with strange princes; they made laws for themselves; and when they levied forces, and resisted the oppressions of their sovereign, or chastised the nobles for pillaging, the war which they made was not regarded as either unjust or unnecessary.

The following account of these states is given by Dr Karl Venturini, at a later period, 1776:—

“Who shall now struggle against the power of the crown? The prelates, who were indebted to court favour for their prebends, were naturally dependent on the government; and though they were learned in dogmas, and the history of the church, that gave them no well-grounded and perfect information respecting the constitution of the country. The deputies of the towns, instead of being [I-433] the unsuspected organs of the will of their constituents, were machines in the hands of government, which did not want means to punish them severely—very severely, if they wished to steer the state-ship in any other manner than its commander thought good. How could it then be otherwise, than that in these two classes the spirit of indolence and submission would be predominant? From whom else could the land hope for relief, but from the class of the nobles?

But what relief?—nearly all the deputies of the nobles were in the service of the crown. They were all related to one another by blood or by marriage. They only struggled to preserve their own freedom from taxation. And if this were preserved, they were perfectly submissive to the government, from whose favour there were no more benefits to expect.” [26]

How little the ancient rights of the states were latterly regarded, is shewn by the ministry of Hannover incorporating, in 1794, the regiments levied for the defence of the land with the regular army. The states, particularly those of Kalenberg and Lüneburg, opposed this, but they were told, that “the sovereign’s power, relative to [I-434] war and arms, admitted of no limitation; and they were silent.” On another occasion, when the inhabitants of Hannover were discontented because some debts which were due from the English commissariat were not paid, the states displayed an intention of bringing these claims before the English parliament; but they were told, “the sovereign would regard such a step very unfavourably,” and here the matter rested. [27]

The only act of injustice of which I have read or heard of, as committed by the government of Hannover, grew out of the measure of incorporating the militia with the regular army. The Herr von Berlepsch had made himself conspicuous by his opposition on this, and on several other occasions, and had particularly excited the resentment of the ministry, by making a proposition to the states, that they should endeavour to establish a neutrality for Hannover, and should declare that they were not disposed to convert a war made by the chief of the nation into a national war. This was treated as a design to separate the country from the elector. [I-435] The states were blamed by the ministry for listening to such a proposal; and Mr von Berlepsch was not only dismissed from his situation as a judge, Hofrichter, but was also put out of the assembly of the states. He appealed against the conduct of the government to the imperial chamber at Vienna. A judgment, which, in the vigour of imperial power, would have been immediately fulfilled, but which the power of the King of Great Britain enabled the elector of Hannover to set at nought, was pronounced in his favour. He was to be restored to his situation; but the imperial herald who was bringing the rescript was chased with indignity from the gates of Hannover. [28] Such was the alteration in the states between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, that the ministry latterly regarded them as the servants of the crown. They were no longer the judges betwixt it and the people, but an instrument for governing the latter.

In Riesebeck’s Travels through Germany, page 8, an instance of the opposition of the states of Wirtemberg to the will of the sovereign is mentioned. [29] In the same work it is stated, that the [I-436] elector of Saxony had a privy purse, but that the taxes were levied and controlled by the states. Their present power has been mentioned. In the little county of Wernigerode also, states are said always to have been in use, in which the chiefs of the villages had a right to a seat and a vote. There was a period when states or parliaments were universal and powerful in Germany. Nor do they, except in Prussia and Oldenburg, appear any where to have grown into absolute disuse, although their powers were every where much weakened and diminished.

Considered as a system of representation, the states of the different countries of Germany were undoubtedly as perfect as the parliament of Great Britain. All the landed property of the country, and all the commercial wealth, were completely represented by the nobles and the deputies of the towns. Property is adequately represented in both countries. So far as the form of the system went, it might have been a priori expected, that the states of Germany should have maintained their power, as the parliament of Great Britain has maintained and increased its power. But the [I-437] former sank into insignificance, while the latter has become sole legislative and all-governing. In Germany, the power of the sovereigns, and, in Britain, that of the parliament, became pre-eminently great. It may be worth the trouble to throw a hasty glance over some of the causes which reduced the states of Germany to insignificance, and made the difference between them and the parliament of Great Britain now so remarkable.

Owing to various causes, our parliament has been subjected to many changes. Its constitution has been frequently, and, in some instances, entirely changed. This has adapted it to changes in the manners and modes of thinking in the people; and, without rendering it in its form a more accurate representation of all classes, has made it a better instrument to effect the welfare of the whole. But the German states, till a very recent period, continued unaltered. They were adapted to the fourteenth century, and were necessarily inefficient in the eighteenth. Spittler says, [30] “That among all the powers of Germany, there is hardly one whose constitution, during an unbroken succession of 500 years, has been so little disturbed by the powerful hand of a reformer, as that of the German dominions of his Majesty King George the Third of Great Britain, [I-438] nor is there any one which has so many intricacies that nobody has ever attempted to simplify.” The same fact appears true of most of the political institutions of Germany. Since the Reformation the sovereigns may have changed their ministers, or altered the uniforms of their guards, or introduced some new arrangements into their cabinets; and they have gone on constantly augmenting their power; but the people, since that period, as if satisfied with the efforts they then made, have never, till within a few years, paid any attention to their governments, and they have continued unchanged in form. It has been in some measure, therefore, from wanting the interference of the people—from not being occasionally reformed, that the states of Germany have dwindled into insignificance. The spirit which animated them fled, while the forms remained, disguising slavery with the attributes of freedom.

It is since the Reformation that the power of the sovereigns of Germany has most increased. The thirty years’ war which followed that event reduced many flourishing towns to poverty, augmented the power of a few successful princes and, gave them the command of standing and mercenary armies. The people, who had been plundered, and almost reduced to despair by the miseries of so prolonged a contest, surrendered themselves to the guidance of the princes. The destruction [I-439] of many cities had deprived liberty of her principal support.

The Reformation in Germany also completely destroyed the clergy as an independent part of the states. The whole of their revenues in the Protestant countries were taken from them, and they were only allowed a sufficiency for subsistence. The greater part of their wealth and their power fell into the hands of the sovereigns, who thus added to their own power all that which belonged to one of the three members, and perhaps the most powerful one of the states. In countries to which the Reformation did not extend, the clergy necessarily became alarmed by the fate of their brethren; and they united themselves more closely to the crown. In England there was such a reformation in religion as satisfied the people, and the church retained its wealth. It was not reduced to actual dependance on the crown.

In this point there is a resemblance between Scotland and Germany. In both these countries the wealth of the clergy was appropriated to individuals, or to the sovereign, and their separate independent existence as a political body destroyed; and in both, the power of the sovereign was proportionally augmented more than in England.

A law in Germany called the Meyer ordinance, or law, and also custom, very generally regulate and limit the power of the landholder over the peasant. [I-440] While this latter has an hereditary right to a small spot of land, the former has a right only to a certain portion of services or rent, which cannot be augmented. This law, by compelling the land to remain divided into small parcels, has impeded the advancement of agriculture, and has constantly limited the wealth of the nobles to the incomes they possessed three or four centuries ago. They could not lump several farms together, nor could they exact a greater rent for their land than was already paid them. Their own prejudices prevented them engaging in commerce, and they had no other way to acquire wealth, or to preserve superiority to their families, but to hire themselves as soldiers, or as servants, to the sovereigns. The impossibility of the nobles increasing their revenue, and their desire to participate in all those luxuries of modern times,—to enjoy which is a mark of superiority,—was the great means of reducing them to a dependance on the sovereign for places and pensions. The nobility of England have not only remained rich from their property having increased in value as they lived more luxuriously, but the mass of their wealth has been considerably augmented by their intermarrying in families grown opulent by commerce, and by many of these latter having been added to the nobility. These circumstances, which are unknown in Germany, have saved the nobility [I-441] of Britain from becoming, like the nobility of Germany, dependant on the sovereign.

The third order of the German states, the deputies of the towns, were in general the magistrates of the towns, who were originally tradesmen, and interested in the welfare of their fellow citizens, and in the honour of their city. As these magistrates had to administer the laws, when a foreign law was introduced into Germany, it became necessary one or more of them should study this law, or be a jurisconsult. In a little time they all became jurisconsults, and the whole influence of the magistracy fell into the hands of a sect or profession. The magistrates had then no means of acquiring wealth but by their profession as lawyers, and they became dependant on the sovereign, from being willing to unite any emoluments he could give them with those which they derived from their situation as magistrates.

Learned men necessarily regarded common tradesmen as very unqualified to judge of their fitness to fill the office of magistrates. They were countenanced in this opinion by that ignorance which admires what it cannot comprehend, and the magistrates were suffered to elect the magistrates. To ensure their power, they joined with the sovereigns against the citizens, and they effectually succeeded in taking from the latter all control over their own concerns. They necessarily lost by this, [I-442] however, all the consequence and power which is derived from representing the opinions of a large body of men, and of being supported by them. They transferred the people to the sovereign, and they themselves dwindled into mere individual lawyers, whom the sovereign could command or buy when he pleased.

There is here another point of coincidence between Scotland and Germany. In both countries a foreign law was introduced different from the laws and customs of the people, which, in both, rendered the people entirely dependant on the interpreters of that law. By this means the mass of the people in Germany were gradually excluded from all participation in the administration of the law, and of government, and gradually reduced to such a state of comparative ignorance of political matters, as to render it dangerous, at a later period, to allow them to have any influence whatever in them. Thus it has ever been. Some vile state system degrades men, and then this very degradation is made the plea for continuing the system.

Government in Germany appears always to have been considered as a mere attribute of property. All its duties and its rights belonged to clerical corporations, to towns, and to individual nobles, as the owners of certain estates. The practice of dividing their properties, which so long kept the sovereigns of Germany weak and dependant on the [I-443] nobles and towns, was generally abolished in the seventeenth century. When the right of primogeniture was introduced, the sovereigns not only transmitted their own properties undivided, but, by the extinction of other branches of their family, the number of the sovereigns diminished, and the power of each one became augmented by his uniting in his own hands several sovereignties. Thus the sovereigns of Prussia, of Hannover, of Austria, gradually acquired the power of several provinces and principalities, without the people or the states of those provinces becoming so united as to form any counterpoise to the increased power of the sovereigns. The revenues of the sovereigns of Germany were principally derived from landed property, and, as they acquired more territory, they necessarily added to their revenues. This gave them still greater power. The states of Kalenberg or of Brandenburg were fully competent to contend with the Prince of Kalenberg or the Margrave of Brandenburg, but their power was not equal to that of the Elector of Hannover or the King of Prussia. This was evidently a great cause of the loss of power by the states. They retained more power under the sovereigns of Wirtemberg and Saxony, who increased their dominions very little, than they did under the emperors of Austria, under the kings of Prussia, or under the electors of Hannover.

[I-444]

The sovereigns of Germany were enabled to maintain standing armies out of their own revenues, and the privilege of the states to grant taxes, to keep them when collected, and to control their expenditure, became useless. [31] The very contrary of this happened in Britain. The property of the sovereign became the property of the nation, and he became dependant on the parliament, not only for the means of carrying on war, but for the means of supporting his domestic establishment. The sovereigns of Germany possess a large part of the land as their own property, but the sovereign of Great Britain has little other wealth than an income fixed by the parliament.

In Germany, the clergy, as an independent part of the states, were destroyed, the nobles reduced to dependance by their poverty, and the magistrates of the towns were rendered insignificant by their ambition of governing independent of the people. In the same proportion as the sovereigns increased in wealth and power, the states lost great part of their influence as political bodies, and they are only now [I-445] likely to regain it by becoming the representatives of the people and of public opinion.

There are some points of difference between the constitutions of these states of Germany and the parliament of Britain, and in the circumstances of the two countries, that deserve further notice. All the members of the states of Germany were in general members for life. In Britain the power of the crown is increased by parliaments lasting seven years instead of three, and the sovereigns of Germany must have had a proportionately greater influence over deputies who were never subjected to account to their constituents. Holding their situations for life, and at the same time managing the taxes, the interest of the deputies came to be the same as the interest of the crown, and they were easily persuaded to join in all its measures. A struggle between the landed and the commercial interest of Great Britain, in which each one is ready to buy the favour of the sovereign by sacrificing the other, has very often increased his power at the expence of both. The same fact is true of the German states; but, separated as the deputies of the towns were from the nobles, opposed to them as they have ever been since towns were first built, they were seldom or never disposed to act in strict concert. Each party very often made conditions for itself, and most generally the towns took on themselves a stipulated and unequal portion of [I-446] the common burdens. The two bodies had no common interest. They were jealous of each other, and both sought the protection of the sovereign.

The wealth which has been diffused in our country by commerce, and the change in property which that has occasioned, is at present a very marked difference between Britain and the north of Germany, but that can hardly be considered as a primary cause of the difference in our political institutions. The facility of acquiring landed property in Britain, which enables the merchant to give stability to his wealth, and to acquire political power, has had great influence; but the mere extent of our commerce is rather a consequence than a cause of our political regulations. In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, when every town of the north of Germany was a trading town of some importance, when Brunswick, and Hannover, and Goslar, were members of the Hanseatic league, the north of Germany had probably as much commerce as England at the same period. The commerce of Britain has gradually increased since then, while that of Germany has stood still, if it has not actually diminished. The country possesses sea-coast, noble rivers, and all possible advantages of communication, but the same freedom has not been left to its trade as to that of Britain. The diminution of its commerce has been caused by impolitic regulations, but, as it [I-447] once equalled our own, could it have given that freedom of which we boast, Germany would have possessed freedom as well as England. The extent of our commerce, by accumulating capital in the hands of a few persons, may be supposed rather to have impeded than promoted political liberty.

From the very imperfect manner in which the British parliament is composed, and from the total want of general principles in its formation, it has no real claim to the character of an accurate representation of the people, and there can be no doubt that all the good which we ascribe to it has been produced far less by virtue of its own composition, than by the influence of the public press. This has given it the support of public opinion, has embodied it with the nation, and prevented it from becoming what its constitution would otherwise have made it,—the mere organ of the ministry or of the monarch. Without the press its members would have possessed merely the influence which their own property, and the influence which the power of the persons who appoint them could give, and they would then have been a few individuals taking care of their own paltry interests. It is the press alone which has given them the support of the public, has elevated them to the dignity of legislators for the nation, and has invested them with all the power which flows from possessing the confidence of a great and a mighty [I-448] people. If there were no busy, well-informed, meddling public, if there were no free press, our House of Commons would only be a larger sort of council to the crown, a more extensive ministry, exercising its office by usurping the name of the people.

The Germans have always been, till within a few years, destitute of any vehicle for public opinion, and of every means of giving it weight by concentration. Both as Germans, and as Austrians, Prussians, Hannoverians, &c. &c., they have never been united. They have had nothing in common but the name. Their country has constantly been subjected to a change in its governors or proprietors, and there has, therefore, been no common bond for the people. Their attention has been exclusively occupied with the trifles of learning, with the parade of war, or with the more necessary business of procuring subsistence. Many of them have had no time, and the rest have had no inclination, to attend to political affairs. There has been a want of large bodies of men, who regarded themselves as having a common interest, and there was no means of uniting the Germans into such bodies till they acquired a common literature. They have never regarded their states as the palladium of political freedom, they have, in truth, only thought of it within a few years. The states have, therefore, never had the power [I-449] and the noble character of representing a whole nation. And one great cause why institutions so similar in their origin as the states of Germany and the Parliament of Great Britain, have had different results, has been, that the former have wanted that political public, and that free press which have saved the latter from becoming an insignificant council of the crown. It is by our own interference, by our own virtues, that we have gained all our advantages, and if liberty be, next to health, the greatest earthly good, we may appreciate how much the Germans have lost by neglecting to direct their own concerns, and by that implicit confidence which they have placed in their rulers.

CHAPTER XIV.
hannover—the present states.↩

When united.—Speech of the Duke of Cambridge.—Intention of forming a general assembly of the states.—How composed.—Dependent on the government.—Imperfect as a system of representation.—Proceedings secret.—Salaries of members.—States protect a right of the people.—Benefits and disadvantages of the new system.—Probable effects.—Remarks on the wish of the Germans for new constitutions.

It had long been thought desirous to unite the many different provincial states which existed in Hannover into one general assembly for the whole country. The chief circumstance which prevented this union was, that each one of the provinces had different debts and taxes, which it was difficult or impossible to equalize according to any general principles, which should be just to all. When the country was taken possession of by the French, they reduced all the provinces to the same level of misery, and set aside all the provincial states, and thus facilitated, at a future period, the completion of the long desired union. Soon after [I-451] Hannover was restored to the rule of its ancient sovereigns, the different provincial states, with some modifications, were ordered, by a proclamation dated August the 12th, 1813, to assemble in the town of Hannover, there to form one general assembly of the states for the whole kingdom. This assembly was not composed of precisely the same number of deputies as composed the several provincial states, but the sovereign ordered what number of deputies should be sent from each province, and by whom they should be elected.

The assembly was opened in form by the Duke of Cambridge on the 16th of December of the same year. In his speech, among other things, his Royal Highness said, “The Prince Regent was preceding the other sovereigns of Germany in calling an assembly together, in which the voice of the people might lift itself with freedom, but with order, for the purpose of informing him how he might best see his wish of promoting the welfare of the land fulfilled.” The president of the assembly, on the following day, replied to this speech, and praised in it “the noble spirit of the Prince Regent, because he wished to give his Hannoverian subjects that activity of mind which was the pride of the British nation, and which was the source of all those lesser advantages which support and adorn life.” The Duke of Cambridge replied, that “the Prince Regent had given up [I-452] some rights which other princes regarded as a necessary part of the royal dignity, inasmuch as he had called them to be to him, what the parliament is in the sister kingdom of Great Britain; a great council of the nation.” [32]

This is the language of temperate and rational freedom, and it explains tolerably well what was the intention of the sovereign in forming this assembly, and what he expected it to perform. Parliaments in some measure similar to this one, and with similar intentions, have been promised or given to most of the countries of Germany. They are modelled in name after the House of Commons of Great Britain, and are to form great councils for each nation. How far they are likely to succeed, and what are likely to be their effects, may, in some measure, be known by attending to the real formation of this of Hannover. A list, therefore, is given in the Appendix, No. II. of this assembly. It consists of 101 persons, 48 of whom represent the nobility, 10 the clergy, 37 the towns, and 6 the holders of free property, which has not the privileges of nobility attached to it. Four of the six represent the free proprietors of Friezland, one those of Hoya, and one is sent by the inhabitants of the marsh lands on the Elbe.

[I-453]

It must be remembered, that what are classed as representatives of the clergy are not elected by any members of that body, but by the chapters of the several secularized convents which have been mentioned, all the members of which, with the single exception of those of the abbey of Loccum, hold these appointments at the will of the crown, and are very generally some of its civil servants. The representatives of the towns are elected by the magistrates, who are all either appointed by the crown, or dependant on it. In the absence of the sovereign the nobles, who possess the exclusive privilege of filling all the higher offices of the ministry and government, must be considered as the real sovereign and executive power. There remains, therefore, of the whole assembly only the six representatives of free property, who may not be considered as appointed by the executive government. A great majority of this “great council of the nation” is composed of members appointed by the executive government, to sanction, in the name of the people, all its acts. The name it bears in the country corresponds to this character; it is called the jahen Gesellschaft, —the assenting society.

There are only twenty-nine members of this assembly who do not actually hold some office, from which they may be removed at the pleasure of the crown; and, of this twenty-nine, there are only three merchants, and two agricultural gentlemen, [I-454] who do not fill some situations in the service of the crown, such as officers of the army, from which it is not customary arbitrarily to remove them, or who have not filled some office, the title of which they still retain, and of which they may be deprived. Those who know how dear every title is to the vanity of a German, may appreciate the influence which these give the crown over the members of this assembly not actually in its service.

As a system of representation, even of the three classes, which it is said to represent, it is very defective. The whole body of the real clergy have no representative, and the deputies of the towns are elected by the magistrates, not by the citizens; as a system of representation for all the people it is still more defective. The whole class of the cultivators of land or peasants are neglected. They have no representative. In fact, the nobles are the only class adequately represented.

It cannot be expected that an assembly so composed should bestow on the country any of those advantages which we have derived from a popular government. It cannot give, according to the intentions of the sovereign, that activity of mind which our people derive from partly governing themselves, or rather from not being so much governed as other nations; it can never produce those benefits which we ascribe to our parliament; and bearing the name of a system of representation, it [I-455] may chance to bring all such systems into discredit. The nations of Europe feel the weight of their respective governments more in taxation than in any other manner. All the members of this assembly are paid; it otherwise costs a considerable sum; it must add to the burdens of the people; and when they find, as they probably will, that no benefits are derived from it, they may be as unanimous in wishing its abolition as they were in asking it, and may gladly seek refuge in the less expensive government of a sovereign and his ministry.

One of the first acts nearly of this body was to decide whether their proceedings should be open and public, or not. I have been told by a member that the question was never decidedly put to the vote, but I have read that it was, and it was decided by a majority of two, that the proceedings should not be public. What they deliberate about, and the result of their deliberations, is never accurately known, further than that those things which they agree on are announced to the public in the form of laws.

A complete set of regulations for the conduct of the assembly was drawn up. A translation will be placed in the Appendix.

The deputies are to receive:—Those who live out of the town of Hannover, four thalers, 13s. 4d. per day each; and those who live in the town two thalers, 6s. 8d. per day each. To the officers [I-456] of the assembly, such as the secretary and syndicii, some still greater pay is to be given, but the amount is not yet settled.

One instance has been mentioned of a deputy who was several years ago turned out by the government. Members may resign if they please; instances are known of their doing so; but with this exception they are elected for life.

The present powers of the states are not defined by any law, and they are not so established by custom that they can be described. They are to possess all the power which the different provincial states could rightly claim. This includes the right to grant or to refuse taxes, and to take them into their custody. This would be a mighty power, had the monarch no other revenues. His domains, however, render him independent of them. Every thing the government has yet asked for in the form of taxes has been given it. The management of them is entirely entrusted to what may be translated, the superior tax committee, ober Steuer Commission. This committee consists of five persons appointed by the crown, and of seven deputies elected by the states—one out of each province. The president is the minister of finance, and this committee regulates whatever relates to the levying, managing, and expending the taxes.

One particular point is known, and there may [I-457] be more, in which the great prerogative of a representative assembly, that of granting taxes, is not regarded. The executive levies taxes without the consent of the states, by quartering soldiers to any extent it pleases on the people, without they receiving any remuneration. A particular instance of this is known to have occurred at Meppen, and of which the inhabitants complained.

It is equally bad that the governments of the provinces possess the power, at least they practise it, of ordering money to be collected for the support of the troops. By an order issued by the provincial government of Bentheim on the 10th day of March 1818, the inhabitants were made to pay two certain taxes for the support of the landwehr, land dragoons, and the 2d regiment of hussars quartered in Osnabrück. The order seems to have been given entirely in the name of the government. Höheren Orts are the indefinite words; and the people are warned, by the probability of punishment, to be punctual in their payments. When this sort of power remains in the hands of the sovereign, and is used by his servants, it is but a mockery to say, no taxes shall be levied without the consent of the states.

It has been said that no laws shall be made without their consent; and then it is affirmed that only is a law which is made with their consent. But many regulations have been made in [I-458] which the states have had no concern whatever, although they are truly laws of a most important character. One has been mentioned as entirely altering the constitution of the city of Embden. Yet, contrary to the custom, when any law has been made in conjunction with the states, it was decreed in the name of the sovereign alone.

There appears to be no sort of regulations which the states may not assist in making. They have been called to deliberate on the improvement of the system of justice; and, imitating the practices of a British House of Commons, they gave solemn thanks to their mercenary army. On another occasion they interfered to protect an important part of the freedom of the subject. This deserves to be recorded not only to their honour, but as an example to another nation, which boasts much of its justice and freedom. In an act relative to the Landwehr, [33] the ministers had inserted words which implied, it was only right for the subjects to quit the country when they had the permission of the government. These the states objected to, as “limiting the natural freedom of the inhabitants, and that right which is born with man, to seek his residence, according to his convenience, [I-459] in a foreign country.” [34] The ministers allowed the alteration, and the inhabitants of Hannover, more privileged in this point than some of the inhabitants of Great Britain, are allowed to carry their industry to the best market.

Representative assemblies are at present asked for in many parts of Germany. Subjects demand new constitutions of their sovereigns; and it may therefore be worth while to inquire what benefits have been conferred on Hannover by this new form of government, and what the rest of the Germans may expect from their demands being complied with.

Many persons appear to imagine, that hitherto Germany has been arbitrarily governed;—that the sovereigns have been every thing, and the people nothing; they therefore conclude, that any assembly bearing the name of a representative assembly, and approaching the character of one, must be a benefit to the country, and a step towards freedom. But the unlimited government of the sovereigns is of very modern origin; and it may be doubted if the representative assemblies which they may establish, will not be so framed as to support their own power, rather than to add to the freedom of the people. A very favourable opinion is also entertained of the principle of representation; [I-460] and it seems to be imagined, that any assembly bearing the name of representatives of the people, is a sure guarantee to liberty. This is judging hastily; and it must not be inferred that the inhabitants of Hannover have had freedom given them by the sovereign, because he has established what he was pleased to call an assembly similar to the parliament of Great Britain.

The inhabitants of the different provinces of Hannover have long had different privileges; and a system of representation which might be a benefit to one part, might be a curse to another. A similar fact is true of most of the countries of Germany. A system of representation which would be an advantage to the ancient provinces of Prussia, might be a step towards slavery, if applied to the provinces on the Rhine. A very ill formed government might be a blessing to Hungary, which would be a curse to the dukedom of Austria. In the same way, the general assembly of the states in Hannover, which may be advantageous to some of the ancient provinces, may be most pernicious to Friezland. It is a very pretty sounding doctrine of politicians, that all the subjects of the same government should have equal rights and privileges. It would be still better extended to all men; they should all have equal rights and privileges. In the mouths of statesmen, however, this maxim does not mean an equality of freedom, nor that all should be raised [I-461] to the same enjoyments, but that all should bear the same burdens, and be visited with the same oppressions. With them it is a sort of Jack Cade equality;—all men are to be equal, but they are to be the lords and masters. In pursuing this equalizing system, the free inhabitants of Hadeln and Friezland are now to be inflicted with as great a portion of the evils of government, with as great a weight of taxation, as the provinces of Kalenberg or Hoya. Those who have struggled for ages against their enemies, are now to be loaded with slavery by their professed friends. Such seems to be one characteristic of that general system now adopted for Hannover; and systems similar to it are probably about to be adopted throughout Germany.

Comparing the present situation of Friezland and Hadeln with their situation before the French occupation, they have both evidently lost much by being made parts of the general system. Where Friezland had its own parliament, in which the proprietors of land were adequately represented, it now sends nine members to the general assembly, four only of whom can be considered as independent. It has been already proved, that they are not able to shield their country against the power of the government. When the parliament assembled in Friezland, it was under the influence of the opinion of all the people; but how shall the opinions of the Friezlanders cross the sands, so as [I-462] to make any impression on the assembly at Hannover? or what weight will be allowed to so small a part of the whole? It is generally a blessing to limit the number of separate governments. Scotland, Ireland, and England, have only become one nation, since they had but one government. As governments are reduced in number, so national distinctions and national animosities are diminished; but it must always be desirable, that the less free should be united to the more free, and not that the freeman should be bound with the slave. It is from changing its own free government for the government of Hannover, that Friezland has suffered.

The little Land Hadeln also has changed the ten deputies which it formerly had, who met together in that Land itself, and who were controlled by the opinion of their neighbours and friends, for a single representative in the general assembly; and he is a doctor of laws, chief of the police, and bürgermeister of Otterndorf.

Could the assembly be considered as independent of the sovereign, it would undoubtedly be a more efficacious instrument for supporting the rights of the people than so many scattered provincial states. Being dependant, however, it will probably be more easily led by him now when it is united, than the separate assemblies could be. In fact, the difficulty of procuring similar resolutions to be adopted [I-463] by all the provincial states, was one reason assigned for uniting them together. One assembly is a focus for public opinion, but public opinion has yet to be formed, and it can only be worked into a consistency by a free press, which the country does not enjoy. This assembly at present can have no support from public opinion; there is no such thing in all the half-inhabited provinces of the kingdom, and there is no means of forming it. The press from the other parts of Germany may have an influence on the assembly, but its nominal constituents, and the nation at large, can neither support it nor bring it into disrepute. It is at present independent of them, and can only work good or evil of itself.

The prosperity of our country is frequently attributed to the mere circumstance of our having a House of Commons, which may lead persons to imagine, that, now Hannover has a similar assembly, she can have nothing more to desire. Her people having received that from the bounties of the crown, will be seduced into indolence, and tempted to believe that they have done whatever is necessary to secure their freedom. They will be likely to slacken their efforts, and resign themselves more patiently to the direction of the government. It is, however, apparent, that most of our prosperity is more owing to our free press than to our parliament, and, composed as that of Hannover [I-464] is, it never can be a cause of prosperity to that country. Contemporary, however, with its establishment, a sort of free press, and a thirst for political discussion, have in some measure grown into use in Germany. Political knowledge is rapidly spreading. The Germans must improve, and it is probable that the improvements derived from an increase of knowledge will be ascribed to an expensive parliament. Men will be still taught to look to parliaments for those remedies for their sufferings which they must in fact supply themselves. This assembly must be regarded as adding to the expences of the country, and as complicating still more the machinery of government. It will reduce the peasant to a still greater degree of poverty, and rather prevent than promote the spread of political knowledge. It never can be what the sovereign said it was intended to be. It never can be a larger council of the nation. It may echo the voice of the ministers, but it can never lift up the voice of the people.

Men boldly arraign and censure the laws of an individual sovereign or his minister, or the actions of any single man, when they patiently submit to those laws which emanate from a body of men, and they deem those actions right which are performed by a multitude. The decrees of a congress, or of a parliament, though as unjust as the decrees of a single man, are much more respected. When the [I-465] debates of a legislative assembly till it forms a decision, be in secret, the delusions of interest, and the inflammation of passion, are likely to render its decrees unjust. The wisdom of a few men is but little better competent to govern nations than the wisdom of one. Both are inadequate. But, from the respect which men now pay to the decisions of deliberative assemblies, it is obvious, that, by establishing them, the principles of obedience are laid on a broader foundation. When such assemblies are under the influence of the crown, they add to its direct power all that indirect power which is derived from the subjects entertaining a conviction that the decisions of a number of legislators will be more correct than the decisions of one. They are very often, however, dictated by the wisdom or prejudice of one person only, and deliberative assemblies, under the control of the crown, are a covert means of stamping laws with the signatures of many wise men, which are often made by one very foolish man.

It is not a new spectacle for ministers to shelter an unpopular and an unjust action by the authority of parliament. Had it rested on their individual responsibility, were their names alone to be blackened with all its infamy, they would have shrunk from its performance. But when they can seduce or persuade a large assembly to sanction the deed, the infamy becomes so divided, and so small a portion [I-466] falls to each individual’s share, that a large assembly, under the influence of the crown, may be considered as a convenient instrument for executing all its unjust or oppressive measures. We have seen how the assembly for Hannover is formed. If the parliaments which the monarchs may give to other countries be formed in a similar manner, they will only be a more secure means of carrying into execution unjust decrees. They will be what our House of Commons has sometimes been described to be,—a control upon the people, not a control for them.

There are many testimonies at present to the evil of numerous laws. There is a diseased desire to legislate common to this age, which crowds the statute-books of every European nation with numerous and contradictory enactments. It has been mentioned how mischievous the provincial governments of Germany are, merely from being composed of a number of persons who have nothing else to do but to govern. And long since the rest of these observations were written, Sir J. Mackintosh is said to have observed in the House of Commons, “that the revolution of 1688, by giving more power to parliaments, had given a facility to legislation which had been productive of many unjust laws.” [35] Creating a legislative assembly supposes [I-467] a necessity to make laws, and it encourages that desire to legislate which has already been so productive of evil. The doctrines of political economy have taught us that there exist laws made by nature which are eminently productive of prosperity; that these laws cannot be violated without impeding that prosperity, and that the whole of European legislation, in so far as the production of wealth is concerned, is, and has long been, a violation of all those natural laws by which wealth is produced. It is notoriously known, that individual industry is the source of national wealth; that the natural love of luxury and distinction constantly excites industry, and that this is never so well regulated, nor so productive, as when it is left entirely free. Nature has, therefore, already made laws for the conduct of individuals and of nations, which cannot be violated without prejudice, and which teach us that there is little or no necessity for human legislation. For the people to demand legislative assemblies, supposes them ignorant of this most important fact, and to create legislative assemblies can only tend to oppress future generations, even more than we are oppressed with the unwise regulations of a more ignorant age. There is room to doubt if legislative assemblies be the best means of promoting improvement, and, before such a quantity of political knowledge can be spread amongst the mass of the German people, as will [I-468] make such assemblies beneficial by subjecting them to public control, it is possible that they may be abolished as pernicious in countries more advanced in political knowledge. Many evils are in Germany occasioned by governing too much, and this is likely to be increased rather than diminished by creating parliaments. Too much good is already expected from governments, and more will be expected from them as they are supposed to be better constituted. Men will augment that blind obedience they now pay to sovereigns when they transfer it to legislative assemblies, and the great failure of the German, perhaps of the European mind, is its habitual and undiscerning reverence for constituted authority. A host of governments and unproductive labourers is already one sore on the body politic of Germany, and this disease will be much increased by the creation of legislative assemblies.

The present power and prosperity of Great Britain excite envy amongst other European nations, and they imitate those institutions which are supposed to be the causes of this power and prosperity. It would be well for the world if they were accurately traced and thoroughly known. They are all to be referred to “the greater activity of our people.” And in Germany there seems to be but one opinion as to the causes of this activity. It is attributed to our free press and our representative [I-469] system. Hence the Germans are loud in their demands for a similar system. Some men ridicule these demands from a hatred of freedom, others are jealous of our own superiority, and imagine no other people are capable of appreciating political liberty but ourselves, and they affirm that other nations are not yet qualified, by their knowledge, to enjoy it. There are others, again, who, quite in love with our own institutions, assume them as a standard of perfection, and measure the progress of other nations by the approximations they make to them. Without joining with either of these parties, the wish which the Germans have for a representative system like that of Great Britain, and their loud demands for it, appear to me both blind and rash; though they cannot be regarded as incapable of appreciating and of enjoying the highest degree of political liberty. If there be one people on earth who are qualified to receive and to enjoy freedom, that people is the Germans. The kindness of their hearts; the amiableness of their manners; the softness of their dispositions; and the quantity of agreeable knowledge which is spread amongst them, and which constantly employs, without subduing, the passions, will secure to every man, without the interference of an iron government, the free enjoyment of his property and his time, and may guarantee all the surrounding nations against any irruption from Germany, [I-470] except the irruptions of knowledge. They are blind and rash, however, in their demands, because they value legislative assemblies too highly, and because it is certain that for them partially to imitate one of the institutions of Britain, when the whole frame of their society is different, can never promote that freedom to which they have so just a claim.

“Each nation,” says one of their own authors, “must imitate the spirit, and not the words and forms, of what is excellent in another country. Each one must form itself after its own manner. Some general ideas are applicable to all, but the manner in which they must be carried into execution must, and always will, be different in each nation that possesses a history.” The Germans, therefore, should build on German foundations, rather than seek to import the institutions of another country. They should recognize, as the basis of their proceedings, the most perfect state of society, and they should endeavour expediently to bring their own country to that state. They are now only imitating imperfection, confounding change with improvement, and adopting the errors of another people, instead of following their own wisdom.

The exclusive privileges of their towns were undoubtedly great evils, and ought to have been gradually and utterly abolished, but organized as they [I-471] were, the residence, as they have long been, and are, of all that is polished and informed, they afford a ready means of opposing a consolidated mass of opinion to any acts of oppression. Their magistracy required to be made more popular; their exclusive privileges to be gradually rubbed away; their walls to be thrown down, and the entry to them made free. The Germans, however, seem not to admit of gradual improvements. They are boys in politics; they wish to knock down systems like card-houses; they would not reform the privileges of their towns; they abolished them.

I can but regard the writers of Germany as having accelerated the ruin of the political privileges of their ancient and venerable cities; as having gone before the steps of the sovereigns with their wishes and advice. The former usurpations of the towns, their lofty and unjustifiable pretensions, had excited a spirit of opposition and of hatred. They were regarded also as the remains of feudality. In truth they were; but they were the temples of that system, in which all that was innocent, and sacred, and free, had been harboured, and from which issued all the light of liberty and science. Much of the hatred against them was built on the pride of learning. Learned men listen with no patience to the pretensions of shoemakers and masons. They could not forget that low mechanics framed [I-472] the laws of the guilds, which were therefore contemptible from their origin, and which they have unsparingly reprobated. I am sensible of the impolicy of the close corporations of the towns of Germany; but, by demanding the sovereign to reform them, the whole of their powers and privileges have fallen into the hands of government. It has acquired a greater power to resist the wishes of the people, and many powerful bodies of men, who were accustomed to act together for political purposes, have been entirely dissolved.

All the separate and particular privileges and laws of the thousand little Gaus, districts, and circles which there are in Germany, are all impolitic; but each one had a name peculiar to itself, and its inhabitants were in some measure accustomed to live and act together. It was on such local distinctions, and on such German and ancient foundations, that the Germans should have sought to build up their political edifice. The great want is, a means of giving political knowledge and power to the great mass of the people. The ancient distinctions found them collected into bodies, and fitted them to receive and transmit political power. German authors and German governments seem to have formed to themselves a more scientific and mathematical idea of these matters. They want an equality throughout to be established. [I-473] They strive anxiously after a uniformity of organization to which we are utter strangers; and the consequence has been, that they have all been reduced to the same measure of submission to the power of the sovereigns. The striving after uniformity, and the wish to introduce a British constitution into Germany, have led the Germans not merely to forget all their ancient privileges and rights, but induced them to aid the sovereigns in trampling them under foot, and in seizing the whole powers of the several classes.

The long established privileges of a feudal nobility were most debasing and pernicious to the people; but the gradual increase in wealth and knowledge of the other classes, rendered the nobles no longer dangerous. The veneration which other people had for them it was right to destroy. It may however be doubted, if the society will not be more injured by all the powers and privileges of the nobles now centering in the hands of the sovereigns, than when they were divided amongst several people. One master is better than many; but from the natural progress of things, there was a greater chance of destroying the many than there is of resisting the one successfully, now when he concentrates in himself all the powers of the many. It would be better if the Germans could unite the nobles in favour of political improvements, rather than drive them, as they are [I-474] now doing, by an eagerness to destroy them, into the palace of the monarch.

In England, a constitution seems to be regarded as the grand principles assented to by the monarch, as a guide for his mode of government, and by the people, as prescribing the extent of their obedience. In Germany, however, constitutions are asked from the sovereigns as favours, and accepted as gifts. This is fundamentally wrong. For the giver may annex to his gift what conditions he pleases. If the states be representatives of the people, or if they assemble by virtue of rights inherent in themselves, the extent of their powers must be previously established, or they can only be limited by the people whom they represent. All power rests in the people; it is nothing separate and distinct from muscular force; and they ought to determine what portions of it they will give their representatives, how many they will have when they shall meet, and what business they shall perform. When they ask constitutions from their sovereigns, however, they give them that right to prescribe conditions, which belongs to the people themselves. By the very petition they degrade themselves to servants and slaves; and where they ought to command on what conditions their delegated authority should be exercised, they entreat permission to approach a master. The petition implies, that the sovereigns possess a greater [I-475] degree of political power than they ought to possess, or than they ever have before possessed. The only sovereign of Germany who ever possessed such a power was the king of Prussia; but his arbitrary assumptions of it in a time of disorder and distress were illegal, till they were sanctioned by his people imploring him as a favour to give back the rights which he had usurped.

A demand for new constitutions throws the power of new modelling all the ancient usages of a country into the hands of a sovereign. We have seen how this has been used in Hannover and Prussia, and we may thence infer that it will most generally be employed to strengthen and secure the power of the sovereign. There has yet been but one Washington in the world, and he was born and bred not a sovereign but a subject. From the mighty increase which has taken place in the power of the sovereign throughout Europe, it is manifest that its further increase is what men have most to dread, and to guard against, unless it should be absurdly supposed that the whole race of men ought to suffer their faculties and powers to be limited by some of the weakest of their fellow mortals.

Men are perhaps now, however, awake to the evils of unrestrained power. The recent conduct of most of the sovereigns and their ministers has taught them what to expect from an implicit confidence [I-476] in the promises of kings. These gentlemen everywhere pursue the same sort of conduct, they promise largely, and they give to their subjects such a mockery of free institutions as the states of Hannover, in whose name they attempt to secure their own power. The circumstance of questioning their infallibility has taught them to take measures to secure ready obedience. They have increased their revenues, they have augmented their armies, they give constitutions suitable to the circumstances of the times, they establish numerous subordinate governments, they control education, they bribe the arts, they seduce the sciences; whatever they can do, that they do to secure and to augment their sovereign power. It may be hoped, however, that their attempts will be vain. They must stand or fall by opinion, and this most assuredly grows against them. Men begin to measure the value of governments, to mock at their preposterous claims to a power to make the race happy, and they must sink to the level ordained by general utility. It is from doubting the utility of sovereign power that we are most taught to deprecate and condemn a demand for new constitutions. It invites sovereigns to mix in all the affairs of men, till the most common concerns of life are not left to the guidance of individual wisdom; and these feeble mortals, encouraged by our reverence, charge themselves with the enormous, and when coolly examined, [I-477] the impracticable power of regulating and promoting the happiness of the whole race of mankind.

What the Germans have already gained they have gained by means of their press, and they should rely on that alone for greater conquests. In fact, the only utility of a legislative assembly, such as that of the parliament of Great Britain, arises from its being the organ through which public opinion may make itself quietly known; and, since the force of public opinion has already, in several instances, procured the establishment of such assemblies, it surely may be relied on to effect alterations of less importance without the intervention of these intermediary organs. Public opinion is no tangible thing like the walls of a parliament-house or the members of a parliament, and in this age of figures, when every thing is numbered and counted, nothing is believed that cannot be submitted to the test of arithmetic. Public opinion is not, therefore, confided in unless it has a specific and regular mouth piece, that can be examined and measured. It has demolished empires, it has controlled and destroyed the mightiest power the world ever saw,—it has altered, and is constantly altering, every society in Europe,—it renders laws of no avail,—it supplies their place,—it punishes crimes that they can never reach,—and yet, because it can neither be seen nor put into a mathematical shape, men act as if they did not believe [I-478] in its existence. Its organization costs nothing, its progress is exactly in proportion to the wants of the society, and it is on it the Germans should rely, rather than on new and expensive institutions.

The progress of public opinion in Germany is strongly marked by the homage which the former military despots of that country are now obliged to pay to the name of Freedom; they assume her dress and her language, and wear a mask resembling her, when their only aim is to destroy her. The very words, “Voice of the people,” “Council of the nation,” mark a deference in the sovereigns of Germany to the formerly despised people, and to public opinion, which were equally unknown and unhoped for prior to the French Revolution. It is only from tracing what men have performed that we can conceive what they may accomplish. The progress which the Germans have already made is a pleasing guarantee for their future improvement. We are quite certain that they must go on improving, though it is impossible for any imagination to tell where they will stop.

Since this was written, I have read two or three reports that another, a newer, and a finer constitution, is to be given to Hannover. It is now to have a House of Peers and Commons, which will be a still farther and still more ridiculous imitation of Great Britain, [I-479] and a still farther complication of what is already a most complicated machine. Are not these changes sporting with solemn and sacred things? Are not men taught by them to despise governments altogether? And is not this modelling and remodelling Jacobinism on the part of sovereigns? Reform may lead to innovation, but change can only be followed by destruction.

CHAPTER XV.
hannover.—the army.—revenue.—taxes.↩

Strength of the army.—How recruited.—Landwehr.—Power of the sovereign over the people.—Military punishments.—Courts-martial composed liberally.—Sources of revenue.—Domanial accounts not submitted to the public.—Taxes.—Debts.—Expenditure.—Manner of levying taxes.—Complaints.

The army of Hannover consists of

The landwehr is estimated at 18,000 men, making the whole army 30,940 men. [36]

[I-481]

The regular troops are recruited by voluntary enlistment. The landwehr is embodied by constraining certain classes of the inhabitants to enter into it. The whole country is divided into thirty districts, and each district provides men for one battalion, which bears the name of the district. The number of men to each battalion is 600, but it is the duty of the commander-in-chief, with the advice of the cabinet ministry, to determine what number of men each district shall furnish. Every man between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, capable of carrying arms, is liable to serve in the landwehr. If the persons between these two ages are not numerous enough to complete the quota required, then the persons who have passed their twenty-fifth year, and have not reached their thirtieth year, are liable to serve, but cannot be called out till the first and second reserves have been both exhausted. These reserves consist of some particular classes of those persons who are between nineteen and twenty-five years old. Postillions, men whose trade requires some considerable time to learn it, and whose place could not be immediately supplied, and many others, form the first reserve; owners of manufactories, farmers keeping a team, the only son of a widow, or of parents who depend on him for support, and several others, form the second reserve. Public officers of all descriptions are entirely free.

[I-482]

The pastor of each parish is obliged to give the magistrates lists of all the males born or confirmed in the parish, who have entered their twentieth year. The magistrates add to them all the persons resident in the parish, thought not born in it, who have reached the same age. These lists are then publicly exposed in some well frequented place during eight days, in order that every person may know if his name be inscribed or not; and if it be not, and he be liable to serve, he must himself inform the magistrates thereof. The magistrates then fix a convenient time and place, to which every person liable to serve must go, or send some person properly qualified to represent him.

At this meeting there are four persons, namely, a landwehr commissioner, a military commissioner, the chief magistrate of the district, and an under magistrate as secretary, who form a sort of commission to examine any claims which the persons whose age renders them liable to serve may have on other grounds to be free from service. A surgeon, the amts assessor, the Vorsteher of the village, and two or three respectable inhabitants, must also be present. The parties are examined publicly. Individuals not content with the decision of these commissioners, may repeat their claims to the magistrate in writing, who communicates them to the landwehr commissioner; this latter must state his opinion to the cabinet ministry, [I-483] which decides on the claims without further appeal.

After this examination, the landwehr commissioner makes out lists of the persons liable to serve, of those who are to be set in the reserves, of those who, being within the prescribed age, are yet fully free, and of those whose health or other circumstances do not allow them to serve at the moment. These lists are sent to the ministry, and are subjected to its review.

When the persons liable to serve are examined, they draw by lot, each one a number, and it is according to the numbers that the individuals are taken to fill up the vacancies of the battalions, or taken from the reserves when that is necessary. The people are at liberty to change these numbers one with another, and to provide substitutes when they do not themselves like to serve. The period of service is fixed at six years, but in time of war it may be indefinitely extended by the will of the sovereign.

All the persons liable to serve are exercised for four weeks every year, and on a certain number of Sundays after noon. During peace, they are permitted for the other eleven months of the year to follow their ordinary occupations. They must not, however, quit their place of residence without permission. They are only subjected to military discipline during the exercise time, and when engaged [I-484] in actual service. It is at the same periods only that the landwehr man receives any pay, though the officers are permanently employed and paid. When the Hannoverian army is sent to the field, every regiment is to be composed of one battalion of regular troops, and of two battalions of landwehr. It is intended always to preserve these proportions, so that, with an army of 10,000 regular troops, a force of 30,000 men may be speedily assembled.

During the time the Hannoverian troops were in France, eighty men of each battalion were kept in constant service, and the sovereign may employ as many as he pleases. There is no limit to his power on this point; no specified occasion on which he may order the landwehr into actual service. He alone is the judge of the time proper to order the landwehr out, and of the number he will employ. His power is on this point only limited by his revenues. The ministry also decides, in the last resort, on questions of liability to serve, so that the whole young population of Hannover are entirely at the mercy of the sovereign, and may be subjected by him to military discipline whenever he pleases. It is commonly said that every man is bound to defend his country, but this can only mean that every man is bound to defend himself, and he defends his country because its laws and customs are valuable to him. In our time, however, [I-485] politicians and military despots call themselves and their own petty ambition, interests, and passions, the country, and they are in the habit of commanding men to murder one another for their own despicable purposes. On this ground, such a power in the hands of any sovereign as this over the Landwehr is most pernicious. It allows him to compel his subjects, under the delusive words of fighting for their country, to engage in wars of aggression and violence. Such has been the use made of conscriptions in all ages.

The Hannoverian army, in its appearance and discipline, resembles our own. Punishments are still severe, and running the gauntlet is yet a common practice. A permanent military court takes cognizance of military offences. Courts-martial, when they are necessary, are composed of some members taken from the class to which the offender belongs. It was once proposed to introduce such a regulation into the British navy, and, at the same time, to interdict all arbitrary punishments. And it was supposed this would have the effect of rescuing our sailors from that severity of flogging which has long ago made our men of war the objects of every sailor’s detestation. Though it is reduced to practice in Hannover, it was laughed at in England as visionary.

The officers of the Hannoverian army receive their first commission from the bounty of the sovereign, [I-486] but they are afterwards promoted according to their seniority. Every one must, however, first study for three years at the military school. They have the reputation of being plain, sensible, well-behaved men.

The revenues of the government of Hannover are derived from the domains and from taxes. The former are regarded as the private property of the sovereign, of which he may dispose in what manner he pleases. In former times, it appears that there was no other mode known in Europe of paying public functionaries than that of giving them the produce of certain portions of land. The nobles of Europe, some of whom have become modern sovereigns, were originally officers for the administration of justice, or of the army. Many of those of the north of Germany were appointed by Charlemagne, when he conquered the country, and were paid with a portion of land. Many of them, again, were originally elected by the people, who also gave them certain lands as their reward. The inhabitants of the north of Germany were originally free allodial possessors; their name of Saxons, or Sassen, is said to be derived from this circumstance. They are said to have frequently resigned their lands into the hands of certain chiefs, on condition of these chiefs protecting them. The lands were given back as feuds, and held on the mutual conditions of services and protection. Some of these [I-487] lands have since escheated to the feudal lords, by the family of the vassal becoming extinct. But they were originally given to them that they might protect the vassal.

The property which formerly belonged to the church was begged, and claimed, and possessed, by its members, on condition of performing certain services for the people, such as teaching them, praying for them, buying them out of purgatory with holy words, and ensuring to them eternal happiness. At the Reformation, those persons who took the property of the church took with it, or ought to have taken with it, the duties which possessing that property imposed. It was from sources such as these that the nobles and sovereigns of Europe originally derived all the land cultivated by other people, which they acquired justly, that is, without robbery, conquest, and fraud. This property they are bound to administer for the service of the people, or at least to perform the duties which possessing it imposes on them, without further reward. The altered circumstances of the world, however, leave many of them no duties to perform, though they now claim the property as their hereditary right.

It is found from experience to be necessary that subjects should make their rulers submit to them the accounts of the receipts and disbursements of public money. The people of Hannover have, in some [I-488] measure, the accounts of the taxes submitted to them through their representatives. In former times, the whole expences of the sovereign and of government were defrayed out of the domains. The extra supplies given by the states were always granted for specific purposes, and for short and stated periods. The sovereign only appealed to them when, from particular circumstances, such as war or his improvidence, the produce of the domains was insufficient for the public service. And from the domanial possessions of the sovereign having been originally given for the public service, the Hannoverians have an equal right to see the accounts of them with the accounts of the taxes. They would be justified should they demand that the produce of the domains, and the manner in which it is expended, be submitted to them. They, however, acquiesce in the sovereign using this produce as his private property, and, therefore, nothing is ever known concerning it but by conjecture.

Prior to the French occupation, the domanial income was supposed to amount to 1,875,000 Cassen-Thalers, or L. 312,500 Sterling. At present it is estimated at 3,000,000 Cassen-Thalers, or somewhat more than L. 500,000 Sterling.

There are seven taxes in Hannover, namely, 1 st, A land-tax; 2 d, A tax on things consumed in towns, called slaughter or licence-tax; [I-489] 3 d, A tax on brewing and distilling; 4 th, A tax on salt; 5 th, Stamp duties; 6 th, Tax on imported articles; 7 th, A tax on income and on persons. The exact amount of each, and of all these taxes, is not known. The official accounts had been long promised, but were never ready to be submitted to the states. The following is supposed to be an approximation to the truth: Land-tax, L. 170,000; tax on consumption of towns, L. 20,000; on brewing and distilling, L. 67,000; on salt, L. 5000; stamps, L. 15,000; customs, L. 33,000; income and persons, L. 92,000. There is reason to believe that this statement is rather low, and that the whole produce of the taxes may be taken at L. 3,000,000 Thalers, or about L. 500,000, making, with the domanial revenues, a sum of L. 1,000,000 per year, as the whole revenue of Hannover. The complicated Hannoverian government, compared with the value of the concern administered, reminds one of the machine described by Smollet, which required several horses to put it in motion, and which was invented for the mighty purpose of cutting cabbages scientifically from the stalk.

The known and certain debts of the old provinces of Hannover, including Osnabrück, amounted in 1813 to 10,677,461 Thalers. The new provinces have also some debts; and some have been contracted since 1813, the amount of which is [I-490] unknown. They are roughly estimated as making, together with the old debts, the sum of 20,000,000 Thalers, or about L.3,330,000. They bear interest at 4 per cent.

The following are some of the items to which the produce of the taxes is devoted, though the whole expenditure is not accurately known:—Interest of the debts, 800,000 Thalers. Military, 1,400,000. Administration of justice, 128,000. Education, and such good purposes, 65,000. States, 50,000; making together 2,443,000 Thalers, or about L.407,000 Sterling. How the remainder is disposed of is unknown. As the ministry and the greater part of all the servants of government are paid out of the L.500,000 arising from the domains; as part of the expences of the army are also paid out of these; and as a full court-establishment has always, till lately, been kept up in Hannover, it is not possible, as is supposed by some people, that our royal family have drawn a great deal of wealth from that country. Some it possibly may have drawn; but all that can be saved from such a revenue, with so complicated a system of administration, can certainly never have exceeded the income of an English gentleman. [37]

The manner of levying these taxes is, of course, [I-491] different, according to the tax. The land has at various times been measured and valued; and, according to these valuations, the occupier or owner was obliged to pay the proportion fixed. When the owner was either the monarch or a noble, the land he kept in his own hands paid no land-tax; but that which he let to tenants was paid for by them. But if the owner of the property was not noble, he paid the tax on the land he occupied.

At the gates of the towns which pay the slaughter tax, a man usually called a gate secretary, Thor Schreiber, collects the tax on all articles subject to it, as they enter the town. It seems to have been supposed, that the land-tax falling heavier on the inhabitants of the country than on the inhabitants of the towns, made this additional tax on the towns people necessary to equalize the burdens. The tax on meal, however, is yet levied on the inhabitants of the country. There are every where yet found what are called zwang Mühle, or mills, to which the inhabitants of certain districts must send their corn to be ground, and where a tax is levied on it. It was from the land-tax, and from the slaughter-tax, and from the zwang [I-492] Mühle, and from the domanial tolls, that the nobility were formerly entirely free; to some of the other taxes they could not be subjected, except as consumers, as they never distilled or brewed, and the others they paid. According to a late regulation, they are now to pay their proportion of all these taxes. As landholder, the monarch is now to pay the land-tax from his domains.

When a person wants to brew, he is obliged to give notice to the proper officer of the quantity and nature of the grain from which he intends to brew, the day and hour when the malt is to be mashed, and the day and hour when the vats will be filled; and the tax is levied in certain proportions, according to the quantity of malt employed, and the quantity of beer obtained. If a small quantity of the latter is made, the quantity of malt employed is paid for in the proportion of 1s. per bushel for wheat malt, 8d. for barley, and 6d. for oats. If a large quantity of beer be obtained, it is paid for at so much per gallon.

The law orders every man who has a still to give notice of it to the collector of taxes. This still is measured, and the alembic or cover deposited with the collector; and each distiller is charged so much in proportion to the size of his still, every time he takes the alembic away. He may not take it for less than twenty-four hours, but for so much longer a period as he pleases; and [I-493] he pays, in proportion to the time he has it, so much per day. Strict regulations expose any person to punishment who possesses, makes, buys, or repairs a still without giving notice of it to the tax-gatherer. The tax on salt is paid by the manufacturers before it is allowed to leave the place where it is made;—it is 5 d. per bushel. Stamp duties are collected as in our country. All law papers which are laid before the chanceries or other courts are subject to a stamp-duty each of 3d.; consequently all law proceedings are taxed. There are also a variety of contracts and bargains which are subjected to a greater stamp-duty.

The tax on imported articles, or customs, is levied by officers on the borders, or at the ports where they are introduced; and they are at present levied according to a strange principle.—Each hundred weight of goods, be they what they may, pays 2s. on entry. Liquids, of course, pay by the measure; and to the general rule there are some exceptions; as tobacco, which is subject to a greater duty; but a hundred weight of fine cottons, or cambrics, and a hundred weight of iron, are subjected to the same importation duty. This regulation saves a great deal of trouble. The effects of levying taxes on particular articles appears yet so imperfectly known, that this plan may be as useful as any other.

The people are obliged to make returns to the [I-494] collectors of the number of persons in their families. The whole are divided into classes, and the individuals pay according to the number of heads, and according to the extent of their income, as they belong to one or other of the six classes. The sum paid is, in the first class, 2s. in the sixth class, 1½d. by each person per month. Children are paid for when above sixteen years old. The income-tax is levied in the same way; the people paying a greater or less tax, as they are in the first or sixth class.

The collection of the taxes is under the direction of a committee, or commission, of eleven members of the states, as before mentioned, the individuals of which are partly appointed by the crown, partly by the states. One portion of them are treasurers, the other superintend the levying. There are six principal directors immediately subordinate to this commission, each of which has the superintendence over certain districts. These districts are again divided into circles, and there is one or more collectors to each circle. Under these, again, are placed the gate secretaries, and other subaltern officers of the district.

The pressure of governments on subjects is at present so exclusively felt through taxes, that these latter are always sure to be complained of. At present, also, men complain more than before. The pressure they labour under is augmented, [I-495] while the hope they had formed of its being decreased has been disappointed. The ex-emperor had so long been the object of reproach, he had done so many unusual and very often oppressive things, and men are so ready to attribute every evil they suffer to every thing but their own deeds and opinions, that it was only natural all Europe should believe he was the cause of every calamity and suffering. People consequently hoped when he was destroyed that golden days of enjoyment would be their lot. He is destroyed, and the only difference discovered is, that the evils suffered are still as great, but they are more systematically, regularly, and, according to opinion, legitimately inflicted.

It is in some measure because the hopes which the Hannoverians had formed to themselves have been disappointed, that they now complain very much of the weight of taxation. It does not appear to be absolutely so great as during the French usurpation, but it is very little short, and greater beyond all comparison than before that period. The restored government appears to have made it only a secondary consideration whether the people could support all its multiplied servants: its first care was to make them. It had a noble opportunity for benefiting all its subjects, and for acquiring their love. It has done nothing more than make a much greater number of dependants. [I-496] Amongst these dependants are to be found nearly all the men of education in the country, and not a single person, therefore, appears to have thought of simplifying that immense machine whose complexity is the great cause of all the poverty, distress, and discontent, though the latter is not great, which are found in the country. [38]

Some of the particular complaints which are made are directed against the inequality of the taxes. That, for example, on persons, by which a man who has 400 Thalers per year pays half as much as he who has 6000. Other complaints are directed against the impolicy of a tax, that, for example, on distillation, which allows smuggling from the neighbouring countries in which such a tax is not levied. On the subject of taxation, however, it will always be impossible to reconcile the wants of governments with the wants of the people. Taxes will always be unpopular, because he who pays never can discover the good he receives in exchange for his money.

END OF VOLUME FIRST

TRAVELS IN GERMANY.

[II-1]

CHAPTER I.
courts for the administration of justice.↩

Property the foundation of the right to administer justice.—Patrimonial courts.—Justice chanceries.—Appointments of judges.—Salaries.—Chief court of appeal.—An example of tolerance.—Curious distinction.—High reputation of this court.—Advocates.—Regulations concerning.—Effect of public pleading on their importance.

The French introduced the code Napoleon, and their own forms of procedure, into Hannover. They swept away the whole of the ancient institutions for the administration of justice, but they did not possess the country long enough to conquer the habits of the people, and, with some few amendments, the ancient methods are again fully established. The present tribunals may be conveniently described as patrimonial courts, justice chanceries, and the court of appeal.

Both the administration of justice, and the power [II-2] of declaring what justice ought to be, or the whole of the legislative and judicial functions, were in most European countries, at a period antecedent to the present, considered as the attribute of property. Many of the regulations now imposed on us as the will of the society, were originally the regulations of lords for their slaves; and in their origin some of the highly honoured laws of Europe may be compared to the slave-codes of the West Indies. This state of things still in some measure exists in Hannover. The possessors of certain properties have the power of administering justice within their limits, and they appoint all the persons connected with the administration of justice. Courts constituted by their authority are called patrimonial courts. It is by virtue of the right of property that the monarch appoints his amtmen, who being officers for the administration of justice, amts are considered as patrimonial courts. The jurisdiction of town magistrates was confined to the land which belonged to the town, or which was under its immediate protection, and they possessed this jurisdiction by virtue of the right of property. Towns, therefore, are also patrimonial courts. Hannover itself presents an illustration of this truth. It is divided into two parts, the land on which one is built belongs to the town magistracy, and is under its jurisdiction; the land on which the other is built belongs to the sovereign, and is placed under [II-3] a person appointed by him. I do not know the number of patrimonial courts belonging to individual noblemen which yet remain in Hannover, but at present the number is not considerable. The royal amts amount to at least 160.

Patrimonial courts are distinguished by some of them having jurisdiction in civil suits only, while others have both civil and criminal jurisdiction. This difference is not a consequence of these courts belonging to individuals, or to the monarch; it seems to have been introduced by chance, and to have been established by custom. There are at least twenty towns with tribunals possessing full powers, and there are at least two courts belonging to noblemen, those of Hardenberg and Adelepsen, which also possess them. A committee of the states which was appointed to inquire into the administration of justice, recommended the separation of all criminal jurisdiction from the patrimonial courts, which are the property of individuals; but owing, I believe, to the power of the individuals, this recommendation has not yet been complied with.

The magistracy of the towns has been described in the chapter on Government. The members of patrimonial tribunals are appointed by the proprietors. They must be persons properly educated, and, in general, they must be approved of by the [II-4] Crown. Each of these tribunals consists at least of a judge, with two assistants, who bear the title of secretaries, or assessors. Many of them employ several more assistants. Formerly these judges presided in some instances over two courts, which afforded them an opportunity, by multiplying the acts of both courts, to increase their emoluments at the expence of the unhappy suitors. They were some times also advocates by other tribunals; and on the borders of two countries, they sometimes, till they were forbid, served two different masters.

There are at least three educated jurisconsults, distinguished as amtmen, assessors, and secretaries, at each of the one hundred and sixty amts mentioned, so that the persons of this profession employed in the minor tribunals may be considered as extremely numerous. The amtman frequently unites a great deal of power in his own hands by being at the same time the tenant of the royal property within his district. In this the tithes, and a right to a certain portion of the labour of the peasants, is frequently included. He has also the superintendence of roads and bridges, in short, all the powers of the proprietor, of government, of the administration of justice, and of the police within his district. The persons living under him may certainly apply to superior courts if he oppress them, but, as far as the peasantry are concerned, this must be out of their power from poverty, and [II-5] over them he is completely the lord. The amtmen sometimes live very splendidly, and when they happen to dwell in some old monastery, or ancient baron’s castle, they seem not imperfectly to represent the feudal nobility. They possess all their consequence without their pride, independence, or ferocity. Among their other duties, I must not forget to enumerate, that they are ordered frequently to visit the inns, in order to see if the guests have good food and drink provided for them. They have also to see that no more of the land occupied by the peasant is ploughed than he is allowed to plough by his contract. [1] This is surely, therefore, a most benevolent government, which takes such care of its subjects’ palates and health, and which so carefully limits their exertions.

The union of the administration of the royal property with the administration of justice, has long been a matter of complaint, and probably of serious inconvenience. It is, however, common in Germany, though, in some of the countries, in Brunswick for example, the two are separated. Absurd as the union appears, if the separation is to make two offices where one only now exists, it must rather be considered as an evil than as a good. [II-6] The whole of these functionaries are said to have borne their power so meekly, that it is doubtful if the evil of multiplying offices should be incurred for the advantages of the separation. The best way to affect it would be, to sell or let the domains as if they were private property.

All these minor officers of justice are principally paid by fees, which are regulated according to law. Magistrates of towns have also salaries. But it is unwisely made the interest of all these gentlemen to increase law-suits, and thus increase their emoluments.

Since the restoration of Hannover to its former masters, many minor patrimonial courts have been abolished. The French had also abolished them, but it is only now that it can be said that they are abolished never again to be revived. It is curious to read of courts whose power was confined to single houses, or by the marks made by the water as it dropped from their roofs. There were many other similar ones, with uncouth untranslateable names, and they prove completely how utterly ignorant our ancestors were of what we call order and good police. In all the alterations which have been made, it is evident that power is leaving the nobles, and concentrating itself in the hands of the sovereign. In all the former practices, a state of society may be traced, in which power and government were founded on no views of general good, [II-7] but on individual strength. He who was stronger than his neighbours usurped authority over them, and he established his power for the gratification of his own lusts. The general good of a former period could only mean the good of a part of those inhabitants who now form the different kingdoms of Europe. As conquest and usurpation went forward,—as the ambition of governing was more extensively gratified—the terms general good were extended from the castle of the noble to the neighbouring villages and towns, and at length they were applied to provinces and nations. The powers of modern governments were originally ill-acquired, and, from being concentrated in the hands of few sovereigns, they have now become an enormous evil. Its very enormity, however, makes it more visible, and we may hope for its limitation from the doubts and alarm it will excite.

Most of the patrimonial courts possessing jurisdiction in criminal causes have a curious method of examining or trying prisoners, without passing sentence on them. Many of the magistrates of the minor courts are ordered to send all the acts, as the papers relative to processes are called, to some superior court, for its judgment. And the magistrates of the towns, who are not obliged, very frequently send the acts both of civil and criminal processes to some superior tribunal, or to the members of the faculty of jurisprudence, at some university, [II-8] who pronounce the judgment. The examinator and the judge are, in such cases, different persons, and none of those passions which are so likely to be occasioned in the examining judge, by the obstinacy, impertinence, or independence, of the persons examined, can have any influence on the judge who pronounces the sentence. He may be deceived by the reports of the examining judge, but he has the power, if he suspects any thing wrong, to send the acts back to be revised. The examiner may give to the evidence the colour of his own kindness or malignity, but the operation of either of these dispositions is easily detected. The judge, therefore, pronounces according to the facts presented to him, independent of all other sympathies than those occasioned by his preformed moral opinions, and so far as these facts are correctly stated, his judgment is likely to be correct. By the acts of one tribunal being thus exposed to the inspection of another, a sort of publicity, though far from the best sort of publicity, is given to the proceedings of courts, which produces, in a small degree, motives for honesty. On the other hand, as distant judges share with the examiner the responsibility of ordering the punishment, he may sometimes be tempted to be careless or unjust.

I am not quite sure that it is right to condemn a man to punishment after an examination of a written [II-9] statement of facts, and without being guided by sympathy or antipathy. In a personal examination there are many little circumstances of voice and manner, which have a powerful effect on determining our opinions as to guilt or innocence. These are part of the materials of an accurate judgment, and of all these the distant judge must be entirely ignorant. There is a consciousness of innocence or of guilt, which lives in the eye or speaks in the voice of every man; there is a nobility of thought, whose simple utterance commands belief; and there is a baseness of mind which deprives all words of any power of conviction. These the sentencing judge should see and hear, for it is on his conscience the weight of a conviction, or the joy of an acquittal, rests. A man may be capable of convincing his judge by one emphatic word; but this power is denied to every prisoner who is sentenced by judges whom he never saw.

The law also hurls its vengeance against certain specified actions, the guilt of which was determined, perhaps, by the sympathies of law-makers who lived some ages ago. But guilt or innocence is something different from a visible or tangible action. A rifleman of an army coolly selects his victim, and kills him, but he does not commit murder. An individual who shoots his deadliest foe, the despoiler of his fortunes, or the defiler of his [II-10] bed, though he have been ten thousand times more injured than the rifleman, commits murder. The law, that is, the sympathies and opinions of perhaps barbarous legislators, condemns him to expiate with his life the act which he has committed. I shall not decide if he or the man who kills his fellow-men for sixpence per day be most guilty; but from this example, it is clear that guilt is perfectly independent of any visible action. And a judge who pronounces on mere facts, who condemns any man because he has done a certain action, inflicts on that action all the pain which the antipathy of the legislator appropriated to guilt.

There are seven superior tribunals, called Royal Justice Chanceries; one is situated in the town of Hannover; one at Celle: one at Göttingen; one at Stade; one at Osnabrück; one at Hildesheim; and one at Aurich, in East Friezland. Each one of these chanceries has a director, and six or seven persons called justice-councillors, who are the judges, with a proportionate quantity of auditors, secretaries, assessors, taxators, clerks, and persons bearing other titles, to the amount of thirty persons for the worst provided, and fifty for the best provided court.

The jurisdiction of each of these courts extends over several provinces, but it does not extend equally to all persons. Thus the magistracy of the town of Hannover, with the exception of the bürgermeisters, [II-11] are amenable only to the town tribunals. The members of the chief court of appeal at Celle, with their domestics, children, wives, and widows, so long as they remain at Celle, are amenable only to this tribunal, with sundry other similar exceptions. These courts are, of the first instance, for certain persons, such as all their own members, of whatever rank, for noblemen, for clergymen, for both the actual and titular servants of the crown, and also for some persons who, being under the jurisdiction of some inferior court, have obtained the special privilege of having these as courts of first instance. They are courts of second instance, or of appeal, to persons to whom the amts towns and private patrimonial courts are courts of first instance. Such distinctions are very strange. They appear to suppose that the inferior tribunals are only capable of administering justice to inferior persons. By the members of the various courts being subjected to these courts only, and by the jurisdiction of certain courts being obtained as a favour, it seems as if partiality, or something more than justice, were to be obtained for particular persons. There are some reasons, however, to believe, though this practice may now be perverted, that it had its origin in a principle which was once common to all Germany, and somewhat analogous to that great axiom of the English law, that every man should be tried by [II-12] his peers; at least, that no man should be tried by persons of rank inferior to his own. [2]

From the great many tribunals which there are in the kingdom, and from this difference in their jurisdiction, there is great uncertainty to which court a person must apply. In the town of Göttingen, for example, which contains 12,000 inhabitants, there are eight different tribunals, including those of the university as one. The jurisdiction of each of these tribunals is not only limited by place, but also by the condition of the parties, and the nature of the offence committed, or the value of the thing in dispute. All these distinctions must be accurately known, before an action can be brought, or a prosecution commenced; or the court will declare its incompetence; or, being incompetent, if it gives judgment, its incompetence is a reason for appeal, which will be sure to render the judgment invalid.

The director and all the councillors of the justice chanceries are nominated by the ministry, and confirmed by the king. Advocates do not rise to these situations. The councillors or judges are [II-13] taken, in general, according to seniority, from what are called the auditors, who are young men of good or noble families, who study jurisprudence expressly to fill these situations, and who have little else to do till they receive the place of judge, but to attend to what is done by the judges. The auditors also are nominated by the ministers, and confirmed by the king. They are examined by the director and the whole of the bench, both when they are made auditors and when they are made judges.

The college or chancery in general divides itself into two parts, for the quicker dispatch of business; and from this circumstance, and the number of courts, the auditors and the judges have very little to do. Instead of being grave men, dignified by great wigs and silken gowns, they are some of the gayest young men of the whole country. The director of the justice chancery of Hannover, who may be considered as one of the dignitaries of the law, dined regularly every day at a tavern, where the price of dinner was about 1s. 8d. without wine, and 2s. 9d. with. He went regularly to some public garden to drink his afternoon’s coffee, and passed his evenings at a public place, playing ombre or whist. There is a great difference between such a person and an English judge. If the latter have more wealth, more stately vigour of mind, and a [II-14] greater dignity than the former, he has fewer of the light and amiable pleasures of life. An Hannoverian judge has in truth so little to do with professional duties, and so much with the amusements of society, that he has every appearance of being a perfect man of the world. He bears no distinctive professional marks.

The settled salaries of the directors and of the councillors of justice are said to amount to 1200 or 1500 Thalers per year,—from L.200 to L.500. They have also fees, the amount of which cannot be known. They are generally considered as holding their places for life, unless they are promoted. One instance has been mentioned of a judge being removed at the will of the sovereign. Several of the judges enjoy other situations under the government. Some of them, indeed, such as superintendent of a theatre, seem to be incompatible with the dignity of a judge. From this circumstance it is correct to assert, that the judges are dependant on the crown. If the country be to have political liberty, the perfect independence of these gentlemen should be one of the first things insisted on.

The chief court of appeal, situated at Celle in the province of Lüneburg, was first established in 1713. Till August 1818, it was composed of a president and fourteen chief councillors of appeal, as judges. At that time four more councillors or [II-15] judges were added, and two vice-presidents. It now, therefore, consists of one president, two vice-presidents, and eighteen judges, with a proportionate quantity of secretaries, clerks, procurors, and other subordinate persons. The reason assigned for the addition to the number of judges, was the increase of business which the court was likely to have, from the territories of Hannover being so much increased. One of the additional councillors was said to be for Friezland, one for Hildesheim, one for Osnabrück, and one for the other little spots which have lately rounded the territories of Hannover.

The greater part of the inhabitants of Hildesheim and Osnabrück are Catholics, and those of Friezland are Calvinists. It was therefore wisely declared, with regard to religious toleration, that these new members might be Catholics or Calvinists. And as the right of presentation to the new places was at the same time conceded to the states of these provinces, the declaration would not remain a dead letter. It was not mere words which the sovereign could follow or not as he pleased. The king of Hannover has no spiritual councillors with large revenues. Neither bishops nor archbishops have access to the royal ear, and influence on the royal conscience; and he is much more tolerant than the king of Great Britain. Though he be a Protestant monarch, [II-16] and his subjects chiefly Protestants, he admits Catholics to be members of the highest court of appeal in his kingdom; and he sets an example of treating his subjects equally, without any regard to their religious persuasion, which is worthy of the imitation of the monarch of England. The tenderness of the royal conscience has often been made the excuse for withholding from the Catholics of Great Britain some of their rights as subjects of the empire. But the same tenderness is not felt in the much more beloved kingdom of Hannover. This, therefore, must be considered as the mere excuse which interested men have made to cover their own bigotry.

A portion of the members of this court, six, with the three presidents, are appointed by the sovereign; the other twelve are appointed by the states. This practice was once general in Germany. For example, the members of the celebrated Cammer Gericht, which was a court for the whole empire, were partly appointed by the emperor, and partly by the states of the empire, who were, however, in this case the electors, and other sovereign princes. The reason assigned for this was that members might be named out of every province, who were acquainted with the local laws. Another feature common to all the courts of justice in Germany may be traced in the former constitution of this one.

[II-17]

It is composed of two distinct banks of judges, a bank of nobles, and a bank of learned men; and formerly the youngest noble member preceded in rank the oldest learned member. When a part of them met in a committee, without the presence of the usual president or vice-president, the youngest noble member assumed the temporary presidency before the eldest of the learned members. It is an evidence of improvement, that by the regulations of August 1818, this superiority of the nobles, which has been long complained of, was abolished. In all matters of business the eldest learned member now follows the eldest noble member, and in committees, the eldest member present, whether noble or learned, is the president. Notwithstanding this distinction of noble and learned members, the nobles are also learned; that is, they study jurisprudence; and when they are appointed councillors of this court, they are examined by the other members, and are obliged to give a proof of their ability to fill the office, by drawing up a legal argument on some particular case. These judges are, both from situation and birth, men of distinction in society. Even the learned members are generally men of privileged families, and they often possess sufficient influence to bequeath their office to one of their sons. The judges from the minor tribunals, and the auditors of this court, are the persons from [II-18] amongst whom the judges of the chief court are selected.

Its title explains most of its duties. It is the last court of appeal for causes sent from the other courts. It is a court of the first instance for all the members of the court, for parties that live, and for properties that lie in different provinces, which are subject to different jurisdictions, and it is a court of first instance in all cases where a jurisdiction is doubtful. It is a court of appeal both in civil and criminal causes, and it has a criminal jurisdiction over the persons to whom it is a court of first instance. It has the inspection of all the minor tribunals of the kingdom, and the examination of persons who, after a due course of study, wish to practise as advocates. It is necessary for all the advocates to undergo this examination, and to have the permission of this or some other court before they can practise. On questions of great importance the whole court are called on for their opinion. Generally, however, it carries on business by means of three committees, each of which has a president. Some particular member is appointed to examine the written acts of every case, and report on them. In fact, with all the multitude of judges, the judgment is more generally the result of the investigations carried on by one person, than by several.

The salaries of the members are said to be [II-19] 1500 to 1800 Thalers, or from L.250 to L.300 per year, exclusive of fees, whose amount is totally unknown, but every one is regulated by laws. The persons connected with the law, who are said to make most money, are called cancellisten, and their duty consists chiefly in clerkship.

The reputation of this court for impartiality is very great. George the Second expressed his surprise to one of his friends, that he lost all his causes in this court. “Sire,” was the reply, “the reason is obvious;—your Majesty is always in the wrong.” Nor is its reputation now diminished. There was a dispute between the government of Hannover and some of its subjects, relative to some domanial property which had been sold during the French government. They recently petitioned the diet at Frankfort, that the question might be decided by a court of law; and if their petition were granted, they declared they selected his Majesty’s court of appeal at Celle, as the one to which they wished the question might be referred. The members are bound, in cases in which the crown is concerned, to do justice with impartiality, without regard to any body but God; and they have generally so well preserved their character, that the court has obtained the honourable name of the Doomsday Court. The expression is more applicable in the German than in the English language, because our day of judgment is expressed [II-20] in that language by words signifying the last court, Dasjungste Gericht. And it is this name which is given to the court of appeal.

Such are the courts, and such the judges appointed in Hannover to administer justice. They may be taken as a model of the courts of other parts of Germany. Each country has its subordinate courts and its court of appeal, each of which is composed of many members. In all a due regard to subordination may be traced, and in all, the same form, that of a college, as a body of judges are called, exists. This is a distinctive mark of the institutions of Germany. It is a sign of the influence of a sect, and of the want of influence on the part of the people.

The college form of the different courts is very much praised, as leading to more accurate judgments. The matter in all its “bearings,” it is said, “is discussed by the different members, and the opinions or judgments of a majority, which are so much better than the opinions of one person, decide.” The maxim is true, but it is not clear that it is followed in these courts. To me it appears, that the reporter is the only judge; and all the ends here proposed are much better obtained by public examinations, public pleadings, and trial by jury. When the administration of justice in our own country is compared with that of other countries, it seems as if one excellence of the trial by jury is its natural tendency [II-21] to make justice cheap to the community. That justice is not cheap in Great Britain, arises from other causes than the institution of juries; and certainly this evil would not be remedied by the appointment of a multitude of judges with fees, when it is because a few at present have fees, that justice is so extravagant.

The whole of the sittings of the judges are held in such secrecy, that even persons having business with them, such as advocates, are not allowed to enter their room without being previously announced, and without having obtained permission. No more of their proceedings than the judgments which they deliver, and the executions which they order, are known to the public. With this permission to do wrong, there is, perhaps, no land where the character of all the superior functionaries employed in administering justice is more unsullied than in this. I have suggested to persons who were in many particulars hostile to these functionaries, that it would be easy to bribe them. “True,” was the reply, “but they are all too honest to allow themselves to be bribed.” A similar opinion of their virtue is generally entertained. This sort of union between permission to do ill, and abstaining from doing it, is a very anomalous feature in the character of persons enjoying power, and it does vast honour to the individuals. Its causes may probably be discovered in the general good education [II-22] and manners, and in the peaceful enjoyment of superiority which the members derive from their situation, without being eternally goaded by a desire to obtain the distinction which is in other countries more exclusively given to wealth.

The advocates, who are generally at the same time notaries, are obliged to study jurisprudence at some university, for three years; but this term, provided they have before studied any other branch of science, and have afterwards diligently devoted themselves to jurisprudence, may be shortened to them. With certificates of three years’ attendance and industry, the young man announces himself to some one of the tribunals, generally to the chief court of appeal at Celle, which examines him, and allows him to matriculate, and practise as an advocate, if he be found qualified. Advocates are directed to be conscientious men; and to make them so, they are threatened in all cases of bad behaviour with punishment. They are commanded to begin no suit of whose justice they are not convinced, and to cease the pleadings at any time in the course of it, if they discover that the cause is unjust. They may be fined at the discretion of the judges, for contravening these rules, or for bringing frivolous appeals. They are commanded to promote the settlement of disputes, by arbitration, to speak of the magistrates with respect, [II-23] and to treat their opponents with politeness.

They are very moderately paid, though the regulations which fix the amount of their fees are not rigidly attended to. One or two of them in Hannover are, comparatively, opulent men; but as a body, the advocates of Germany do not possess the same rank, and the same political influence, as the advocates of Britain. The influence of the sect arises from the number of educated lawyers who are magistrates, and who fill situations under government, but to which the professional advocate rarely aspires, and which he rarely obtains.

Their want of political influence may be in some measure owing to their numbers, which may have made the whole too cheap. There are fifty for the little town of Hannover, and a proportionate number for all the other towns in which a justice chancery is situated. A quantity also are scattered through the country, sometimes pleading before the amtman, sometimes filling, as magistrates of some of the smaller towns, the two offices of advocate and judge. Another reason probably is, that there are very few higher situations open to them. They may become secretaries to the magistracy of the larger towns; they may even become bürgermeisters, but this is rare; and all the higher places are possessed and almost hereditarily enjoyed by families, no member of which ever engages in [II-24] the business of an advocate. There can be no doubt that much of the importance of the counsellors or advocates in our country arises from public pleading, by which they embody themselves with the interests of the people, and make themselves so well known, that they are afterwards selected to fill offices of political importance. The advocates of France, like the advocates of Germany, were also an insignificant race of people till the Revolution and public pleadings brought them into notice, and gave them political importance. We cannot hesitate, therefore, to ascribe the want of importance of the professional advocates of Germany chiefly to the want in that country of all public pleading.

The order which has been mentioned above for the advocates of Hannover, to treat each other in their writings with politeness and respect, and the want of public pleading, do not allow that browbeating of witnesses,—that scandalous aspersion of private character; and that vile abuse which the gentlemen of the English bar sometimes heap on their unfortunate victims, and which is very often urged by foreigners as a great national reproach to us. In speaking with a German gentleman, who had been long in England, on the value of the two different modes of procedure, the secret one of Germany or the public one of England, most of his objections to our mode rested on the vituperation [II-25] our barristers allow themselves to use. No man’s character, he said, was safe from their attacks if it were for the interest of their clients to traduce it. A virtuous and a retired man might be dragged as an evidence to a court of law, or be compelled to appear as a prosecutor, and must submit to that mental torture which may be there inflicted, and which is possibly not inferior to the thumb-screws or the parchment boot of more arbitrary tribunals. If these gentlemen have any regard for their own interest, they should be careful how they bring discredit on their own profession, and how they bring the practice of public pleading into disrepute; for they may be assured, when they lose the countenance of the public, they will sink into that same degree of dependant insignificance which is common to advocates in other parts of Europe.

CHAPTER II.
hannover—civil laws and processes.↩

No civil code.—Different laws.—Dissimilarity between civil and criminal process.—Civil process described.—Great length.—Difference of opinion as to codes of law.—Opinions of Savigny and Thibaut.

In Hannover, so well as in England, there is no regular code of civil law, and its place is in some measure supplied, in both countries, by similar expedients. In the former country there are, and have been for many years, sorts of statuary laws made by the sovereign and the states conjointly; and, although the rescripts of the sovereign bear not the name of laws, yet, in their actual effects, they may be so considered. Some property is still held by feudal tenures; some by a tenure corresponding to our copy-hold; and some land is absolutely free. Because at one time each province was an independent power, each one has different statuary laws; and because the greater part of the towns were in like manner independent, because, in fact, each nobleman was a sovereign, the provinces, the towns, the villages, and even separate properties, [II-27] are all subjected to different laws and customs. When neither these, nor the statuary laws, nor the customs of the province, dictate what is to be done in matters of dispute, the jurisconsults apply to the law of Rome, and regulate their decisions by its precepts.

It will be easy for the reader to conceive the perplexity, complication, and confusion, which must necessarily ensue by mixing such dissimilar institutions as the ancient laws and customs of the almost barbarous, yet free inhabitants of the north of Germany, with the regulations of the polished, effeminate, and degraded inhabitants of the south of Italy. It will be easily conceived, also, what a quantity of power it must give the interpreters of the laws, that those by which they endeavour to regulate all the others, are written in a language which is not the language of the people. Laws, instead of being what Judge Blackstone has defined them, “a rule of conduct,” a beacon to direct us, are everywhere a trap for the unwary, an instrument employed by a particular class to enrich themselves at the expence of other men. It is impossible to describe these laws accurately without describing them minutely, and therefore nothing further will here be said of them.

In England civil and criminal processes are both very much alike. In both it is required to establish a fact, and in both it is done by an examination [II-28] of such evidence as each party can bring to support his plea. The names and the first steps of the process are different, but whatever has any influence on the finding of the jury, is in both substantially the same. In Germany they are different from one another, and the manner of conducting both is different in the different countries, and even in the different provinces of Hannover. Causes of small value, that is, not exceeding L. 2, brought before the minor tribunals, and having nothing very intricate in them, may be pleaded by speaking. Then, however, no persons are admitted but the advocates and the parties, so that publicity of judicial proceedings, except that sort of publicity before mentioned, is unknown.

When a person thinks he has a just cause of complaint against any other person, he applies to a regular advocate, and makes his complaint known to him. The advocate sifts, or ought to sift, the complaint to the bottom,—ought to hear what the man has to say, and what his witnesses have to say. When he has done this, and ascertained to what court the jurisdiction of the particular case belongs, he writes a petition to this court to grant him what he supposes just. In this petition, a duplicate of which must be given into court, the facts of the case are to be stated, the nature of the proof to be brought hinted at, the instruments which relate to the claims, either in the original or copies of them, [II-29] must be subjoined, and the remedy prayed for must be distinctly stated. Some courts have ordered,—for judges are allowed, in Germany as in England, to prescribe the conditions on which they will administer justice,—that each of these petitions shall relate to one point only. Consequently, when there are more points than one in dispute, either of law or of fact, a different petition must be written on each one. Other courts, again,—and this is now the general rule,—allow more points than one when the things litigated are not of great value, and the parties concerned are the same, to be mentioned in one petition. When the petitions also are made by conjoined persons, and when more than one person are complained of, they are now allowed to compress their complaint in one paper. The order to make more than one petition, shews the influence which jurisconsults have had, and the manner they have been disposed to employ it. Such an order could only have been made for the purpose of increasing their emoluments.

The judges privately examine this first petition, if it contains nothing reprehensible, they note the day on which it was given in, communicate it to the other party, and invite him to reply to it by a certain day. The chief court of appeal allows four weeks, the justice chanceries fourteen days; at the end of which time the answer must be given in. The first reply, called the Exceptions paper, contains the [II-30] reasons the opposite party has to urge either as to forms, or as to the jurisdiction of the court, why he ought not directly to reply to the accusation. In general it prays further time. There are some cases in which the exceptions are thought to make further pleading unnecessary. When this is thought not to be the case, the reply contains some bye-blows at the complaint. The advocate hints at his opponent’s inaccuracy, boasts the means he has of shaming him, and skirmishes and makes sham fight with him. The history of the cause may be told, and if victory is certain, the point in dispute may be fairly and clearly stated. The judge has the power of sending back for revisal, or of refusing all petitions which are not dressed according to forms; and if they send one twice back, the point in dispute is taken against the party who fails in form or in elegance of phrase.

In this stage of the process, either party can require the judge to make his opponent find bail to answer the complaint, or to carry on the process. Bonds are required when the parties have no landed property in the province, or they are required to deposit a sum of money, or give such other security as the judges suppose will secure their attendance.

In this stage the judges have a curious power of terminating the cause, they examine it to the bottom, and calling the parties before them, recommend [II-31] them to compromise it in the manner which seems fit to the judges. If their advice be not followed, and the thing in litigation will not pay the expence of the process, they are allowed to refuse further to hear the cause, and they decide it as they please. This is called suchen die Güte, and seems to be complained of by the lawyers as unsystematic. It does not allow them to chase one another through all the labyrinths of a process till they reach a formal decision.

Should the cause not be concluded in this manner, the Exceptions paper is communicated to the complainant, who replies in fourteen days, or a month, according as the cause is before the court of appeal, or one of the justice chanceries. The judge decides on the exceptions, or he communicates the reply to the opponent, who again rejoins in the prescribed time of fourteen days or a month. From these four papers the first judgment may be given. The judge, however, may allow the parties, or call on them, to make further explanations, but no cause is decided from less than these four papers. No others are necessary for a decision, there is no cross-examination of witnesses, no appealing to evidence, and the unhappy clients lose or gain their suit without the pleasure of knowing what is said in their behalf. Every man who raises a process is ignorant why he loses or gains an estate, except he learns it from the favour of his lawyer.

[II-32]

All the papers are written after a regular prescribed manner, and they are all subjected to stamp duties. Ours is not, therefore, the only country in which justice is taxed, and in the same proportion injustice protected. [3]

When the preparatory steps are considered which are necessary to engage a lawyer, to collect evidence, and to write out the complaint; when the time which is allowed an adversary to reply, and the time again demanded before the reply is replied to, and when the time which the judge takes in examining these papers before he can decide, is recollected, it is clear that the shortest possible time in which any process can be completed in Germany is more than two months. And the courts are here always sitting. There are no assizes twice a year in Germany. It is not, however, unusual for the judges, who are subjected to no control, to delay giving their judgment for several weeks or months. A cause is, therefore, seldom terminated with the least possible delay, and with the power of appealing from a first decision, it may last for many years.

The first judgment, also, may be interlocutory or definitive. In the former case, there is some [II-33] point which requires further elucidation, more documents are necessary, or more evidence is demanded, and the further hearing of the cause is then postponed for many months. When the judgment is definitive, it may then be appealed against, and when at length, after months and years of tedious waiting, a judgment is pronounced, from which there is no appeal, the law allows the execution to be staid in several ways. So tenacious have the judges been of doing every thing deliberately, and so fearful of not doing right, that a whole life is not thought too long to keep one case under consideration.

Law suits, when not absolutely endless, can yet be so protracted, when there are any funds to pay the lawyers, as to last the life of man; indeed, more than one process is known, which have lasted more than two or three generations. The interference of society, or rather of a few jurisconsults prostituting its name for their own selfish interest, is in such cases carried to the very climax of absurdity and injustice. They attempt to regulate the disputes of individuals, and points of litigation, that, if men listened only to the voice of right, might be thoroughly sifted and decided in a few hours or days, and that would be so decided but for them, they keep undecided for many years. The justice of lawyers is but another name for litigation and injustice. Yet men are told, and what is still more [II-34] absurd, they can believe, that such practices are for the good of society. What a cumbrous means have legislators here devised for ascertaining what is right. But we may trace in this, as in all their regulations, the influence of a particular class, who have never sought any thing beyond their own interest, which they have called the good of society.

On this point, probably, Britain has no model to offer to Germany. Ours, as it has been aptly called, superstitious process, when not positively so bad as that of the Germans, is most wretched, and is much more worthy of being amended or destroyed than of being imitated. There is a blind faith in other doctrines than the doctrines of religion. Men have long had such a faith in the assertions of lawyers, and they will assuredly continue to suffer under their dominion while they place so much confidence in them.

All the means by which a process can be lengthened, and all the law chicanery which men can invent, are regularly taught at German universities. There are professors who instruct in the art of conducting processes, and who are particular in dwelling on the means of gaining a victory for a bad cause, or of so lengthening it as at least to perplex and ruin an opponent. This is a perversion of the mind, and a teaching of injustice, yet it is denominated science and wisdom. We ought [II-35] not to wonder that a love of falsehood and chicanery should be common amongst men, while it is thus openly taught and praised.

There is one practice common throughout Germany which deserves mentioning, because it is a substitute, though possibly a bad one, and certainly an expensive one, for that publicity which all honest men should wish to give their transactions. The best security for both parties in all bargains of great value, in extensive contracts, and in mortgages, is to conduct them openly, and in the face of the world; then few men will cheat or be cheated. In countries where every thing is regulated, buying and selling, particularly buying and selling land, must be under the direction of the magistrate. In the towns no house can be sold without his permission, and in the country no land can be disposed of without his knowledge. Buying and selling is, in fact, regulated by laws, and under the direction of the magistrates. At every magistracy, and at every amt, a book is kept, in which every person who possesses landed property within the jurisdiction of the particular magistrate has a leaf to himself, in which his name is written, and his property described; or every person has his own separate book, which is deposited in the custody of the magistrate, and then the name of the person, where he resides, and a description of his property, are inscribed in his book. According to law, no [II-36] mortgages on land, and no sales of fixed property are valid, unless they are mentioned either on the leaf or in the books. No person, therefore, can make either a mortgage or a sale without the knowledge of the magistrate, nor without inscribing it here. Before money is lent on mortgage, recourse is always had to these books, or to a certificate signed by the magistrate, of the amount of the incumbrances on the estate. It costs something either to inspect the books, or to procure the certificate. This practice may possibly prevent fraud, which publicity would do equally well, without the expence of feeing the magistrate; but it is another means by which the interference of the government is extended to every concern of individuals. These books are called mortgage books, Hypotheken Bücher, and they are often the subject of regulations and ordinances. Indeed, they are thought one of the most important and wisest parts of the civil policy of Germany.

The evils naturally resulting from such mixed institutions, and from such confused codes of laws as exist in Germany, are acknowledged to be very great; and it may be worth while to state, that our intelligent neighbours are making great progress in this arduous field of human inquiries. Austria, Prussia, and Bavaria, have each a new code both of civil and criminal laws; and, during the usurpation of the French, the code Napoleon [II-37] was introduced into the kingdom of Westphalia. A whole code of laws, or rather five codes, making together a complete code both of laws and procedure, and written in a language that so many persons could read and understand, made a powerful impression on the Germans. Many of those who could compare it with the unintelligible, voluminous, and mixed laws of their own country, loudly demanded, when circumstances again restored Germany to its former governors, that one code for the whole of the country should be digested and introduced. Some wished for the code Napoleon, with such improvements as were necessary; others, that the most celebrated civilians of Germany should meet together in council, and frame a new code for their country. There arose, however, another party, composed, or at least led, by some of the most celebrated civilians themselves, who, after pointing out a great many errors in all the new codes, came to the conclusion, that there ought to be no codes of civil law.

This party was chiefly led by a Mr Savigny, professor of law in Berlin, whose work, entitled, Beruf unsere Zeit zur Gesetzgebung, written with a view of supporting the opinion, that there ought to be no written civil code, excited much attention; and by Mr Hugo, professor at Göttingen, who, in several papers in the Göttingesche gelehrte Anzeigen, supported the same side with much vigour [II-38] and ingenuity. These gentlemen are two of the most celebrated professors of Germany, and it appears that their writings have had a considerable influence in checking the rage which did exist in Germany for making new and simple codes of laws.

I can give but a faint view of the principal arguments used by this party. They were, that the rights of the different classes of society were never stationary, and that the knowledge of these rights, or the science of right, Rechtswissenchaft, grew with the people themselves, and with their progress in civilization. That it was, therefore, wrong to make that a positive law to-day which an improvement in knowledge might hereafter shew to be unjust. That because the opinions of the people as to right were constantly changing, it was not possible for any written precepts constantly to express those opinions. That as the rights of men in society became more complicated, they required a particular study, and that the persons who made those rights their study, acquired more knowledge on the subject than other individuals, and they might be considered as the legal depositaries of the laws, the representatives of the opinions, and, in truth, the living codes of the society. Medicine and mathematics, they said, were constantly improving, and so was the science of right, and that it was equally absurd to make codes of medicine [II-39] and mathematics as to make codes of rights or laws. That, as the former was left to the doctors, the latter should be left to the jurisconsults, who, constantly studying what was right, and constantly improving their decisions, were more to be relied on than codes of laws which only contain the legal knowledge of the age in which they were made. This was the main principle of their objections, and they supported their arguments by referring to the common law of England, which was rather decisions of judges than a written code. And also by referring to our acts of parliament, which were described to be decrees suitable to the knowledge of the times, and which constantly improved our laws.

They still further affirmed, that the code, if it were made by several civilians, would assuredly be unequal in its parts, if it were made by one alone, it would assuredly want wisdom, and would fail in giving satisfaction to all parties. They affirmed, that it was impossible men should make a perfect code of laws, and that, therefore, it was better the power of constantly amending the practice of law should remain in the hands of the civilians.

They were perfectly sensible of the great advantages which would result from one set of rules being followed throughout Germany; but they affirmed, that, owing to one system of teaching being followed in most of the universities, owing to the [II-40] education of all the civilians being the same, to law books being common to the whole country, and owing to the great bases of laws being in all the different countries of Germany the same, this benefit was already in a great measure attained, and would be perfectly attained as the society increased in knowledge of what was right.

There is probably much truth in the arguments which apply to the unfitness of men to make codes of laws, and there is certainly much cunning, or much wisdom, in the civilians claiming, from their studies, a power of deciding on the rights of all men. They openly claim to be the depositaries of the legal knowledge, and the representatives of the opinions of society. The jurisconsults of Germany have long been the possessors of the Roman law, and according to it they have decided questions concerning the property of the Germans. They have studied the quibbles of this law, and with them they have perverted the sense of right among the people. They have been the legal priests, but most assuredly have never been the representatives of the people.

The chiefs of the opposite party were a Mr Thibaud, professor of civil law in the university at Heidelberg, and a Mr Feuerbach, who lives, I believe, at Munich, and was employed in making the code for Bavaria. The arguments they principally urged were the uncertainty of the present civil [II-41] law, from being written in a language that was no longer in common use; that there was no perfect copy of all the Roman laws; and that criticism was unable to supply the defects: they pointed out the possibility of different professors interpreting these codes differently; they expatiated on the confusion which existed; and they enforced the fitness of the season, when all Germany was re-united, to form one code for the whole empire. They did not despair of making a code much better than any which at present exists, and they demanded one as the only security for the rights and property of individuals.

Without pretending to give an opinion on the great point here disputed, Whether a written code of civil laws is of itself good or bad, I may be permitted to remark, that the dispute itself is an evidence of the rapid improvement which the Germans are making. Such questions involve the best interests of society, and it can only be from fully discussing them, that these interests can be well protected. Accustomed as we are to hear it constantly held up as a matter of first necessity, that every society should be regulated by laws, our faith is somewhat staggered by the learned disputing on the utility of laws. For unwritten laws can only be considered as vague traditions, and somewhat like no laws at all. To dispute the utility of a written code is assuredly to dispute the utility of [II-42] laws altogether. Yet this is now disputed by some of the most celebrated men in Germany.

Although many individuals who are not professional men have felt interested in this dispute, and although many a wish has been expressed for a new code; for the want of uniformity and simplicity in the present codes is what the great mass of the people complain of; yet I do not know an instance of any person taking part in it who was not a professional man. Unfortunately all such questions are decided by what are called learned men; by men intimately acquainted with the pandects and the institutes; by men accustomed to pry after quirks and detect trifling discrepancies, but who are not men of enlarged views, nor much acquainted with the business of life. They are too much educated not to be full of the prejudices of education; and there would be a greater certainty of improvement, if such questions as the one here mentioned were to be decided by men, and not by civilians.

CHAPTER III.
criminal laws—processes and punishments.↩

Criminal code of Hannover.—Remarks on it.—Unfitness of the code.—Is not followed in decisions.—What the judges do follow.—Torture abolished.—When last inflicted.—Criminal process secret.—Is regulated by the convenience of the judge.—Great length of processes.—Fail to instruct the people.—Tribunals formerly public.—Number of persons punished in Hannover in a year.—Proportion of females.—Proportion of thefts.—Cruelty of punishments.—Are more humane than formerly.—Few persons punished in Hannover for coining or forgery.—Punishments of the police.—Comparative statement of the number of persons punished in Great Britain and Hannover.

The only code of criminal laws which exists in Hannover,—if it deserve the name of a code,—is the celebrated Carolina, or Hals, or Peinliche Gerichts Ordnung of the Emperor Charles V. This was formerly the penal code for all Germany. Austria, Prussia, and Bavaria, [4] have now adopted new codes. As it has long been the chief and only [II-44] criminal code of the country, it must have had a considerable influence on the manners of the people. It is eminently worthy of remark, however, because it shews clearly how perfectly unfit men formerly were to legislate for the present time. And we may infer from this how perfectly unfit the laws, which the present race of legislators are so eager to make, will be for posterity. There was no monarch of his time who was superior in talents to Charles V. and in making this code he was aided by all the learning and wisdom which Germany then possessed.

In this code crimes are not classified, they are set down as chance has directed. Enchantment is ordered to be punished as severely as murder. Minor offences are punished by cutting out the tongue, or cutting off the ears or the fingers, or by some other cruelties. But its chief abominable principle is, that it recommends and recognizes no other means for the discovery of truth but the infliction of the torture. It says, at page 17, as a general rule, “In cases where it is certain crimes have been committed, if the accused deny his guilt, he shall be compelled to confess the truth by torture, in order that for all well-known crimes the final judgment may be given, and punishment may be executed with the least delay and expence possible.”

The torture was not only used when it was certain [II-45] a crime had been committed, but also when it was only suspected. At p. 68, this code says, for one of its particular rules, “When a female who, on such grounds,—as having been seen with an enlarged body, and having secretly delivered herself,—shall be suspected of child-murder, and she shall deny it, she shall be brought to confession by torture, in order that she may be finally judged to death.” We here see distinctly that connection which former legislators supposed to exist between crime and punishment. The former had been committed, and they thought, without any reference to the good of society, it was necessary to inflict the latter. People were to be tortured that their confessions might justify the judges in inflicting punishment. There seems to have been no principle whatever followed, more than a vague notion of some conformity between guilt and burning to death.

The death which was to be inflicted for child-murder was drowning, and this was a step towards improvement, for a former custom is mentioned of flaying and burying the criminal alive. That these legislators might not, however, be too humane, it is stated in the same article, that if child-murder is frequent, burying alive and flaying may be used; and, further, that, “with the advice of men knowing in the law, the flesh may be torn from the criminal [II-46] with burning pincers.” Such is the humanity of this law.

We shall, however, be more thoroughly sensible how unfit these men were to legislate, if we attend for one moment to the nature of that crime which they employed torture to discover, and which they punished with death. At present it is no longer doubted, that society is rather injured than benefited by a number of children being thrown upon it. So far, therefore, as the increase of the society is concerned, it is not injured by infanticide. Though an infant be born alive, a few moments of misery can give it no connection with the world; it can have no knowledge of enjoyment: and if its being be extinguished before it have well existed, it may be doubted if it suffer any injury. How common is the exclamation, that the poor child was well rid of a troublesome world. Neither the child, therefore, nor the society, can be said to suffer by the crime of the mother. But the child is in fact a part of the mother, and might be as great a source of enjoyment to her as the faculty of vision. To deprive herself of a mother’s love, and her child of life, is synonymous with doing herself a serious injury. The state of misery to which a woman in European society must be reduced before she can bring herself to do so foul a deed, gives her a claim to our pity; and it is most cruel to add to her misery, [II-47] by torturing her to confess what she had done herself so much injury to conceal. Infanticide is a terrible crime, inasmuch as it is a terrible injury to the unhappy mother who commits it; but while it is concealed, it can do the society no injury whatever.

By the very terms of the law in question—by its directing an examination by midwives, and to force a confession by torture, it supposes the crime not to be known, but only suspected. Being unknown, it could have no effect as an example; and the more perfectly it was concealed, the more exclusively did the whole evil belonging to it fall on the unhappy mother. By lawgivers endeavouring to discover such a crime, and by making it known, they spread that horror which men so naturally feel on such an occasion, through a greater number of bosoms, and they inform all those from whom it was most desirable such information should be for ever concealed, that it is possible to commit such a crime, and yet escape punishment. An idea that they never could have formed, but for the trouble the lawmakers took to discover and inflict punishment on the crime. In this case it is the law itself, it is the meddling of legislators, which in reality causes all the evil which may fall on the society from the conduct of the female. And if the evil which any action causes to the society be the measure of the guilt of that action, legislators [II-48] are, in such cases as this, far more guilty than the unhappy mothers. From the terms of this law it seems as if legislators delighted in discovering crimes; and they ordered the most horrible torments, to produce a confession that might in their opinions justify the infliction of death.

It must be clear, from the specimens which have been given of this code, and from this one case being so contrary to our present feelings and our modes of thinking, that the legislators of that period were perfectly unfit to dictate the laws which ought at present to govern the world. And surely such an example should teach us, that many of the boasted codes of the present time will appear equally cruel and absurd to posterity. With such specimens of ignorance and failure before us, and how many might be added? it is most strange that we should yet be taught, that legislators are the greatest of human beings, and that to obey and reverence them is one of the greatest virtues.

The Carolina is not only very unsuitable to the present time, but it is also very imperfect; in many cases, therefore, it is not followed; and many others occur for which it prescribes no punishment. In all these cases the judges follow their own good sense. They moderate the punishments which the code orders; they punish many actions not mentioned by it; and in all their judgments they appear to act more according to the present state [II-49] of knowledge in the society, than according to any fixed rules. One advantage which has resulted from this is, that infanticide, which the code orders to be so cruelly punished, is punished with imprisonment for a few years. When the crime is only suspected, the torture is no longer employed to force a confession, and the pain of concealing delivery is only further enhanced by confinement for some months. On this point our neighbours are superior in humanity to us. They regard the anguish of the mother as a severe punishment, and no longer imbrue their hands in the blood of the unhappy and guilty wretch who already suffers the penalty which nature inflicts on her crime.

What the judges are taught while they study at the university, and the books which have been written by celebrated professors on criminal jurisprudence, serve to make the judgments of different judges alike; and all of them are therefore guided by some common rules. The professors who lecture at the universities on criminal jurisprudence, explain the present state of knowledge on this subject. They give their own opinions, and the opinions which they have collected from other writers; and these, with the sentences previously pronounced, form that body of knowledge on which the judges act when they condemn any man to punishment. This is, in fact, a sort of code; but as it has no other authority than that of reason, it is always [II-50] modified by the private opinions of the professors and of the judges. Hence it is gradually and constantly amended as the society improves in knowledge. The principal work which is at present used as a guide is, “The Principles of Criminal Jurisprudence, by Professor Meister of Göttingen.” There is one evil, however, belonging to this practice, which is perfectly evident. The judges having it in their power to institute investigations not only into acknowledged crimes, but into such actions as they think criminal; having this discretionary power to punish; not being exposed to public censure; and anxious, like all such persons, to prove the value and utility of their ministry, they punish a great number of actions which are regarded in other countries as out of the common jurisdiction of tribunals. Thus, for example, “a midwife neglecting her duties,” “quarrelling with a land-dragoon,” “insolence,” muthwilligkeit, “drunkenness,” “not profiting by example,” are all crimes pregnant with mischief, but utterly beyond the proper jurisdiction of any tribunal. Much, undoubtedly, of this interference is caused by the judges seeing no other power but their own to check and restrain the conduct of men. The ill health of the drunkard, the loss of practice by the negligent midwife, the constant enmity and quarrels occasioned by insolence, are nothing visible to the judge; and he must see [II-51] something, or he will not believe any punishment is felt.

From the specimen of improvement which has been mentioned above, however, it seems on the whole to be good that laws should in their execution be thus left to the magistrates, and should thus be constantly modified by the opinions of the day. Possibly these opinions alone would be a better guide than any code which should remain unalterable. It is no bad thing that the writings of clever men are allowed to have all that influence which in Germany is allowed to the instructions of the professors; and this system would be worthy of all praise, provided the trials were all carried on in public, and the judges were more subjected to public opinion. But almost the only point in which civil and criminal processes agree is, that they are both secret.

A great improvement has recently been made in the criminal process of Hannover, by abolishing the torture. The French abolished it, but it was again introduced on the return of the country under the present government. It has since then been several times practised. In the town of Hannover, a man was tortured so late as the month of March 1818. His crime was stealing a cow, and the judges were anxious to make him confess. In 1817, two other persons were tortured in the same place; and in 1818, three other [II-52] men were tortured in various parts of the kingdom. It was in the month of December 1818 that torture was finally abolished.

The first-mentioned instance of torture excited a great deal of attention in Germany; and there can be no doubt that the reprobation with which it was treated in many public journals was the chief cause why it was afterwards abolished. It may be reckoned as one benefit which has been gained for humanity by men devoting their attention to political subjects. If no others were to follow, this will remain a lasting memorial of the improvement of the Germans in political knowledge. It may be quoted also as proof of the falsity of that perhaps general opinion, that mankind are depraved. The voice of the multitude is generally on the side of humanity.

At the same time that the torture was abolished, some alterations were also said to have been made in the mode of conducting criminal processes; but what they precisely were is not known. I shall therefore here endeavour to describe the former criminal process, and the reader will be enabled to form some estimate of the effect it has had on the character of the people.

It has before been mentioned what courts have a criminal jurisdiction. One of the first regulations concerning criminal processes is, that the examinations shall never be carried on by one person [II-53] alone. If there are not two judges belonging to the court, or if from any circumstances one only is able to attend, he must take with him a notary, or an auditor from some other court, or some qualified person, to attend the examination. In cities, and under the chanceries, where the magistracy is numerous, the examining judge must not only be attended by an actuary, but also by two persons called Schoffen or Schoppen. At present these persons are some of the officers of justice, but originally they were impartial persons taken to witness that all things were conducted properly. And prior to the introduction of the Roman law, and of secret trials, they seem to have had a vote in the judgment. This is a point in which the forms for the administration of justice have very much deteriorated. The whole of the examination, the questions put, and the answers given, the names and characters of the persons present, and every incident which during the examination may help to prove either the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, must be written by the actuary in a clear legible hand. Finally, it is ordered, that the person who conducts the examination shall never of his own authority order the torture, or punishment of any kind, to be inflicted. The written examination must first be submitted to other magistrates, who alone can order either punishment or torture. There is reason, [II-54] however, to believe this latter rule was not always attended to, and that the whip was frequently employed by the examinators of the minor tribunals, as a convenient mode to make the accused give consistent answers.

In case any person is accused by another of having committed a particular crime, the judge examines the life and general conduct of both parties, and the probable motives of the accuser; and he must have reason to believe that the accusation is just, before he subjects the accused to a particular examination. In cases, however, of public and notorious crimes, the judges in whose district they may have been committed are not to wait till some person is accused, but they are immediately to proceed in what is called a general inquisition. They examine all the circumstances, visit the spot where the crime was committed, inspect the body, if a person has been murdered, open their ears to any reports against the probable criminal; and when they are satisfied on good grounds that any person is guilty, they subject that person to what is called a special inquisition.

The only protection which the community has in this case against the power of the magistrates is, that they are warned to be cautious in their proceedings, and that if they do any wrong, they may be punished by a superior court. One instance of a judge being punished for improper [II-55] official conduct is known. But when the committing is also the examining judge, he has such a power to give a colour of probability to the accusation, he can make such a multitude of excuses in his zeal, and the esprit d’ corps is so strong in the profession, that the possibility of punishing him if he do wrong is so remote, that it can afford to the ignorant and poorer classes of the community no protection whatever against his power. It is at all times of great importance to any community to have a protection against its own servants; but it must now be doubly important to the Germans, when they are beginning to struggle for political freedom, and the judges are the dependant servants of the government. To render the judicial independent of the executive power, to provide some security against the power of the judges, and to have open courts, should be some of the first reforms demanded by the patriots of Germany.

All the circumstances which justify special inquisition justify the arrest of the suspected person. It is ordered that all the tribunals shall be provided with two prisons—one for security, another for punishment. It has been expressly forbidden that any one hardship whatever shall be inflicted on the prisoner, which is not necessary to secure him. If the suspected person be loaded with irons, be shut up in a damp unwholesome dungeon, as he is in England, [II-56] if he have not “full light and full liberty to read, and pray, and sing,” it must be in defiance of very precise orders which have been given on the subject. Where circumstances allow of kindness, prisoners intended for trial are not, in fact, subjected to any hardships not necessary for their security.

The liberty of the subject is also protected by the law allowing bail to be put in for the appearance of the person accused, when the crime is not liable to be punished by death, or imprisonment for life. He may either be bailed by people being bound for him, or by his delivering up such a quantity of property as may be thought necessary to ensure his attendance. Even in cases which involve the severest punishment, the Chanceries have the power, if they think fit, of admitting the accused person to bail. This law is not a dead letter, it is in daily use, though its operation does not extend to persons whom the government might think fit to punish. Allowing bail, however, also depends very much on the will of the magistrate. Though the law prescribes it, he allows it or not as he thinks fit. This custom of bailing is, I believe, confined at present to the north of Germany.

So soon as possible after a person is apprehended on suspicion, the judge is to examine him, to warn him to speak the truth, to threaten him with [II-57] the torture or horse-whipping, and to ask him if he will confess to have committed the crime of which he is accused. On the first examination nothing further is done. If the accused can bring forward proof of an alibi, or that the accusation is founded in malice, he is allowed to do it in writing, before the expiration of fourteen days. After this period the judges consult their own convenience as to proceeding in the examination. If any circumstances whatever induce them either to delay or to hurry the trial, it is perfectly at their option to choose the time for its further prosecution. The superior courts may be applied to, and may sometimes be prevailed on to order the inferior courts to proceed or stop a trial; but with this exception, the prisoner is entirely at the mercy of his judge.

Prior to further examination, the judge writes out all the questions he means to ask the prisoner; to him, however, they are not communicated, till the judge requires him without his advocate being present to answer them. The apparent aim of most of the questions is, to induce the prisoner to confess his guilt.

The judge has the power of examining such witnesses as he pleases; and before he examines them, the questions he means to ask them are communicated to the prisoner, who has the privilege of suggesting to the judge those questions he may [II-58] wish asked of the witness. Witnesses may be examined in presence of the accused; and when, from any circumstances, they cannot be brought to the place where he is confined, he may empower some person to attend their examination in his name. When he does not do this, the judge does it for him. No advocate employed by the prisoner is allowed to suggest to the judge what questions to ask; nor does any other cross-examination of witnesses take place at this time, other than what the judge thinks necessary for the discovery of the truth. If the witnesses have deposed to something denied by the accused, the judge may confront them, and the accused may then remark on all the absurdities, falsities, and other imperfections which he may discover in the testimony of the witnesses. This confrontation, however, is not a necessary duty towards the prisoner, it is a part left to the discretion of the judge. Of course, the judge has equally the power of confronting the witnesses and accomplices one with another.

At this stage, the justice chanceries, or, if the examination is conducted by some minor court, that university faculty or superior court to which the acts of the examination have been sent, may order, if it think it right, the torture to be inflicted. This order is not to be immediately made known to the accused, but he is first to be more strongly exhorted [II-59] to tell the truth. If he persist in denying his guilt, he is to be threatened; but one or two days are to be allowed him to deliberate. He may now affirm, on oath, that he believes he can yet produce something more in his defence, for which a few days may be allowed him. His further defence is judged of by the court to which the acts were before sent, and if it confirms its former judgment, the torture is then to be applied.

The judges collect in the court; the prisoner is again questioned, and his answers registered. If he still denies, he is introduced into the torture-chamber. The executioner is informed to what degree the torture is to be carried. The eyes of the prisoner are bound, and this degree is to be applied for half an hour, or more than an hour, unless the prisoner in the mean time confesses. The instruments employed are various, but the principal one is the whip, while the man is fastened to the wall with iron cramps, and a judge and a surgeon direct the pain to be augmented or diminished, in proportion as the criminal is obstinate, as he relaxes, or suffers. In a pamphlet which was published anonymously, but which was evidently written by some person filling a subordinate situation in the courts, this is called a wholesome method for the discovery of truth, and the author appeared extremely indignant that it was then no longer allowed to be practised by the minor tribunals. [II-60] He compares it to opium, which may be sometimes misemployed, but which is, in the hands of a skilful practitioner, of sovereign usefulness. A solution of the celebrated ironical proposition of the Marquis Beccaria, “The force of the muscles, and the sensibility of the nerves being given, it is required to find the degree of pain necessary to make an accused person confess himself guilty of a given crime,” appears to have been sometimes actually aimed at. It is commanded, “that when the tortured man confesses his guilt, the degree of tortore at which he does this shall be accurately marked,” in order, possibly, to know at what degree to begin with the next similarly circumstanced criminal.

The accused person is allowed, in all cases that involve a greater degree of punishment than confinement for two years, to select one of the advocates received by the court, to defend him. If he be too poor to pay a defender, the court appoints one, and the advocates fulfil this duty in turns. The court orders such a reward as it thinks the advocate employed merits. The advocate is allowed to see all the acts of the process, and, if necessary, to take copies of them. He is allowed to speak to the person he defends in presence of one of the judges. Should the prisoner wish to see the acts after an order has been given to inflict torture, he is only to be allowed to see them [II-61] when the judge is fully convinced it is not intended to use them as a means of bringing a suit against the person denouncing the accused, but that they are only sought by the prisoner as a means to defend himself better. After this the final judgment is formally announced to the criminal, who may still demand further time for his defence, and this, too, is at the option of his judges. In the whole of the proceeding, every thing is left to the examining judges, who seek for evidence, examine so far as they please, and so often as they please. It is something in which no man but the sufferers and the judges has any concern.

There are some conspicuous faults in this manner of trial. First, there is no time fixed during which the process is to be proceeded in. All this is left entirely to the discretion of the judges, and the consequence is, that criminal processes last in doubtful and difficult cases for some years. There are instances in which the value of the property stolen would have been more than compensated by the labour of the accused skilfully directed during the time he was shut up for trial. Criminal processes for stealing things of no great value last sometimes more than two years. Throughout Germany, even in those countries in which new codes of laws have been introduced, the forms of procedure are nearly the same, and in 1817, a trial was concluded at Vienna that had lasted twenty-six [II-62] months, and had cost the public 90,000 florins, or, according to the value of an Austrian paper florin at that period, about L. 2600 Sterling. And this was the trial of a murderer who expiated many crimes at the gallows. It was not enough that he was convicted of one, but his whole life was tried, and he was questioned as to every year of his existence. In no case, however complete may be the proof, can the process in any degree be ever assimilated to a summary, or, as it has been better named, a rational process. Delay is so great, that the criminal, when he is to be punished, may forget, and certainly the man injured must long have forgotten, what was the crime committed. One of the good effects attributed to punishments must by this mode be absolutely lost. They follow the offences at so great a distance of time, that no man can connect one with the other, and they can never operate as an example.

The trial is in a manner secret. The judges, the advocate, and the criminal, are the only public. It is for the interest of society that men are tried and condemned. Trials, as well as punishments, are instructive to the world. They are intended not only to prove the guilt to the judges, but to demonstrate to mankind the justice of the sentence, which can never be known unless all the proceedings are known. Between the accusation and the punishment, how many proofs may be imagined of innocence? [II-63] Till these are known, punishments decreed by secret tribunals can never deter from crimes, because no man can be convinced that they are the consequences of guilt. They are the consequences of something unseen and unknown, of the opinions, prejudices, and passions of the judges; they may, and they do, reduce other men to a dependance on the administrators of the law, but they bring home to no man a conviction of the evil of crime, and can, therefore, correct no man’s immorality.

What a different idea do men form of justice, as its proceedings are open or secret. In the former case, when it is at all administered as it ought to be, its punishments may be distinctly traced to be the consequences of guilt. In the latter, it is for the mass of society a dreadful power that strikes like lightning, and like the tempest. Their causes are unknown, and they are only seen and felt by the fear, and pain, and destruction they occasion. When justice is publicly administered, it is known to be an establishment of men which men may inquire into and improve. When it is privately administered, men regard it as something above them, and they submit to it with all its accumulated horrors, as they would to a superior being, whom it is impossible to resist or control. Its rules are even above its ministers, and thus the absurd institutions of ignorant men are made fetters to their better informed posterity. It is said in favour of secret [II-64] proceedings, that they can reach man in his most private doings, and only stigmatize him with punishment when he is really found to be guilty. That they are like the powers of conscience, always and only felt when wrong has been committed. But, to prove their efficacy as a means of preventing crimes, they should be equally directed, like the silent penalties of nature, against all the actions which produce evil to man. The heartless inactivity which slumbers through life, the turbulent restlessness which permits no peace, the makers of bad laws, so well as law-breakers, should all have proportionate penalties inflicted on them by secret tribunals. Till they extend their power to every evil caused by man to which man is subject, and this is impossible, they can only be regarded as an inefficient means of preventing crimes. Men also console themselves when they are punished by asserting they do not deserve punishment. Secrecy of trial must always aid this, because it affords the criminal a chance of being believed.

The proceedings of the tribunals were public during the usurpation of the French, they are now public in a part of Germany, their publicity has been demanded in some of the writings of the day, and as they were public at a period long past, that they should now again be so may not only be claimed as a formerly existing right, but as a great probable benefit.

[II-65]

While it is cheerfully admitted that the spirit of criminal justice is improved, that the cruelty of punishments is fast diminishing, that probably none of the judges deliberately commit injustice, it cannot be denied that, in form, the tribunals are much worse than formerly. They have been entirely regulated by jurisconsults, whose thoughts have in no country ever gone beyond the consideration of their own sect, and whose present influence is one of the worst evils under which Germany, and perhaps Europe and America, suffer. But Germany appears particularly cursed by them, because they have there introduced the laws and usages of a foreign and enslaved people.

The following passage will both shew the former state of the tribunals of Hannover, and that the opinion here enunciated of jurisconsults is not singular. “How honourable and simple was everything before this new class of men, learned doctors of the law, was known. The prince held a court in the open air, attended by his nobility, some few times in the year, either in the Baumgarten at Hannover, by Lauenrode, or on the Leineberge by Göttingen. He gave justice to those who came before him, and many came without support, and without any person to speak for them; because they who had been injured could best explain in what manner, and why they believed they had been injured. So soon as the news were spread that the prince and his nobility [II-66] were again assembled, people came quickly together from all the neighbouring country. As the delay of his coming had made many people forget why they would complain, and as the manner of proceeding in each dispute terminated it quickly, in a few days quietness was restored to the whole district. In disputes between nobles, or when nobles, clergymen, or the officers of the prince, were accused, justice was seldom delayed to these periodical times, but the accuser sought the prince, followed him far and near, and always found a hearing when elderly experienced nobles were with him, whom he could use as witnesses or jurymen, Schoppen, to assist him in pronouncing judgment.”

“All the relations, however, that sprang out of the whole circumstances of the society, were without foresight, unsparingly destroyed, as the doctors of the Roman law gathered about the courts. They not only introduced new principles of decision, but gave to the whole of the proceedings a finer form, which, in a short time, necessarily made the whole of the business their property.” [5] Laws in Germany are still called the property of a sect of men, Ein casten Güt. At a former period, therefore, [II-67] courts of justice were held in the open air, and justice was not then a mystery known only to a few adepts. It was rude, perhaps, but it was something which every man knew, which was then equal to the wants and knowledge of the society, and which has only been kept below the level of our wants and knowledge, by having been monopolized to trade with by the learned doctors of the law.

In the whole of the kingdom of Hannover, between the 1st of May 1817, and the 1st of May 1818, there were punished by the different tribunals, for the crimes of

[II-68]

Of these 525 persons 106 were females, consequently rather more than one-fifth only of the persons punished belong to the other sex. Similar, or rather greater, proportions in favour of women are found in other countries, and if punishments be at all an index to crimes, this proves the females to be much more virtuous than the males.

Here also, as in all other European countries, notwithstanding more severe laws have been in constant existence for the punishment of theft than for any other crime, the greater part of the punishments are inflicted for some violations of that right of property which all men allow to be, as it at present exists, the mere creation of social institutions. Without setting myself to find out whether any better system might be introduced or not, it is clear that the greater part of the crimes now punished by the laws of Europe are occasioned by the social institutions of Europe. Whether other and greater crimes would not exist without these institutions, is not at present a matter of inquiry; but it is a certain fact, that somewhat more than four-fifths of all the crimes punished by the laws of Europe are violations of the artificial right of property. In vindication of nature and of mankind from the aspersion of legislators, it must always be remembered, that the great part of the existing crimes of men are not crimes of the heart, or of natural [II-69] passions, but of ignorance, and of the systems of these legislators themselves.

Among the thefts are a very few burglaries; they are mostly stealing in houses and gardens, or stealing of horses, sheep, or linen. Some persons have been punished for stealing game. Many of them have been repeatedly punished. In Hannover, therefore, as in England, the punishments of the laws do not deter from committing crimes. Another curious fact concerning this land,—the females of which, common report says, and I believe says true, are not so chaste as in our country, is, that adultery is punished. The same crime was punished in France before the Revolution, and is still occasionally punished in that country, which seems also to substantiate the assertion, that the punishments of laws do not deter from committing crimes.

Out of the 525, 35 were punished with death. Some were strangled, some were hung, some were beheaded, some were broken on the wheel, and some were dragged to the place of execution on a cow’s hide, stretched over a hurdle, and were beat to death with iron clubs, beginning, as the sentence says, at the head. Such barbarities are disgraceful, and were it not that they have never been made a matter of public examination, it would be extraordinary how they should be continued by the mild, kind, amiable, and enlightened [II-70] Germans. The sentiments of men are formed by their gradual progress in knowledge, while the punishments inflicted by the laws are the remnants of times of ignorance and barbarity. Though institutions do not stop, they impede our progress; and nothing but the native goodness of the heart, and the common interest of men, enable them to triumph over the obstacles which the vain meddling of a few legislators have laid in their paths.

Cruel as the present punishments appear, they are now much more humane than formerly. Those ordered by the code of Charles V. to be inflicted have been mentioned, and, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was customary to make the punishment of death so painful as possible. The criminal was frequently tortured in public, and every fine feeling was destroyed by frequent and barbarous executions. “The robbers of the gold table at Lüneburg were suspended from a gallows; on the following day when they were not dead they were taken down, their tongues were cut out and burnt, and the mangled body was again hung up by the heels, and dogs were tied up near it.” [6]

The principal crimes punished with death are murder, arson, highway robbery, with attempt to murder, and repeated stealing. The other punishments [II-71] inflicted are confinement, barrow-wheeling, and public labour, called “Karren schieben,” for the men, and confinement in a penitentiary, Zucht-house, for the women. Some are confined for life, and some for the short space of three months. All the intervening degrees are inflicted. These are the punishments which are generally in use. It is, however, sometimes customary to punish people for minor offences by making them stand against a wall, or against a post, with an iron collar round their necks. There are such posts, with collars, or collars chained to the churches, in most of the parishes, and the offences which they are employed to punish may be known by the inscriptions sometimes painted on them,—“For disobedient servants.” The custom which Selwyn, or some other wit, facetiously denominated a proof of a civilized country, exposing the bodies of men suspended from a gallows, for the purpose of terrifying others, is still continued in Hannover. One that I saw had been a robber and a murderer, but appeared to have committed no crime so great as refusing to confess when tortured. Other persons had in their agonies accused him, but his sturdy nerves, or his consciousness of innocence, refused obedience to the rack, and his tongue uttered not, at the command of his judges, the mechanical acknowledgments of his guilt. He was perhaps guilty, but his honour was piqued, as a superior [II-72] thief, not to confess, and, after having been racked, he died protesting his innocence.

Few persons are punished in Hannover compared to the number punished in England, for uttering or coining base money, and the crime of forgery is almost unknown. These facts appear to prove certainly one, perhaps two things. They certainly prove that the number of forgeries in England are the effect of our paper money, and paper money has been created by a regulation of the society, and they make it probable that punishments, forgeries being very severely and very generally punished in England, absolutely cause an increase of the crimes punished. This is probably an effect of all the punishments inflicted by laws.

To have a correct view of the mass of misery which is directly inflicted by the laws of Hannover under the name of punishments, those which are inflicted by the police, which, though trifling as to severity, are of importance as to numbers, must be added to those which have been already mentioned. It inflicts a few days’ imprisonment, or it punishes with fines, for what often appeared to be very trifling offences. The police of the town of Hannover alone punishes on an average 180 persons monthly, and lists of the persons punished are regularly published to serve as an example to others, and to prove that the police is an active useful institution. To establish a body of men to [II-73] keep order and punish crimes, is like establishing a legislative body. This is encouraged to make laws, and that to inflict pain. The members must shew that they are useful. The number of persons they punish is the index of this utility, and it is their object to shock us with the number of crimes which are committed, rather than to prevent them. To establish such a body of men argues in the society an avarice of blood and pain, which it is their business to gratify. A disposition to gratify it, even unjustly, is known to belong to the police of France and Germany, to the constables of England, and to the darogahs of India; [7] and the fact ought to caution us not to empower and set apart a particular body of men to detect crimes and to punish them.

Taking the population of Hannover at 1,314,124, and that of England and Wales at 10,000,000, the number of people punished in the former country, in one year, without including those punished by the police, is 525. The proportion which this number bears to the population of the country should make the number punished in one year, in such a population as is stated to be in England and Wales, 3995, but in the same year there were 13,932 actually committed to prison, and 9050 punished. The police punishments of our country [II-74] are also not included in this amount. In Hannover, one person out of 2503 is punished; in Britain, one out of 719 is committed, and one out of 1104 is punished. It may be fairly stated, therefore, that there are proportionately twice as many persons punished in England and in Wales as in Hannover; and it must be further remarked, that many of those persons punished in Hannover are punished for trifling crimes, such as never enter our gaol calenders. This is a frightful picture of the comparative morality of England. At the same time, it is pleasing to record, that the number of executions were comparatively less;—in Hannover, one out of 17 of the whole number of persons punished was executed; in England and Wales only one out of 78. We have, therefore, more punishments, but a less number of persons are punished with death.

Unhappily for the cause of freedom, this part of the character of our country is too well known on the Continent. Much of the evil which disfigures other countries is hidden from the view of the world, but there is not a speck on our illuminated land that is not seen and known. She is bespattered, too, with much imagined dirt, and she may well say, with Schiller’s Maria Stuart,

“Das Aergste weiss die welt von mir, und ich
Kann sagen, ich bin besser als mein Ruf.” [8]

[II-75]

To us this sort of exposure is a consolation, for it must bring amendment after it, but it is pernicious to the reputation of freedom. All its adversaries, and many of its friends, attribute the crimes of our country to its political freedom. I have met many sensible men in Germany who entertained such an opinion as this, and who preferred their own all-directing governments to ours, because they thought a less degree of interference on the part of government would bring on Germany the same atrocity of crime of which they read in English newspapers. In this opinion there are probably few of our countrymen who will join. The multitude of crimes in Great Britain is much more to be attributed to the increase of taxation, and to the many temptations held forth by our high duties to break through the principles of virtue, and then fall into the deepest abyss of vice. We have been fleeced to build up the old despotisms of the world, which has degraded our people, and half destroyed their morality. The wars in which we have been engaged for the last thirty years, in the name of liberty, have brought her into disrepute by corrupting a people who still profess to admire her.

There is no set of opinions which are more likely to influence the happiness of a nation than those which it may entertain relative to criminal justice. It is, therefore, a pleasure to observe, that all the [II-76] nations of Europe are now, for the first time, beginning to regard this subject with that philosophic attention which it merits. The improvement which has taken place in the humanity of the Germans has been mentioned, and the whole of that mild people are averse from the cruelties of their former bloody and barbarous codes. Many of their literary men busy themselves with discussions on laws and tribunals. Knowledge is rapidly advancing. New codes of laws, both criminal and civil, have been talked of for all Germany, and whatever defects they may have in the eyes of our posterity, they will assuredly possess the wisdom and the humanity of this generation.

It is right to add, that all new laws and regulations are carefully published by being affixed near church doors, and in other public places; and the whole of those of Hannover are regularly printed in quarto, under the name of Gesetz Sammlung, Collection of Laws.

CHAPTER IV.
hannover.—appropriation of landed property.↩

Different sorts of proprietors.—The sovereign.—Nobles.—Corporations.—Free property.—Large farms.—Minute division.—Meyer tenure described.—Leibeigen tenure described.—Consequences.—An example.—Discussion and improvement.—Economists.—Farmers.—Bauers.—Middling class increasing.—Regulations influencing the number of poor.—One forbidding marriage without permission considered.—Manner of providing for poor.—A custom of exposing them.—Institution at Hersberg.—Benevolence and charity.

The land of Hannover is divided amongst persons who may be conveniently classed thus:—The sovereign, the nobles, town and religious corporations, persons not noble. In what proportions it may be so divided is not known. One-sixth at least belongs to the sovereign, and possibly more than three-sixths may belong to the nobles, one-sixth to the corporations, and less than one-sixth to persons not noble. That which belongs to the sovereign is again divided in general into large portions, which have once been noble or ecclesiastical properties, and are now let by the crown in their entire state. They may contain from 500 to [II-78] 3000 acres, or in the unfruitful provinces even more, with rights of pasturage over large districts, and in some cases, with a right to the services of the peasants. The tithes also are sometimes united to them. They are let to the amtmen, to individuals, or to noblemen filling the office of amtmen; but it is always considered as a favour to have them, and they are let only to those persons whom the government wishes to gratify or reward. Although the individuals in general pay a certain rent, they are rather considered as administrators of the royal property than as tenants making a bargain and dealing with landlords. The duties of the amtmen as magistrates are generally combined with this administration. These large portions are sometimes cultivated entirely by the first tenant, sometimes they are again divided into many small portions, which are held by the bauers according to some ancient tenures and some certain conditions, called either Meyer or Leibeigen, and to be afterwards described. Sometimes also the property of the sovereign is divided into small farms held immediately of him on such conditions; and then the amtmen are the collectors of the revenues from the farms of this sort which lie in their districts. The whole of this property, whether divided into large or small portions, is never put up to auction, nor is the letting subject to competition; consequently the rent is never high. [II-79] Some portions are in fact held for almost nothing, as a large farm which was formerly the property of a monastery, at Wehnde near Göttingen; for others a very moderate rent is paid. They are let sometimes for the life of the tenant, sometimes for a term of years, and sometimes during pleasure; yet, as the persons who hold them are generally respectable magistrates, they are never subjected to lose their farms without some gross impropriety of conduct. The sovereign has more or less property in all the provinces, but comparatively little in the marsh lands and in Friezland.

There are 644 noble properties in the kingdom, several of which are united in the hands of one person; but there is no one nobleman whose income amounts to more than 30,000 Thalers, or L.5000 per year. Counts Hardenberg and Platen are amongst the most opulent of the nobility. I have met with three instances which have been mentioned, of nobles cultivating their own estates; but in general there are no houses on the properties of the nobles, other than the houses of the farmers; and few of the nobles ever live in the country. Those who retain their property in their own hands generally live in towns. Some exceptions have been met with; but for a nobleman to live in the country without being a magistrate, or without holding some office, is looked on as degrading. Such persons are rather treated with contempt, [II-80] and are designated by the odious name of “Land Junker.” Some of the nobles have full power over their properties, and can let them all to one person, and on what terms they please; in which case they make respectable farms, and may contain from 100 to 500 acres. Such are the farms belonging to the family Von Lenthe, situated at Lenthe, near the town of Hannover. But more generally the nobles have not full power over their property. It is divided into small portions of 5, 10, 20, 30, or 80 acres, which are held on certain conditions, either of doing service, or of paying rents which have been long ago established, and which the landlord has no power whatever to alter. It may be from this cause that so few nobles reside in the country. They have in truth no land but what is occupied by other people. The use of these small portions of land on certain conditions, is the property of the occupier, which he can sell; as the stipulated rent and services are the property of the landlord. The bauer has an hereditary right to the use, the landlord an hereditary right to be paid for that use.

The land belonging in name to religious corporations, in reality to the crown, is again divided like other crown lands, into large and small portions, held on similar conditions to those by which they are held. That which belongs to towns is sometimes divided into farms of from 60 to 100 [II-81] acres; but it is much more generally divided into very small lots of 1, or 2, or 10 acres, which are hired by the tradesmen, and other inhabitants of the towns, who use them as gardens, or to grow corn for their family consumption. Instances have been met with also of the amtmen dividing a portion of their hired land into smaller portions, which they let to the peasantry. In fact, almost every family of the middling and poorer classes, whether living in town or country, and whatever may be its other occupations, has a small portion of land, at least large enough to grow the fresh vegetables necessary for its own consumption, and very often large enough to grow both the potatoes and the corn it requires. This minute division is in some measure convenient, but carried too far it becomes pernicious; and may be remarked as an example of an imperfect division of labour. For example, bakers, butchers, shopkeepers, and others, are also farmers of 10 or 12 acres of land. They are too poor to keep horses, and they are obliged to hire them and agricultural instruments from other persons. They have no time to look after the people they hire to do their work; mutual discontent ensues, and the ground is never more than half tilled. I might wish every mechanic and artisan to have so much ground as he can cultivate himself in his spare time, but for him to have more is [II-82] wrong. Most of the towns and villages have large commons also, on which the inhabitants have a right to keep one or two cows. The milk, and what can be made of it, very often forms a great part of the nourishment of the poor, and the delicacies of the rich.

The occupiers of small portions of land, whether held under the crown, under nobles, or corporations, may be conveniently divided into two classes, distinguished by the conditions of their tenure. There are a great many different tenures, so many, indeed, that, even rich as the German language is, it hardly contains terms for them all. I have enumerated more than twenty, but the division here adopted may serve to give a general idea of their nature. The first class are called Meyers, half Meyers, or quarter Meyers, according to the size of their farm. It is, however, very rare for a whole meyer, in any of the fertile districts, to possess so much as one hundred Morgen of land, about eighty acres; from thirty to forty acres is the more usual size of their farms, while the half and quarter meyers have much less. The other class are called Leibeigeners. The German words are here used, because farmer would most inadequately represent meyer, and so different an idea is connected with the term slave, or bondman, when it is applied to the slaves of the West Indies, from what it ought to signify when applied to the [II-83] German leibeigener, that I shall use neither of them, though one or other is the translation usually given in dictionaries. The term leibeigener signifies strictly a person who owns his own body, and nothing more.

The conditions by which the meyers have the use of their land, consist in paying to the landlord a certain fixed yearly sum, or yearly quantity of corn, for rent. The landlord cannot alter these conditions, neither can he refuse, except when the heir is an idiot, or the rent has not been paid, to renew the lease on the death of the occupier. I never found the rent, in the fertile districts, to exceed twelve shillings per acre; generally it was between this sum and seven shillings. I have heard that it has been so high in Hildesheim as thirty shillings. It amounts to this sum in the marsh lands for free land, but throughout Kalenberg, and the provinces moderately fertile, it may be roughly stated as between seven and twelve shillings per acre, or from two to three and a half Thalers per Morgen. In Lüneburg, Bremen, and the other desolate provinces, much land which is occupied pays no rent, but it all pays tithes, and is burdened with small services. The meyers have also to give the landlord a certain sum when, from death or from sale, the occupier is changed. I met one instance of a much higher rent. The people in the neighbourhood of Göttingen hired small portions [II-84] of land for a season to grow tobacco, on which the landlord laid a certain quantity of dung, and for this land they paid at the rate of thirty-five shillings per acre. The rent is sometimes paid in corn, sometimes in money, sometimes in both. When paid in corn, it seems to give endless trouble. The corn is thought not good, or fault is found with it, and the parties are sure to disagree. With rent sometimes, though rarely, trifling services are also combined, such as supplying the landlord with a pair of horses when he wants to go to town, but all these services are fixed, not to be altered at the will of the lord, and an exemption from them may be, and has been, very generally purchased. A progress is making, particularly on the lands held from the crown, in abolishing them. All the buildings, stock, instruments, belong to the meyer, to the landlord nothing belongs but the rent.

The conditions by which the leibeigener holds his land are also fixed, they are not the arbitrary will of his lord, and it descends with these to his children; but they are conditions of service so onerous, that they reduce him almost to slavery. He is obliged to cultivate the land of his lord a certain number of days in the year, to neglect his own harvest while he is carrying in that of his lord, to employ his horses to bring home his lord’s wood, to supply his lord with coach-horses when he demands them; in short, to do him all sorts of feudal services. [II-85] This relation of the two parties to one another is equally prejudicial to both. If the landlord had to hire labourers, he might have his work tolerably well performed, but it is now shamefully performed, because the people who have it to do have no interest whatever in doing it well, and no other wish but to perform so little as possible within the prescribed time. The people acquire from this sort of labour habits of slothfulness and neglect, which they never lay aside, even when performing their own work. This relation of the peasant to the landlord has been properly named “a school to teach idleness,” and both parties are now injured by their adherence to the absurd regulations of people whose very names are forgotten. It is remarked, that the inhabitants of Hoya and Diepholz, where the tenures approach most to leibeigen, are much worse in their manners, and more stupid than the inhabitants of Kalenberg, whose land is all held by the meyer tenure; but these again are as much inferior to the perfectly free farmers of Hadeln or Friezland as they are superior to the people of Hoya.

The following quotation from a periodical work, but which is no longer published, points out some of the evils of this practice, and the good of abolishing it.

“We know,” the editors speak, “a property in Mecklenburg whose owner was obliged, according to the laws of that country, to supply [II-86] the leibeigener with whatever was necessary for his subsistence, which the heavens had denied him. So long as this practice lasted, nothing was preserved to supply a harvest that failed, and the proprietor was not only obliged to suffer all the losses which were occasioned by bad harvests on his own land, but he was also obliged to support his leibeigeners.”

“On changing their tenure into free property, their manner of living changed also. Eggs, butter, fowls, calves, and other products, which before were unnecessarily consumed, were now made into gold. The rent was punctually paid, the proprietor improved his revenue, and the tenants elevated themselves from the deepest poverty to a state of comfort.” [9]

A few years ago, such a tenure existed in a great part of Germany, and has undoubtedly been a great cause for that slowness with which the Germans are reproached by more active people. From this fact we may learn, that men are only improvident in proportion as their wants are supplied by other persons, and that the simple means of making the race frugal, is to supply the wants of no man, and to leave every man the produce of his [II-87] own labour. This would be the best Agrarian law which could possibly be made. And to legitimate without diminishing luxury, every man should be honest enough not to take to himself the natural share of another.

The meyer ordinance, as the law is called, which secures the rights of the tenants, and regulates all the relations which they have to their landlords, might possibly have been when it was made extremely beneficial. It prevented the landlords from making arbitrary exactions, it hindered individuals from accumulating large properties, and it secured the cultivator from violence. But the day of violence is now fortunately passed, general competition, if left free, will render large accumulation not possible, and long continued customs exclude arbitrary exactions. Contracts of all kinds must and will, from the interest of both parties, be fairly made, and generally observed, and this law, therefore, which continues to prescribe the conditions on which land shall be used is now decidedly injurious. Neither the landlord nor the occupier is completely the owner of the land. It is the law, he who, by his industry, can unite the farm of an extravagant neighbour with his own, and cultivate it, ought not by law to be hindered from doing it. But the meyer law does not allow of two farms being united in the possession of one person. The landlord who can get a greater rent for his land [II-88] ought also to be at liberty to take it. The rights of the occupant are equally good, or perhaps better than the rights of the landlord, and no possible means can be taken to reconcile one with the other but by permitting either to buy the rights of the other, and thus to make the land, however minutely it may be divided, the perfect free property of either one or the other. Prussia, it has been mentioned, has attempted to effect it by a law. This is the very greediness of legislation. The customs of men are with their governors only a sort of air-bubbles, that they can puff up and burst at their pleasure. But nature will not be hurried; ages of bad laws have degraded the bauer, and he can neither be made industrious nor energetic by a decree. And the decrees of Prussia, which were to make all property free, have not accomplished it. [10]

The quotation above made, and the instances adduced of alteration, must have shewn the reader that this important subject has already occupied the attention of the writers and the governments of Germany. The restrictions on a free use of property [II-89] have long been regarded by all the intelligent people of Germany as great evils; and I am happy to say that a progress has been made not only in Hannover, but in many other places, in acquiring accurate notions of their nature, and in abolishing them. The situation of the peasants is, in truth, every where a great deal better than it was a century ago. From the increasing freedom of discussion, there can be little doubt but that the whole of these restrictions are in a fair way of being totally abolished. The French abolished them during their occupation. They have since been partially restored. For example, all land formerly held by a feudal tenure in Hannover was restored to this tenure on the restoration of the present government, but that abolition was violence, and what is now going on is the effect of an improvement in knowledge. That was but momentary, this will be permanent. It is only to be wished that it may be rather left to the people than accomplished by the laws.

The landed property which is entirely free is confined principally to Friezland and the marsh lands, and is divided into farms of from 40 to 100 acres; some few farms are larger. Much of that belonging to the towns, which is divided into small parcels, may also be classed as free; that is, the magistracy of these towns have power to let it in what sized parcels, and on what terms they please.

[II-90]

From the manner in which land is divided, there are three distinct classes of cultivators, each of which follows in some measure methods of cultivation peculiar to itself.

First, Those who have large farms, whether hired of the crown or of nobles. They are called economists, have tolerably large capitals, and when they have a very large amt-farm, keep one or more bailiffs to superintend the management, and have establishments that are regulated with all the nicety of military subordination. There is first a head bailiff, or steward, then there are two or three under-bailiffs to look after particular divisions of the farm; clerks to keep accounts; a chief shepherd, who has the management of the sheep, and the superintendence of the other shepherds; a chief waggoner, who has the same office with the teams, and a chief workman, who in like manner looks after the thrashers, weeders, and other labourers. Many of the actual tenants are jurisconsults, and have not received an agricultural education; of course, their stewards are the managers. The stewards consult their employer on any great alterations, shew him their accounts, and pay into his hands the profits, but they have all the management themselves. Formerly, the stewards were mere practical farmers, who were taken from cultivating their own ten or twenty acres to look after such an establishment. They were admitted [II-91] to the table of their principal once or twice in a year, and were highly honoured by such a notice. Some such are yet found, but, in general, they are persons who have been regularly educated as agriculturists at some one of those academies or institutions for teaching agriculture which are at present numerous in Germany. They are not only farmers, but they are men of a liberal education, who live with their employers. They are said to receive from 300 to 180 Thalers, L. 50 to L. 80 per year.

The second class of cultivators are the owners of free property. These persons direct the labours on their farms, have some considerable capital, own or hire the land, and own the stock. They hire labourers to do the work of their farms, and they resemble very much English farmers.

The third are the occupiers of small farms, whether leibeigeners or meyers, for these in their manner of cultivating and living only differ as to more or less of knowledge and activity. They have this in common, that neither of them have, in general, much more capital than their necessary implements, two or four horses, and money to support themselves and families. When they have servants, they are generally the junior members of their own families; but they think of what is to be done, and they themselves are the persons who do it. This is by far the most numerous class of cultivators, [II-92] and they are what we call peasants; in German they are bauers. Probably four-fifths of the country is cultivated by them.

A class of men, resembling strictly our agricultural labourers, that is, who work merely for hire, are in no part of Germany very numerous. They are found in the marsh lands; some are met with at all large farms, but at both these places they have, in general, also some little property of their own. By far the greater part of the agricultural labourers are the bauers, who are at the same time the occupiers of the land, and the owners of the stock.

The large farmers are the people who are theoretically acquainted with agriculture, and who introduce improvements, till they slowly make their way through all parts of the country. They bear some analogy to our country gentlemen, and the consequence of having such a class of men seems to have been, that the agriculture is in no part of Germany so wretched as it is in some parts of France and Italy. I never saw in the former country, though I have in both the latter, women breaking the clods with wooden mallets, instead of its being done by horses dragging a roller, nor did I ever see them carrying manure to the field on their heads. The middling classes of farmers are, however, confined to particular spots, and between the great farmers and the bauers there is so great a difference in [II-93] point of wealth, and so great a dissimilarity of education, and of habits, that the knowledge of the former descends but slowly to the latter, and when it reaches them is scarcely of any service. The large farmers are gentlemen of education, but the bauers are so occupied by the labour of routine, that they are excluded from all theoretical knowledge, and can make no other improvements than those which they may see practised by the larger farmers. They are too often objects of ridicule not to make their children, when they have acquired wealth by parsimony, eager to leave the occupation of their parents. Every man would rather be one of the inferior servants of the government than a bauer. Another class of men is wanted between these two to promote the improvement of all; and it appears to be growing up. Agriculture on a large scale is no longer dishonoured, and several instances are known of intelligent men practising it. None of them have given up a residence in towns, and become mere farmers, but tradesmen, medical men, and others, bought or hired portions of land when the French occupied the country, some of which they still retain. And they have neither all the advantages of the great agriculturists, nor the disadvantages of the peasants. The clergymen are also very often intelligent farmers, and spread by their influence, more knowledge, and better habits, among [II-94] the people. The sale of the domanial lands would be one of the most important improvements that could be adopted for Hannover. It would effectually create such a class of men. I know no single act which, without offending the prejudices, or injuring in any way the interest of any one person, would so much tend to improve the agriculture, and to increase the industry and wealth of the people of Hannover, as the sale of all the domanial land by public auction. It should be divided in good sized farms, as the individuals who have now an interest in it die, and then be sold. Prussia has done this in all her newly-acquired provinces.

I may here state the conditions under which landed property is held in other parts of Germany. Most of the sovereigns, like the sovereign of Hannover, have large domains. The King of Prussia has sold or given away much of his. The Elector of Hesse Cassel is supposed proportionately to possess the most. Leibeignshaft exists generally in all the eastern parts of Prussia. In the greater part of Brandenburg, and in Saxony, the cultivators hold their land on a tenure resembling the meyer tenure, and sometimes even more free. In Mecklenburg and Holstein most of the property is free. In south-eastern Germany Leibeignshaft is predominant, and in the neigbourhood of the Rhine hardly known.

[II-95]

From the manner in which the land is appropriated in Germany generally, and from the effects of that different mode of appropriation which is the rule of the marsh lands, and which resembles the mode followed in England, it seems that much of the prosperity of Great Britain has been owing to property in land being entirely free. The owner has been at liberty to dispose of it as he thought fit, and, instead of its being neglected, it is certainly one of the most highly improved countries of Europe. This same fact is true of Holstein and Mecklenburg, where the land is in general not subjected to any restriction, and where the agriculture is well known to be better than in the other parts of Germany. Private interest has, therefore, in this instance, effected a great public good, without any limitations or directions by a legislator. Where he has interfered, as in the meyer law, he seems to have done mischief on the whole. While I mention the advantage of our system, it would be unjust totally to pass over the advantages of the other. The minute division of landed property in Germany, the regulations which have forbid an augmentation of rent, or a union of farms, and which have secured to the bauer the full enjoyment of the use of the land, have prevented any person, except the sovereign, from amassing an enormous quantity, and have preserved among the inhabitants a species of equality as to property. [II-96] There are, comparatively, few absolutely destitute labourers. The mass of the people do not live in such affluence as Englishmen, but this is more than compensated to them by all being in some measure alike. In civilized society, it is not destitution, but the craving wants which the splendour of other persons excites, which are the true evils of poverty. The meyer regulations have hindered improvement, but they have also hindered absolute destitution and enormous accumulation. I would not be understood to affirm, that these evils, so far as they exist in our country, have in the slightest manner been occasioned by property being free. They have been occasioned by other causes, totally distinct from this freedom, which also exist in Germany, but which have been there partly counteracted by those restrictions on property which have prevented accumulation.

There is, on the whole, therefore, a great difference between the agricultural labourer of Germany and the agricultural labourer of Britain. The bauer must give one portion of his produce to the state, another as tithes, and a third to his landlord, but the remainder, though small, is his own. He tills his own field, and the reward of his industry depends, in some measure, on nature. Our labourer has to give portions of his labour to the state, to the landlord, and as tithes, and he has also to give a large portion to his employer. He [II-97] tills the ground that is appropriated to another, and his reward depends so little on the seasons, or on his own exertions, that, whether the heavens give or withhold their bounties, whether he is idle or laborious, he has usually enough, with parish support, barely to subsist. The bauer depends on himself, and so long as he can labour, he is never degraded by being told he is subsisted by the state, or by his landlord. There is but one country in which the productive labourers, who are the most industrious men of the world, are said to be maintained by the charities and bounties of persons who produce nothing. The landlord and the capitalist produce nothing. Capital is the produce of labour, and profit is nothing but a portion of that produce, uncharitably exacted for permitting the labourer to consume a part of what he has himself produced. When this is given to him as charity, if he be not oppressed, he is at least insulted. Those who imagine themselves to be very benevolent people, while they dole out to the labourer a pittance of what they have exacted, delude themselves with a hypocritical cant, that, however it may be sanctioned by laws, and however it may accord with the customs of society, was never surpassed by any of the cant of the most absurd religion. By your labour shall ye eat bread is holy wisdom, and he who does not gain what he consumes by his own industry, assuredly eats the bread which nature made the property of [II-98] another. The poor are the terror of the rich, and the scourges of society. But the affluent have little right to complain when their repose is disturbed, for it is they who inflict poverty on their fellows, and at the same time teach them to desire wealth. The evils of society cannot be remedied by acts of parliament. Individuals must reform themselves. Avarice must exact less, and it will have more security and enjoyment. Generally it seems to be supposed, because the rich make laws, that the poor only need restraints, and to be reformed. This is a mistake. It is the class of society which has long ruled that most needs reformation, and that deserves most of the blame for the social evils which exist.

I may here add the little I learnt relative to the support and management of the poor. It seems consistent with the regulations concerning landed property in Germany, that there should not be so many paupers there as in our country. Some other regulations are known, which have probably assisted in protecting Germany from the evil of pauperism to the same extent in which it exists with us. There is no legal provision for paupers. A law of the guilds, which extended to most trades, forbad, and still forbids, where guilds are not abolished, journeymen mechanics from marrying, and, in most countries of Germany, people are obliged to have the permission of the civil magistrate before it is [II-99] legal for the clergyman to celebrate a marriage. The permission seems to be given or withheld as the parties soliciting it are thought by the magistrates to be capable of maintaining a family. At least, it is to prevent the land from being overrun with paupers that the law on this subject has been made. There are so many persons who are ready to impose restrictive laws on their fellow men, and such an undue value seems to be set on the good they can effect, that it is necessary to observe that the whole good of this last restrictive law seems not equal to the evil resulting from it. It is hoped, therefore, nobody in our country will be fond of extending the power of the magistrate to give or withhold a permission to marry.

This regulation substitutes the permission of the magistrate for the natural reasons why people should or should not marry. These latter are the proper motives for conduct; and of them the parties can be the only judges. The magistrate may give his permission from caprice, and, from the reverence with which he is regarded, they who can obtain it, imagine nothing more is required to justify their union, and make it full of happiness. A union that is sanctioned by both priest and magistrate is regarded as doubly sacred, and all the evils which may follow from it as decreed by nature. Thus the people on the Harz, who marry young, are said to have looked on the smallpox [II-100] as a blessing, because it relieved them from the superabundance of their children. They refused for a long time to allow inoculation, saying, they would not interfere with the will of the Lord. “He hath given and He hath taken away, blessed be His name.” They seem to have regarded marriage as a duty, and the misery consequent on it as an infliction they were bound patiently to suffer. The misery which may follow from a marriage, is the natural reason why it should not take place. This important fact the magistrate prevents the parties from knowing, by substituting his permission for the natural reason.

From the quantity of children born out of marriage in these countries, [11] it is also probable that this regulation, though it may prevent hasty marriages, does not much diminish the number of births. It drives men and women to live together without the permission either of the magistrate or the priest. Their passions are stronger than their respect for the law, and they violate their own principles of religion because they cannot obtain the permission of the magistrate. When once principles are violated, no man can tell where the violation will stop. It is, therefore, of paramount necessity, that no laws should ever be made which [II-101] supply a strong temptation to violate them. On this principle we ought to be careful not to lay any impediments in the way of reasonable gratifications, and not to make a law which tempts men to reject the authority of the magistrate, and at the same time violate their own principles of religion.

There is no legal provision in Hannover for the poor. The Vorstehers of the villages, and some of the citizens of the towns, call on the inhabitants, generally of a Sunday, for some little contribution for the relief of the distressed, which, from the publicity of the thing, they are under a sort of necessity to give, and if they do not, the collector is ordered to notify it to the clergyman. The collectors bring with them a book, in which the sum given by each person is inscribed, and they, in some cases, receive a small recompense for their labour. The funds so obtained are distributed by the collectors, by the clergymen, and by the magistrates of the towns, according to the wants of each person soliciting relief. When this money is collected, the inhabitants are warned by the collectors not to give alms, and they seem to expect, that, for what they give on this occasion, they ought never to be tormented by beggars. With the exception of some wandering journeymen, I saw, infact, very few beggars. In the town of Hannover itself I scarcely saw one. In some of the marsh lands the practice is to allow the poor to beg for [II-102] themselves on a Sunday. They then go regularly from house to house, and the inhabitants as regularly bestow their mite on the afflicted. I met a similar custom in France, where the old ladies lay by a certain portion of sous ready to bestow on every Sunday. In both these cases the quantity of beggars seemed so regular, that each inhabitant knew pretty accurately how many would call for relief.

In the town of Hannover, which contains 20,000 inhabitants, about 300 persons, including children, may receive occasional relief from the funds collected as above mentioned. They are under the inspection of the police, and are employed by it to sweep the streets, &c. Most of them were women, and, till I inquired the reason, I was astonished to see a number of debilitated old females occupied as scavengers in the midst of winter. Nor did the assertions that they were idle, worthless characters, justify the practice. There is something about women, something in the honour which is due to the sex of our mothers, which forbids us giving them so nauseous and disgusting an employment. Twice a-year all the persons receiving this sort of alms are led in procession about the streets, in order that they may be known, and their idleness exposed to contempt. The children sang, and the men and women followed, accompanied by police officers. Some of them hid their [II-103] faces, but most of them seemed totally to disregard this public exposure. If it were always true that poverty was a consequence of neglect, idleness, or dissipation, to expose it publicly might merit praise; but, in the present state of the world, it may be brought on men by misfortune; they may be born to it as their inheritance; it may be inflicted on them by the rapaciousness of their rulers; and, in such cases, it is cruel to steep the bread of charity in the bitter waters of public infamy. This is the proper reward of crimes, not of misfortune.

Exclusively of the persons so relieved, there is in Hannover a work-house, in which were 13 children and 30 grown up persons. Some of the latter were sent here as a punishment. All were employed. The children were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. Formerly the funds of the establishment were greater than at present, and then the children were further instructed. The master still shews some of the first essays at drawing of a man who has since enjoyed a little reputation as a sculptor. There are also in Hannover two establishments for orphans.

In Celle, a town containing between 8000 and 9000 inhabitants, some funds bequeathed to an orphan-house, and what is collected from the people, are both appropriated, under the inspection of the master of the work and orphan house, to support the poor and orphans. The children are sent into families [II-104] to be nursed, and distressed persons are relieved at their own houses, chiefly by giving every one who is able to work something to do, and paying for it. About 30 imbecile and aged persons lived in the house; about 200 orphan children were brought up by the funds; and about 200 persons were occasionally relieved.

In Linden, a village close to Hannover, containing between 800 and 900 inhabitants, who were chiefly working people, there were between 40 and 50 persons who occasionally received relief. In one other, or rather several villages united into one parish, Eingepfarred, containing nearly as many people, but removed from any town, there were only four persons who received relief, and one of these was a blind woman. In the marsh lands the numbers were greater.

From these few facts there is reason to believe that neither the number of paupers nor of beggars is so great in Hannover as in Britain. In no country has so many regulations been made concerning the poor as in our’s, and nowhere are they so numerous. Is this not another proof of the inefficiency or folly of legislating so much? It is most strange, that, with an ingenuity surpassing that of all the world, with all the great branches of productive industry united in our own hands, that a greater portion of our people than of any other should be found subsisting [II-105] on the charities, either ordered or spontaneous, of the rest of their countrymen. Though paupers be few in Hannover, there, as in other parts of Europe, it has been found necessary to found alms houses and form societies for their relief. Amongst these, one resembling, in its spirit and form, the plan adopted in Hamburg, deserves to be mentioned. It was carried into execution in the little town of Herzberg, in 1800, by the present Hofrath Arenhold, when he filled the situation there of chief magistrate. I was assured it had been attended with the most beneficial effects, and that his benevolence and praise-worthy exertions were still gratefully remembered by the inhabitants. Wherever the power of the magistrate is efficaciously exerted, begging may undoubtedly be prevented, but comparative poverty is a constitutional evil of European societies, which no outward and local remedies can cure. From several other establishments of this kind, I know the Hannoverians are not behind in the race of benevolence. It may, however, be doubted if benevolence does not sometimes extend to interference, and if the error of our present systems is not a ridiculous desire to shelter some people from the natural results of their own follies and crimes.

Men desire to amend the condition of the poor, by governing them. The tear that flows at the sorrow of another, is the brightest jewel of nature; [II-106] and the heart has no more ennobling feeling than a wish to relieve distress. The noble mind desires wealth and power only to mitigate the sufferings of its kind. The most ardent of our race have the warmest and most affectionate hearts; so it ought to be, or the energies of the mighty would scorch, not delight us. This union is a beautiful illustration of the natural goodness of man. But unfortunately the struggle in which we are obliged to engage to acquire wealth and power too often sours the temper; we forget what was the end of our pursuit, and we come to love power more because it has been associated with our struggles, than for the benefits it may enable us to bestow. The justice of men is easily bribed by the benevolence of their intentions; and the heart that is warm in its wishes for the welfare of others, does not observe that the head is totally ignorant of the means to promote it. Hence wealth and power are often sought by unjust and unholy means. We are told by a German historian, “That Alexander went forth, as he solemnly declared, to conquer the world only that he might make it happy. And, blinded by the apparent benevolence of his declaration, authors have honoured him for it. He followed his brilliant aim through his whole life; ruin and death waited on his footsteps; and the end of his victories was a cruel military despotism. Under its government the people were never heard [II-107] of; there was nothing but generals and soldiers, who quarrelled about the division of plundered nations.” The same disposition, with similar melancholy results, may be traced in many of those laws which have been made in our country, to provide work and food for the poor, and in many of those charitable donations which are recorded in our newspapers. Men seek wealth by legitimately oppressing the labourer, that they may figure as makers of benevolent laws, or as the chiefs of charitable societies. Miserable is the nation where either is much needed. Nature has created each individual with powers to provide for its own wants. She has placed the welfare of millions in their own hands, and has not subjected them to one or a few men like themselves. Our senses and our knowledge extend only to the little circle about us; and it is not only vain, but ridiculous, to wish that our power and our influence may be more widely extended. We can only obtain means to pour the oil of gladness into the bosoms of the sorrowful, by first of all condemning them to sorrow. It cannot be too often repeated, that it is the exactions of one class and the interference of legislators, which have made that poverty and misery these persons are sometimes so anxious to mitigate. Benevolence and vanity conspire to make men oppress and rule their brethren. The doctrines of selfishness are [II-108] in truth full of love as well as of wisdom; and no sentiment deserves so much to be scouted, as that benevolence which curses with its care. There can be no hope for the permanent relief of our poor, till the rich and the mighty leave them to themselves; nor can there be any permanent enjoyment for the rich, till they lay aside the attributes of governing Deity, and be content with the dignity of men.

Those who govern are not content unless they can prevent the interference of others. It is a part of their plans, to substitute regular systematic relief for spontaneous charity. They forbid alms-giving, as encouraging begging; and they suppress sympathy with misfortune, because they would not have kindness imposed on. That to me is strange reasoning, which can lead to forbid alms-giving. Charity is valuable to the giver so well as to the receiver. It amends the outward condition of the latter, but it softens and improves the heart of the former. It appears not right that government should take on itself the administration of the poor, or that it should forbid relieving even that distress which is simulated. It may prevent a little imposture, but it destroys one of the best means of uniting man to man. It is a power usurped not only over our purses, but over our sentiments and our hearts. It pretends to curb our vices, but it renders us in reality deaf to [II-109] the voice of misery; it hardens us against the complaints of our fellow men; and it makes us selfish and unbrotherly. How much more is the receiver also improved by the smile of charity, than by the book-recorded gift of the overseer! “The sight of a benefactor brings joy like his gifts.”

“Denn der Anblick des Gebers ist wie die
Gaben erfreuhch.” [12]

CHAPTER V.
hannover—agriculture.↩

Hannover an agricultural country.—Agriculture of economists.—Farm at Coldingen.—Sheep.—Shepherds.—The family.—Agriculture of the marsh lands.—A mode of mending the land.—Farmers respected.—Bauers contemned.—All follow the same agricultural methods.—Right of pasturage.—Course of crops.—Mode of paying wages.—Prices.—Implements.—Impediments to agriculture.—Origin of tithes.—Manners of female peasantry.—A custom of the bauers.—Plantage at Hannover.

Hannover is said to be an agricultural country; which merely means, that the people still remain in that first state of improvement in which men, after having wandered with their flocks, erect fixed habitations, and cultivate the ground, but have neither capital nor ingenuity to establish extensive manufactories, and to carry on commerce. It does not mean that the Hannoverians are more skilful agriculturists than other people, and that their ground is better cultivated; it means, that they are merely agriculturists. They praise this state of their country, as subjecting them to fewer [II-111] fluctuations of fortune than that in which people unite agriculture with manufactories and commerce. “They may be, and have been, overrun by a destroying enemy, and the country was restored in a year or two to its former state of prosperity.” By this nothing more is meant, than that the mass of the people live in such a constant state of deprivation, that they can never descend much lower, and never fluctuate to higher enjoyments. The enemy found nothing to take from them but provisions; the land still remained for them to cultivate, and the ensuing harvests supplied them again with food. In this estimate it is totally overlooked, that to increase industry is to augment food and people,—the means of enjoyment and defence,—and is to give them something more valuable to contend for. The Hannoverians have been alarmed by the distress which has existed in Britain, and which is frequently attributed to our manufactories and commerce. But employing different kinds of labour to supply different wants, never can produce poverty and distress. And for the benefit of mankind, in order that no species of industry may be unjustly brought into discredit, those social regulations ought to be exposed to censure, which have inflicted on us so much poverty and distress. All the different kinds of productive labour must be beneficial, but the manner in which its produce is distributed in the society is distinct [II-112] from the labour itself, and is the result of social regulations. From confounding these two things, and from being serious in wishing well to their country, I have heard several clever men in Hannover express a wish that they might not become a commercial people. They thought it an evil; and as some of them had some influence on the government, this mistaken view may ultimately be really injurious to the whole.

My object in this chapter is, to give a general, and I would fain hope, an accurate idea of the state of agriculture, and not to describe the management and the improvements of any individual, and take them as the criterion of the whole. At the same time I shall notice any improvements that I know, in order to make the general idea correct.

The three classes of cultivators, mentioned in the last chapter, pursue different plans of cultivation. The large farmers have in general extensive rights of pasturage. They keep large flocks of sheep, grow artificial grasses, turnips, and other succulent roots, and lay down a part of their land as meadows, that they may have an abundance of hay. The bauers may sometimes sow a little clover, or lucerne, or spergel, but they seldom have meadows, and keep no more cattle than is necessary for their work, and than the common lands can feed. They keep sheep only in those countries [II-113] where extensive heaths are favourable to feed them. There are some other exceptions, such as a whole meyer uniting a distillery and a public-house with his farm, and thus being enabled to keep more cattle; but, in general, the bauers keep only the horses necessary for their work, and the number of cattle which can be fed on the common lands. There is therefore a radical difference between the husbandry of the different classes of cultivators.

At one of the large farms the land was divided into two portions. The first had no fallows, but the following rotation of crops:—1 st year, hoed or drilled summer fruit. 2 d, Wheat or rye, over which clover was sown in the spring. 3 d, Clover. 4 th, Wheat or rye. 5 th, Barley or peas. 6 th, Oats, or sometimes rye;—then as before. The whole land under this course is dunged twice. The other course was, 1 st, Fallow, as a preparation for 2 d, Rape seed. 3 d, Wheat or rye. 4 th, Rye, dunged. 5 th, Flax. 6 th, Rye, dunged. 7 th, Beans, dunged. 8 th, Rye. 9 th, Oats; and then comes fallow again. These courses were followed on the farm of Mr Amtman Meyer, at Coldingen. The soil was a brown-coloured loam, free from stones, fruitful, easy to work, and easily kept clean; but in wet weather it quickly became foul, if neglected. A large portion of meadow land bordered on the Leine, and was subjected to be overflowed [II-114] by that river. The land under tillage was more elevated. This farm was hired of the crown, and situated about eight miles from the town of Hannover. It contained altogether about 2600 acres, with a right of pasturage over extensive meadows, from the time they were mowed till the 15th of May, when they were laid down for hay. Seven pair of horses and eight of oxen were kept as working cattle. No cattle were fattened. A portion of the land was let for feeding cows, the superior tenant not liking the trouble of this part of husbandry. His favourite pursuit, and that which rewarded him best, was sheep, of which he had about 2200 head.

The original breed were the small German sheep, which, from being numerous in the neighbourhood of the Rhine and Saxony, are called Rhenish or Saxon sheep. They were crossed by Merinos, and now bear fleeces as fine as those of the Merinos themselves, weighing on the ewe, 2 or 2½, and on the ram, 4 or 4½ pounds. No attention was paid to fatting the carcase, wool being the principal and only source of gain. The peace, and communication with England, had enhanced its price, and the last shearing had been sold so high as 4s. 7d. per pound, which was nearly double its former price. The carcase weighs on an average 40 pounds, the larger ones 60, and sells for about 9s. to 15s.

[II-115]

The shepherds were all dressed in long white linen coats, and white linen small clothes, and wore large hats cocked up behind, and ornamented by a large steel buckle. They all looked respectable and clean. They were paid in proportion to the success of the flock, and had thus a considerable interest in watching over its improvement. They received a ninth of the profits, but they also contributed on extraordinary occasions, such as buying oil-cake for winter food, when it was necessary, and such as buying new stock, a ninth of the expences. The head shepherd had two-ninths of the profits.

Some other workmen on this farm were paid in proportion to their labour. The thrashers, for example, were paid with the sixteenth part of what they thrashed. Other labourers were hired by the day, and they received about 7d. In harvest time they may make 8d. Some are paid by the piece, and then receive at the rate of 2s. for cutting and binding an acre of corn.

A water communication might have been had from this farm to the town of Hannover, and from there all over the world, but the magistracy had stopped the river by a stone wall at some distance above the town, in order to supply the town mills with a sufficiency of water. It should have been done by a lock. All the country above the wall is now excluded from the advantages of a water communication, [II-116] and all its produce must be brought to Hannover by land-carriage. In a country of commercial enterprise this would have been an evil, in Hannover it was neither noticed nor complained of. With this diminution of the natural advantages of the farm at Coldingen, it would perhaps be impossible to find land more favourably situated than it. A skilful and enterprising hand could command at pleasure the waters of the Leine, but they fertilized or wasted at their will. The bailiff was a good farmer; the farm was kept in very good order, according to the common practices, but I did not observe much of that animated seeking after improvement which distinguishes enterprising men. Yet it would be unjust not to mention the care with which the breed of sheep and their wool have been improved. Great expence had been incurred to bring rams from Saxony and from Spain, and the whole of the sheep were of the improved breed.

Consistently with the plan of mentioning such improvements as I have heard of, I may here add to those already mentioned, that Mr Amtman Wedemeyer at Katlenburg, and Mr Backhouse at Göttingen, are both good agriculturists, who are acquainted with the writings and the practices of the greater part of Europe, and pursue the best practical methods of cultivation which are known.

I should do injustice to the hospitality with [II-117] which I was entertained, if I neglected to record it. Mr Amtman Meyer, the tenant of the farm at Coldingen, is one of the best agriculturists of Hannover; and though other occupations prevented him from accompanying me, he sent his steward over his farm, and was politely ready to give me every information my previous knowledge enabled me to ask. We are possibly in England rather given to believe, that the people of other nations are less affectionately attached to the comforts of home than ourselves, and that the decencies and charities of a domestic circle are nowhere observed but in England. From the many well-ordered amiable families which I have seen in Germany, I am disposed to think we underrate our northern neighbours in this particular. An attention to order in their domestic arrangements is common to the Germans; and of this the family of Mr Meyer was a good specimen. I partook with them of a well-ordered family dinner, and passed the afternoon agreeably entertained by the urbanity and politeness of their conversation. His son had been in the English service, his daughter was intimately acquainted with our language, and the whole family resembled the family of a well-educated country gentleman. Before sitting down to table, all the persons, standing behind their chairs, threw their eyes on the ground, and asked in silence a blessing on the meal. This [II-118] is a common custom all over Germany. In the Catholic countries the very poorest people, carriers, servants, and others, when they come from the stable, or when they run in from the harvest field to dine, plump down on their knees, take off their white caps, turn their faces to a corner, and repeat a long prayer. No one begins to eat till all have said grace. When the meal is finished all again go on their knees, and return thanks. In the northern and Protestant parts of Germany kneeling has not been seen. Few people, however, sit down to meals without a short prayer, nor rise from them without a compliment. That you may have a good appetite is the morning’s wish, and that the meal may be blessed, Gesegnete Mahlzeit, is universally the wish at rising from table.

As the farmers of free property are very generally confined to the marsh lands, and to Friezland, and as the soil, situation, and agriculture of these districts are the same, in describing the agriculture of the second class of farmers, I shall necessarily describe the agriculture of the marsh lands.

The land under the plough in the districts on the Elbe is generally divided into long slips fifty feet wide, between each of these slips is a ditch which extends the whole length, and the land between the ditches is laid up round, so that every precaution is taken to keep it dry. The ditches [II-119] supply rushes and coarse grass, which are used to litter the cattle.

Fatting cattle for Hamburg is one of the pursuits of the farmers of the marsh land. Sheep are little attended to, each farmer keeping only so many as supplies his own family with wool and milk. Every day-labourer has one or two, which he uses for the same purpose. They are constantly chained in pairs, and pick up their living on the dikes and other unenclosed spots. When the labourer cannot command such a spot, he is obliged to hire from the farmers so much land as will feed his sheep, but this is a favour not always obtained. The sheep of the marsh lands are much larger than the sheep before mentioned. They weigh, when fat, from 80 to 100 lbs. and bear a coarse fleece of from 5 to 6 lbs. weight. From being more kept for their milk than to fat and kill, they are very generally poor, and when sheared, look most wretchedly. They resemble the marsh sheep of Britain. The only cheese made in any part of Hannover, except Friezland, is made from sheeps’ milk, and the shepherds say that the wool of the animals milked is never so fine nor so abundant as when they are not milked.

Throughout Germany, every body possessing a little spot of ground makes it his first object to cultivate himself every thing his family needs. The people do not seem yet to have attained a thorough [II-120] conviction that, if it be cheaper, it is better to buy than to grow. This state of mind may be promoted by the communication not being rapid, and the markets not certain, but each man prides himself as on a point of honour, in supplying his own wants, without having recourse to his neighbour. Individuals are like the rulers of nations, who imagine the happiness of their subjects will be endangered by a mutual and cheap supply of wants, and they, therefore, preserve a surly independence, not only at the expence of much labour, but of all the kindnesses and affections which grow out of men assisting each other. According to this principle, each farmer grows, amongst other things, so much flax as supplies the consumption of his own family.

With these little exceptions, the great objects of the marsh land farmers is to fatten cattle, and grow corn and seeds. Meadow land, consequently, lets for more money than any other, and much is kept in grass seven or eight years. It is then broken up, and, 1. oats is sown on it; 2. wheat or rye; 3. wheat or beans, and the land is dunged; this change of crops continues without intermission till the land has got foul, generally with couch-grass. On an average, this is every ten years. It is then fallowed till June, when it is sown with rape seed. To prepare for this crop, it is ploughed at least six times, and very often nine, and it receives a large quantity of dung. At this time, also, the land is [II-121] mended by another means. The soil is composed of three distinct strata, which are every where found like the deposits of three overwhelming floods, but lying at unequal depths. The first is clay, mixed with sand, and is very fruitful; the second is a stiff cold clay, that is said to be absolutely unproductive; the third is very fine white sand, mixed with the blue slime of the rivers, and with the remains of vegetable substances. The third strata is usually found at a depth of from three to ten feet, and when mixed with the clay at the surface, renders it more productive. To procure this sand, holes of six feet diameter are sunk, till it is reached, when it is thrown out, and the second strata of cold clay thrown back to supply its place. Many such holes are made in a field, till a sufficient quantity of the sand has been spread over the surface. Sometimes the ditches supply enough, and the process then resembles precisely that which has been practised in Lincolnshire by Mr Cartwright. [13] It appears that the material employed both on the shores of the Elbe and in Lincolnshire, has a great resemblance, and is found lying in a similar situation. Such a practice has long been in use on the marsh lands belonging to Hannover; and it appears to have been suggested [II-122] to the farmers there by observations similar to those which suggested it to Mr Cartwright. It was found in digging the ditches, and it was thought that the sand would loosen and render the clay easier of cultivation.

Although artificial grasses grow luxuriantly, they are very little used. Clover is sometimes sown on the fields, intended to be laid down, but it is mowed as green food, or fed off, and never made into hay. The reason assigned for this is, that the cattle will not eat it when they can get grass-hay. There is little occasion to cultivate it, because there is much land lying on the river, or in other places, of which every farmer has his portion, which will serve no other purpose but to grow hay.

There are some parts where the land, once under the plough, is never laid down to grass. This is the case particularly in Hadeln, where the course of crops is constantly, 1. wheat, 2. beans, 3. rye, 4. and 5. rape or cole seed, then again follows wheat, and so on, without intermission; of course, the rape implies a partial fallow, as it is not sown till between the months of July and August, and till then, the land is repeatedly ploughed, cleaned, and manured.

In Friezland a rotation of crops similar to this last is followed, but here the inhabitants approximate more to the customs of Holland, keep quantities [II-123] of cows, and make butter and cheese. Much land has there been recently won from the Ems, which possesses a vast degree of fertility. It is said to give back rape seed three hundred times multiplied, and barley sixty, when the fourth part of this is reckoned in ordinary land the usual increase. The Friezland or Dutch breed of horned cattle is celebrated for its size, beauty, and for the quantity of milk the cows give. This breed, with the cattle from the Tyrol and Switzerland, are favourites in other parts of Germany, and they are brought from these countries to improve the breed of the native cattle. The inhabitants of Friezland have been at great expence in gaining their most fertile marsh, and no portion of it is left uncultivated. Both here and in Hadeln, so well as an uninitiated man can judge, I should describe the agriculture as excellent, and it is excellent without any theory. The people are not writers, and they are said to have no books on agriculture. They speak the language of Germany, and may, of course, have German books, but their cultivation has preceded the knowledge of the rest of the country, and it is said to have been entirely effected without agricultural writers.

In Friezland, and the marsh lands, the farmers are men of respectability, and so are the farmers in Switzerland, Holland, and Britain, but in every other country of Europe the cultivation of the ground is, [II-124] in some measure, a degradating occupation. It is more honourable to be a mercenary soldier than an industrious man. Such prejudices cause that idleness, that haste to escape from labour, and that profligacy which the rulers of the world are so ready to attribute to nature rather than to their own systems and opinions. In Germany this prejudice is particularly strong; a large farmer may be respected, but a bauer is a term synonymous with stupid, and is used as a reproach to children; soldiers are knights, but bauers are Knechts or slaves. They have apparently been regarded by the other classes of the community as beneath them, and boys in their sport, and magistrates with their laws, think they may mock and oppress the bauers. Thus it was very generally the custom for the magistrates of the towns to fix the price of all the produce of the land when it was brought into the town for sale, and thus boys and girls say, “The bauers ought to be made to sell cheaper, The bauers are for us to laugh at.” Labouring under the disadvantages of being contemned by the society, it is not extraordinary that they should yet be reproached as superstitious, and as dull, and ignorant, nor that it should be found necessary to tell them, “that butter is neither made nor spoiled by witchcraft,” and “that to keep their cattle in good order, good feeding, and not sorcery, is necessary.” Many superstitious notions are attributed [II-125] to them, such, for example, as this. They believe that trees which have a whisk of straw bound round them by a naked man at the first moment of the new year, are sure to be fruitful. I saw each fruit tree in a small orchard, near Hannover, ornamented with such a whisk, and I was assured it had been done by the owner naked at midnight on the first of January. It is the agriculture of the bauers of which I am now to speak.

There is one mode of cultivation, the three years’ rotation of crops, which is common nearly to all bauers. In fact, they are very often obliged, and were formerly much more obliged than at present, to follow precisely the same mode. In general, some persons possess the right to herd cattle on the lands of the bauer, and they are consequently obliged to leave them fallow every third year. I have met several instances of this, and to shew that it is general, I shall translate a sentence from a German author. At the same time, it must be remembered, that this is one of those pernicious rights which have been in several places abolished. “In most districts, domanial and noble properties have a right to herd their cattle, that is, they may send them on the land of the bauer, and he is obliged to leave his fallow unemployed, and must not plough it before St John’s day. Lately, this right is in many places abolished, and he is now permitted to employ a part of his fallow in [II-126] raising summer crops for his cattle.” [14] Wherever this right exists, the system of cultivation is the same. Winter corn follows the fallow, the bauer may choose whether he will sow wheat or rye, but winter corn he must sow. The land over which this right of pasturage extends is generally divided into three large portions, and each of the peasants has a part of each portion; so that the land belonging to each is situated in different places, and the fallowing takes place on each of the large portions alternately. Not only the domanial and noble properties have this right, but also the properties of corporations. The land belonging to Göttingen, for example, is subject to it, so that the land on one side of the town is always sown with winter corn, on another it is sown with summer corn, and on the third it lies fallow. Where such rights exist, or existed, there the agriculture could not improve, and it must be precisely the same at least through the whole of the district over which the right extended.

[II-127]

The rotation of crops here mentioned is that which the bauers generally follow. They have fallow, then rye or wheat, and then oats, barley, peas, or beans, and then again fallow. Where the above right of pasturage does not exist, the bauers begin to employ their fallow for some summer crops, and this takes place, particularly near towns, or when, from other circumstances, they can command manure. Another course of crops I have met with was, 1 st, Fallow, employed for potatoes, flax, or some such crop; 2 d, Wheat or rye; 3 d, Lentcorn; and 4 th, Rye or beans. But in general the three year rotation, with unemployed fallow, is common to the peasants throughout the greater part of Germany.

The utility of leaving land fallow at any time is much questioned since the introduction of so many succulent roots in the common system of husbandry, and it is only justified for strong clay soils. Throughout the north of Germany the soil approaches sand rather than clay. Never but in one spot, in the neighbourhood of Münder, did I see what may be called stiff clay; of course fallows are, in this country, according to the improved husbandry, quite unnecessary. They were imposed on the bauers by the laws. It must, however, be remarked, that their general poverty, and their want of cattle, does not allow them to make those improvements, and to provide such a quantity of manure as is necessary [II-128] to cultivate the ground without occasional fallows. The right of herding, however, destroyed in a great measure the utility of fallowing, because the bauer was not allowed to plough and cleanse his field till it was late in the spring. Of course, the greater part of Germany may be described as being imperfectly tilled. This right alone made, and makes, the whole tillage defective.

In some parts buck-wheat is much cultivated. The grains of this corn, if it deserve the name of corn, is made into grits, and into pancakes, and forms the food, particularly the suppers, of most of the inhabitants of the sandy and moory districts. The peasants have also, in these districts, large flocks of sheep. The extensive heaths are useful for no other purpose but to feed these animals. They cultivate their ground, 1 st, with rye; 2 d, rye; 3 d, oats or buck-wheat; or, 1 st, rye; 2 d, oats or buck-wheat; and 3 d, rye. The ground is then left for four or five years, and fed off during that time by sheep. It is then broken up, and again cultivated in the same manner.

In the greater part of northern Germany most of the bread is made of rye, consequently this grain is cultivated more than wheat. Almost all the bauers cultivate such a quantity of flax as their wives and families can spin. In the provinces of Göttingen, Grubenhagen, Hildesheim, and Kalenberg, and in many other parts of Germany, tobacco [II-129] is extensively cultivated. The ground in which it is to be planted is well dunged and prepared towards the middle of June. It is then planted in rows, two feet apart. It is raised from seeds in hot-beds. When it succeeds it is one of the most profitable crops. It requires too much care to be grown by the large farmers. It rather improves than injures the ground, but the peasants like to plant it on the same spot repeatedly. They cultivate several seeds for the sake of oil, such as rape and cole seed, but more particularly the white poppy. The seeds of this plant supply the oil which the bauers most commonly use both for salads and for their buck-wheat pancakes. Tobacco, flax, and poppies, added to the crops we cultivate, give the German bauers an advantage. They have a greater choice of different fruits.

When these people keep sheep, the shepherd is usually employed rather by the village than by any one individual. The shepherds themselves own a certain number of sheep, in proportion to the extent of the flock. The bauers find food for these sheep during the winter, and, moreover, give the shepherd twelve Klaffters, a measure equal to a cord of wood, and about eight shillings and a penny per year. In another instance, the shepherd received yearly two sheaves of rye, two shirts, and coarse linen for a jacket and trowsers, but no money whatever. He owned, however, forty sheep, from which [II-130] the greater part of his sustenance was derived. In another instance, a shepherd looked after the flocks of three farmers, and he received about nine bushels of rye per year, and they were to feed twenty sheep for him during the winter. In another instance, the shepherd kept the flocks of five farmers, and he lived with them, alternately changing his quarters every week. Each one gave him a lamb and twelve shillings per year. He also received a suit of clothes. Most generally the shepherds have an interest in the flock, or they have sheep of their own, whether the flock belongs to some opulent man or to several bauers. “Sometimes they have a sixth or an eighth part, sometimes they own from sixty to eighty sheep.” [15] Farm-servants are very generally paid in produce of some sort or another, which shews tolerably well the state of the country as to communication and money. I am far from affirming that this is altogether a bad state of things. Servants and labourers, when the peasants have any, live in, and form a part of the family. There is none, therefore, of that disparity of condition which is found in countries where the agricultural labourers are paid in money.

Several examples of wages for agricultural labour have been already given, and I shall here add some [II-131] others. Thrashers are usually paid with a proportion of the thrashed corn. They receive from the thirteenth to the sixteenth part, in proportion to the quality of the grain. It is reckoned that a man must gain 1 scheffel, about 1½ bushel, of winter corn, and 1½ or 2 scheffel of summer corn per week, to enable him to support a family. Ten marien grosscher, or 10d. per day, is the highest wages for common labour which I any where heard of. Most generally, and the rate very seldom varies, it is 6d. 7d. and 8d. Women receive from 4d. to 6d. This is the price paid for digging ground, which is hard labour. It is also paid for by the piece, at the price of 1½d. the square rood. I have met instances of people reaping corn, who were to be paid with a certain quantity of flax seed. I have found the same price given for labour in Saxony, in Prussia, and in Hannover, and the book I have before quoted, Der Angehende Pachter, gives the same prices. Wheat was at the same time selling for about 4s. 10d. an English bushel; rye for 4s. 3d. barley 3s.; and oats 1s. 9d.; beef was from 3d. to 4d. per pound; veal from 2½d. to 3½d.; mutton from 3½d. to 4½d.; a bushel of potatoes cost about 9½d.

I have met no accurate accounts of the quantities of corn produced in the whole of Hannover, but such accounts as I have seen I shall here give. In 1806 the produce was, of

[II-132]

This last country exports, on an average, 5600 last of barley; 700 last of wheat and rye; 800 last of peas and beans, and 60 last of buck-wheat, yearly. Bremen also exports above 40,000 wispel of different sorts of grain, and Lüneburg exports the value of 15,000 Thalers in buck-wheat and oatgrits yearly.

I have seen models, at the house of an ingenious mechanic in Hannover, of most of the new invented agricultural implements of Britain. They are known to all the theoretical men, but I never met with any in use. Agricultural writings are much read, and very plentiful, in Germany, and the readers are acquainted with every European improvement. The plough in common use is a simple but convenient instrument. It has two low wheels; the beam is straight; the share cuts nearly horizontal, and the mould-board, which is fixed always, turns the furrow on the same side. When a piece of land has to be ploughed, it is divided into strips, and when each strip is not already well risen in the middle, the outer part of the strip, at each side, is first ploughed, so that every furrow may be turned towards the center, and the middle [II-133] furrow may be the last made. The consequence is, that the surface of every strip forms the segment of a circle; and when a large plain is so ploughed, as it were in common, these segments of a circle form regular undulations so far as the eye can see. Two horses and one man work these ploughs, although I have seen six horses employed in the marsh lands near Hamburg, with two drivers both riding. This plough costs from 16s. to 28s. The large farmers sometimes plough with two oxen, but the peasants, except in the sandy districts, where oxen can be turned on the commons, invariably use horses. When they are very poor, and have no horses, they sometimes employ their cows. Two or more join their stock, and, with four cows, they manage to plough very well. When the occupier is too poor to keep a team, or occasionally to hire one, he works his land with the spade, and much land is dug. An elderly peasant, close to the town of Hannover, pointed with exultation to his field of flax, and told me “to observe how much better it was than that of his neighbour; but he is a young man, and is lazy; he ploughed his piece of ground, and I dug mine. My wife and daughter weeded it, and you see how well it looks. I can get my living off my acre, but my neighbour, I am sure I do not know what he does.” Ploughing appears to me to be well and expeditiously done. The peasants make no other water-courses than those which are [II-134] made by turning the ground to the center, and the consequence is, that ground which lies low very often produces nothing but coarse grass where corn has been sown. Draining, as a part of husbandry, is only beginning to be practised, and has not yet descended to the peasants, who sometimes ask “what the gentleman means to grow in his under ground ditch.” The plough mentioned must have been a long time in use, because it is common all over Germany, and it appears to me to be superior to the common large wheel ploughs, with shifting mould-boards, of the south of England, though not equal to the Rotheram, or Mr Small’s, or the swing ploughs.

In Friezland they have a plough fully equal to these. It is, I believe, known in England as the Dutch plough, and as the origin of Mr Rotheram’s plough. It is without wheels, and though fit for that heavy marsh, is worked by two horses, and is so light that I lifted one without difficulty.

In the sandy districts the people have another instrument to answer the purpose of a plough, called a Haken, which is very simple. It has neither turning, nor mould-board, nor wheels; the share is long, pointed at the end, and then broad and flat. It is only fit to scratch the sand with. The iron share costs about 3s. 4d. The peasants make the wooden part themselves, during winter, [II-135] and when they buy it complete its price is only about five shillings.

I only saw one two-wheeled cart employed in agriculture throughout the country. All the work is done with light four-wheeled waggons, drawn by two or four horses. They consist of three broad planks, the bottom one of which is permanently fixed to the two axle-trees; the side ones are moveable, and one of them is always taken off when the contents of the waggon have to be thrown out. Four-wheeled waggons, besides being heavier of draught, are more difficult to turn than carts, and they cannot well be made to turn up so as to throw their contents on the ground. But their disadvantages are so well known that I need not discuss them. The mechanical ingenuity of the Germans, though it has long been great, seems to be only employed to build temples to frivolity and folly, and is seldom occupied with the houses or business of men. Accordingly, many of the common instruments, such as carriages, hand-barrows, boats, waggons, and a thousand others, are awkward and ill adapted to their purposes, while musical clocks, harmonicons, and panharmonicons, are most ingeniously made. I never saw any very good cutting instruments, but walking-sticks, that serve as tubes for pipes, with a compressing pump at one end to make a fire, and a machine at the other for impaling without destroying the beauty of insects, are common.

[II-136]

Scythes and sickles are like our own; but there is a sort of sickle in Friezland different from ours, and which appeared to me to be superior. There is also in the same country a very convenient sort of shovel-cart, drawn by horses, which is used to distribute expeditiously and equally, over the surface of the whole field, the earth which is thrown out of the ditches. I despair of being able to convey by writing an accurate idea of these implements, and therefore I do not attempt to describe them. These are not the only parts of the agriculture of Friezland which makes that country apparently worthy of a visit from some of our agricultural gentlemen.

Generally all sorts of grain are sown broadcast. Beans I have seen sown in rows by the hand, the holes being made by an instrument that had a row of ten or twelve wooden spikes. I doubt if a man could make the holes with it so fast as with a single iron crow, and if the ground were hard this instrument would not pierce it.

The only manures which I saw employed were common dung, the refuse of salt-pans, and once or twice lime. In the sandy districts, where very little straw is to be had, it is customary to pare turf with heather growing on it, and to lay it in large heaps in the yards and sheep-stalls and stables.

In some parts of Hildesheim there are hedges and hedge-rows of trees. Isolated farm-houses and [II-137] villages are generally surrounded by trees. Forests cover the hills, but most of the cultivated land is destitute of both hedges and trees. As no instance has been met with of the peasants cultivating turnips,—as they rarely drain their land,—as they have no hedges to make—their agricultural labours are much simplified. After the winter corn is sown, till the following 1st of March, they have nothing to do in their fields, and rarely visit them. During the winter months they thrash their corn, which requires, however, but little time, and is very often done so soon as it is harvested. Those who have teams, and live near wood or peat, and near towns, employ themselves in carrying fuel to them. Many, indeed most of them, weave linen. The want of hedges seems to save a great deal of labour, and there is a much smaller place as a nursery for weeds and destructive animals, but it somewhat diminishes the beauty of the country. The union of weaving and farming is an example of imperfect division of labour.

The 1st of March is the commencement of agricultural labour. “Then we break loose,” says the farmer. A day has also been mentioned when the meadows are no longer to be fed off. And almost every distinct branch of farm business has some particular day on which it is commenced. Thus, the cows and sheep are not allowed in many [II-138] places to go on the common lands before the 23d of April, St George’s day. This was to many of the poor beasts a joyous day; they had been shut up all the winter, and were glad again to breathe the free air. Some few old animals seemed attached to their dirty stalls, and often turned their heads back, and bellowed their melancholy adieus; but the young ones frisked and bounded past all the power of the cow-herds, maid-servants, boys, and girls, and spectators of the village, to keep them in order. How changed did they become in a few days! When the novelty and pleasure were over, they went and came with so much regularity as a well-disciplined regiment performs its evolutions. Fixed days for work mark a general similarity in the habits of the people. They also designate a rude and a superstitious people. For they regulate their labours by only a general sort of fitness in the seasons, and often sacrifice valuable time for the sake of following the calendar of the priests.

There are some little customs connected with the common lands, that I may here mention.— A cow-herd, and often also a swine-herd, are appointed and paid by each village, who come regularly round every day sounding their horns, and collect the cattle to lead them to the pasture, and who bring them home at night. When there is any necessity for watchmen, these herds do that duty, and in winter sound their horns every [II-139] hour. At Christmas a new Vorsteher and a new bull are chosen in every parish; and it would appear from the examples I have seen, that these latter, like some other candidates for the favours of the sex, were of foreign extraction.

There is one little practice connected with agriculture which I cannot forbear mentioning, though I never saw it, because it accords with the German character. The first corn of every harvest which enters any town is usually conducted in triumph. The waggon which carries it is decorated with flowers, the people go out to meet it, and they accompany it into the town in a gay and joyous manner.

From the superiority of the agriculture of the marsh lands, where the property is free, and the farms of a moderate size, it is easy to be inferred, that neither the large nor the small farmers of the rest of Germany are best calculated for the improvement of their art. The large farmers are generally either noblemen or amtmen, who possess knowledge, but want that stimulus to exertion which is derived from a necessity to labour. They keep establishments which are too large to be perfectly superintended and guided by one person. Their situation in society does not depend on the produce of their farms, and they are not therefore extremely anxious to make so much money by them as possible. On the other hand, the small farms and the poverty of the bauers impose [II-140] on them a constant necessity to labour. Their theoretical knowledge cannot extend beyond mere reading and writing, and such little facts as they may pick up in the routine of providing for the cares of the passing day. The single fact, that by far the greater number of them unite some other occupation, principally weaving, with farming, shews clearly, that neither good cultivation nor improvements in agriculture can be expected from them. Their farms are too small, and they are too poor. The manner, therefore, in which the land is divided and appropriated in Germany necessarily causes defective husbandry.

Many of the causes which impede the improvement of agriculture in Germany are similar to those which impede it in other parts of Europe. That great cause, the contempt with which the occupation of the bauer is treated by chambermen and soldiers, has been mentioned; and I shall only here add two, one of which is common to the rest of Europe, but seems to weigh peculiarly heavy in Germany; and the other is peculiar to some parts of that country. The first is tithes, which are still very generally and rigorously collected in kind. Some instances have been met of compensation. They no longer belong to the clergy, but to the sovereign or to the nobles. They principally, however, belong to the sovereign, who shews himself to be, according to his language, [II-141] the father of his people, by his care to gather their harvests into his barns. Fruits grown on the fallow are not subjected to tithes. They appear, however, to fall peculiarly heavy on the German peasant, from the distribution of property. In other countries farmers have a command over labour; and though the labourer may suffer, the farmer gains from his toil a portion of that tithe he must pay; but the bauer is both farmer and labourer, and he suffers all the loss which in other countries is divided between these two classes. Whatever takes any of his produce from him, helps to keep him so near the verge of want, that it is peculiarly pernicious to him, and to the art he practises.

Christianity was forced on the people of northern Germany at a time when writing was common; and the origin of tithes in that country is perhaps better known than in any other. They were imposed by a conqueror. The zealous Charlemagne subdued the Saxons, and he made it a condition of the peace which he gave them, that they should become Christians, and give tithes to the priest. They have had a similar origin in other countries, or were won from credulity by cunning working on the fears it had artfully inspired. [16]

[II-142]

The power which the magistrates possess in many districts, to employ the bauers in mending roads, or corvees, is a cause which is peculiar to some parts of Germany. The ill effects of this, as the Germans call it, gezwungene Arbeit, is too well known to make it necessary for me to do more than again mention that it exists.

The Jews are some of the largest capitalists of Germany; and the law, which in many parts of northern Germany, in Hannover, for example, though not in Prussia, forbids them to hold land, and, I believe, even to take it in mortgage, must prevent them vesting their capitals in agriculture, and thus impede its progress. They can have no good security for money lent on land. This is a palpable instance of the venom of anti-social regulations corroding the body-politic from which they issue.

I have frequently made observations on the manners of the bauers, and I shall here add something [II-143] further on the subject. With the exception of some parts of Westphalia and of Oldenburg, they invariably live in villages. Their houses have very frequently the same form, and their insides are laid out somewhat in the same manner as those of Friezland, which have been already described, but they are smaller. At some particular corner you find a crib bed for the man who looks after the horses, when one is kept, and his bedding consists as much of the provender of his cattle as of blankets and sheets. In the bauer houses there is little other furniture than a stove, a stool, a table, and the cooking utensils. Chimneys are very rare. The smoke finds its way out under the roof, or at any hole it meets with, or it is deposited as tar and soot on the beams and rafters. Generally the houses are built of an oak frame, filled in with closely rammed clay or bricks. They have high thatched roofs. Fires are very frequent in most parts of Germany, and, owing to this manner of building, when once they break out, it is impossible to stop them. The government of Hannover has commanded that houses shall be built of bricks, and covered with tiles. But a family which cannot command these materials must not, on that account, be left without a roof, and accordingly, in spite of this command, I have seen people, after a fire, again building their houses with wood, and again thatching them with straw.

[II-144]

The Germans have now been collected into towns for at least ten centuries, and still longer into villages, and one is almost tempted to believe, that, in the latter, the same form of building is preserved which the first rude settlers adopted. The progress of man in all the arts which minister to the comfort of life is necessarily slow in those countries in which military foppery, operas, and learned trifling, is thought, by him who rules the taste of the country, to be the only things worthy of his patronage. In such countries, the great mass of the society have absolutely not enough common sense to know how to preserve themselves and their property. Their own wants and comforts are the last things to which they can attend. All their time is occupied in ministering to the profusion and luxury of others. How rude and insecure is the house of the bauer, and yet, after toiling for ages, he has neither means nor knowledge to build himself a more convenient habitation. The single fact, that the great mass of the productive part of the population of Europe is involved in comparative ignorance and poverty, is a reproach to the class of men who have so long undertaken to guide them in the ways of knowledge and wealth. The bauer is not insensible to his interest, but he wants the means to follow it. Within a few years he has much improved his agriculture, he has adopted the cultivation of tobacco and potatoes, and he is only [II-145] stupid and ignorant because he is degraded by the opinions of society. After these remarks it must still be allowed that a German bauer is somewhat superior to an English agricultural labourer, and in comfort, and in the scale of civilization he is much superior to an Irish peasant.

Village roads correspond with the houses; when they do not lead to an amt-house, they are in general most wretched. In the vicinity of Hannover itself, they are sometimes so bad, as almost to have the appearance of canals. In the villages and small towns, the inhabitants of which are agriculturists, all the dunghills are placed in the streets. A similar custom exists in France, and in some of the narrow streets there, the only road was over heaps of smoking putrefaction.

The ancient Germans are said to have respected their women almost to adoration, and perhaps the poorer women, without now receiving this respect, continue to deserve it. The wives and the daughters of the bauers perform with them all the labours of the farm. They dig, and sow, and reap, and plough, and thrash, just as the men do, except that the men reserve to themselves the lazy honour of going with their horses. But they do much more than the men, they look after their houses, and no sooner have they nothing else to do, than they turn to their spinning-wheels that always stand near them ready to be used. Men [II-146] may be, and very often are, seen idling away their time, but it is a rare thing to see an absolutely idle German peasant woman. They quite merit what Schiller has said of them, which is in many points an accurate picture of their employments.

“Und drinnen waltet
Die züchtige Hausfrau,
Die Mutter der Kinder
Und herrschet weise
Im häuslichen Kreise,
Und lehret die Mädchen,
Und wehret den Knaben,
Und reget ohn’ Ende
Die fleissigen Hände,
Und mebrt den Gewinn
Mit ordendem Sinn.
Und füllet mit Schätzen die duftenden Laden,
Und drehet um die Schnurrende Spindel den Faden,
Und sammelt im reinlich geglätteten Schrein
Die schimmernde Wolle, den schneeigten Lein,
Und füget zum Guten den Glanz and den Schimmer,
Und ruhet nimmer.” [17]

[II-147]

The women not only work more, but they look more after the business than the men. Their own linen, and very often the whole of the clothes worn by the family, even the coats of the men, are of their manufacture, and the mother of a family in the country of Germany is the person who both regulates it, and whose labour feeds and clothes it. [18] Had the many governments of Germany, who now constantly call themselves paternal, only claimed the higher honour of being maternal governments, their subjects would long ago have discovered the illusion of such language; and would have been fully persuaded that the most expensive and least productive member of the family had no analogy whatever with its mother.

It is possibly a necessary consequence of having so much to do, that the female peasantry are by no means clean either in their persons or their houses. Their hair appears only to be arranged for baptisms, marriages, and other feasts, and at all other times to be matted, dishevelled, and dirty. Their clothes on working days are [II-148] utterly neglected, they are dirty, torn, and negligently put on. They are generally short, have broad faces, with a want of expression, and seem much more calculated for constant labour than for one moment’s love. [19] When the women of Germany are collected in towns, they are pretty and well made, and the female peasantry of the north are only ill favoured from the labour they perform. It is perhaps impossible to calculate how much the happiness of both sexes would be increased if the women had only so much time to spare from their toil as might be required to keep their persons and their houses clean, and so much knowledge as to enable them to know the value of doing this.

When they go to church, or to market, they put [II-149] on gay clothes, and hang their ornaments in their ears, but so soon as they come home, the ornaments are carefully laid away, the rags and the dirty clothes are again resumed, as if they dressed themselves for the world, and not for their families and friends. It is a strange feature in the character of ignorant people, that they are anxious, by every little sort of attention, to obtain the good word of a stranger, or the respect to a person whom they may see once a month, and they never give themselves the least trouble to please those with whom they constantly live. They buy ornaments, and want food, clothes, and firing. They give gluttonous feasts on one day, and are half starved the rest of the year: and vanity seems stronger even than hunger.

I have mentioned at page 188, Vol. I. an instance of their amusements, and it is customary in winter evenings for the lasses to collect with their spinning-wheels at some one house, and the young men follow them, to talk and amuse themselves. They are a social people, and such an assembly is a pleasant sort of party, without any of the expence or brutality of drunkenness.

Quietness, patience, and submission, seem eminently characteristics of the female peasantry. In their houses, or abroad, or in the markets, where they collect in great numbers, each one bringing her own few eggs, or fowls, or skeins of thread, or sausages, or whatever else she has to [II-150] sell, you never see a quarrel, and seldom hear a loud or an angry word. There is the buzz of a multitude, but no voice rises above it.

All the peasantry can read and write; though they are said to use the latter only to record what money is due to them, and the former only to amuse themselves with those scandalous anecdotes, generally of the bar or of the church, which are thickly strewed in the calenders. I have mixed with them, as much as a stranger well could, who did not understand their language; (for Low German, or some provincial dialect, is what they speak;) I have occasionally seen them read their Bible, but never discovered any signs of much knowledge amongst them. I have heard of a journal kept by a bauer in Mecklenburg, but it may be doubted, with all the schools belonging to Hannover, to be afterwards described, if the country ever did or ever will produce, under the present form of government, such men as Burns, Bloomfield, and Hogg.

Talents and animation do not by any means belong to them. I always found them civil and friendly, but calm and dull. Whether I stopped to talk to them when they were at work, or met them in public-houses, or entered their own dwellings, or had them as companions on any road, they always answered all my questions very civilly, but without warmth, without interest, and [II-151] almost without remark. My being a perfect stranger, and different from themselves, seemed to cause very little surprise, and to call forth few questions. I have often told them I came from afar, and endeavoured to excite their curiosity, but it very rarely went beyond asking me what corn we grew in England, or if our’s was not a fine rich land. They are guilty of few errors or absurdities, are very humble before the amtmen and their superiors, and rarely express any other discontent than at the dearness of what they have to buy and the cheapness of what they have to sell. They are too regular and mechanical to allow any thing more to be said of them, than that they eat, drink, sleep, labour, and speak, with a sort of sulky civility and composure.

They have one custom, which appears to have arisen from the services they were and are still bound to perform for their landlord, which is probably worth mentioning. The regulations concerning it are precise, and I know several instances of it. So soon as a bauer grows elderly, and no longer well able to do all the active and laborious part of the work, he resigns his farm to his son, preserving to himself a part of the house and a certain income. He can only preserve, however, a certain part of the house and income; and though he may divide what he has himself gained among his other children, he cannot give from the farm, [II-152] Meyer Hof, any of the stock, or implements necessary for its cultivation. This seems a sort of regulation which makes the heir and his parents in a manner independent of one another, and not unfrequently sets discord between them. There can be no rules for the division of property which will ever be of equal value with leaving it entirely free. It ought to be disposed of according to the discretion of the owner.

I must mention in this chapter one establishment which is of itself very good, and which has introduced into the kingdom, by the care of the government, a great variety of useful and good fruits; but it at the same time shews what imbecility of mind is produced among a people by that unlimited interference which has been described as characterising the government of Hannover. The people, of themselves, had not sense enough to establish a common nursery for fruit trees. What superb establishments of this kind are met with near London! What care is taken to rear and propagate the most delicious fruits! Compared to these, that of Hannover is trifling; but these are private establishments for the purposes of gain, and that is a royal establishment for the benefit of the subjects. It is known by the name of the Plantage, and is situated at Herren-hausen, two miles from Hannover. It is cultivated at the expence of the sovereign, though fruit trees may be purchased at it. Several [II-153] thousand young trees are annually given to some particular parts of the country where they are most wanted, and the amtmen distribute them to certain parishes, and to those people who need them. If it were possible for one moment to forget, that the power to perform such acts of beneficence towards the people is in reality derived from extorting their substance from them; if it could be supposed that governments and sovereigns create those things they are so free to bestow, there is nobody who would not be ready to worship the givers as above humanity. Now they can only be regarded as re-bestowing, with large professions of bounty, the twentieth part of what they have before taken, that they may enjoy in peace the remaining nineteen parts.

CHAPTER VI.
hannover.—manufactories.↩

Linen the staple of Germany.—Quantity manufactured in Silesia.—In Westphalia.—Cotton.—Wool.—Paper.—Iron.—Imperfect division of labour.—Wages of.—Imperfection of German manufactures wrongly attributed to the national character of the people.—Caused by the monopoly and interference of governments.—The guilds.

There is much cause for melancholy, and even for despondency, when we look on the decay of any great national establishment. It is with a feeling of this kind I read the accounts (which I have met in more than one book) of the decay of the linen manufacture, which may be considered as the great staple of Germany. This feeling is not a little heightened by observing, that the people whose ingenuity has driven the Germans from the market have profited so little by their success, that they are involved in greater calamity than their unsuccessful competitors. The manufacture of linen is not confined to particular places; it is carried on in every bauer’s house. “The same hands that cultivate the field, that cut [II-155] wood, and thrash corn, turn from these occupations to the weavers’ loom. They are agriculturists to-day, and to-morrow manufacturers.” The peasants are in winter weavers, the women weave, and they also spin at every moment when they have nothing else to do, “without their various employments destroying their dexterity.” The linen which they do not themselves need is collected by dealers, and sent by them to all parts of the world. Silesia and Westphalia are the principal exporting countries.

In 1805, the value of all the linen manufactured in Silesia amounted to 10,676,000 R. Thalers, (L. 1,779,000,) and of this, 6,091,559 Thalers (L. 1,015,000) were exported. There were in the same year 34,910 looms, and 30,000 families employed. The spinning was done by 500,000 persons. [20] But the writer adds, “This great branch of industry, the chief source of the wealth of Silesia, is at present far less than it was before the battle of Jena. The want of a market reduces it almost to nothing.” [21]

The linen manufactory of Westphalia was equally [II-156] prosperous at the commencement of this century. Between the years 1792 and 1798, the yearly average of bolts of linen brought to the linen-halls for inspection was, fine linen, 18,570, middling fine, 22,767, and coarse, 19,680, with 5,331,543 hanks of thread. There is reason to believe, that this quantity is now diminished by one half.

I have met with no modern accounts which can be relied on of the quantity of linen made in Hannover, but the amount of the value of what was shewn at the different linen-halls in 1793 was 295,116 R. Thalers, (L.49,189.) Without being able to tell precisely to what degree the quantity manufactured is now diminished, I yet know from various sources, that not only plain linen, but damasks and table linen, which were formerly made in various parts of Hannover, are now much less made. The diminution of the linen manufactory has been attributed to the late war, which prevented the linen from finding its way to the West Indies and America. This cause for the want of a market was aided by our machinery, which enabling us to sell our cottons cheaper than the Germans could sell their linen, has in some measure diminished its consumption. A proof of this is, that many Germans now wear cotton shirts, who a few years ago never wore any thing but home-made linen. This alteration must be most [II-157] mischievous to the peasants. Thinly scattered as they are over the country, and destitute of any large capital or ingenuity, there can be little hope that they can supply the place of this manufactory with any other equally advantageous. Perhaps it is desirable that they should attend exclusively to agriculture; but, till the land is appropriated in larger portions, and used on easier conditions, and till they acquire a sufficiency of capital and skill to enable them to live solely by farming, they must suffer much by losing one of the means they formerly possessed of contributing to their own maintenance.

The manufacture of cotton is increasing. There is one considerable manufactory at Osterode, and at various places in Hannover smaller ones are established. Several have, however, failed. In the dominions of Prussia cotton is manufactured very successfully, and is on the increase. It is so well made in the provinces on the Rhine as to compete successfully with that made in our country. There were twenty-two spinning machines established, in 1813, on the left bank of the Rhine, belonging to Prussia. In Silesia the number of looms employed, in 1805, was 3490, and the value of the cotton prepared amounted to 975,998 Thalers, (L.162,666.)

The manufactory of wool is next in point of importance to that of linen; but of this I have not [II-158] been able to collect any details which can be relied on, except for Prussia. In the provinces on the Rhine, woollens are manufactured equal to ours. It is surely a high honour that the manufactories of England should be the standard by which other nations judge their own. In the former department de Rure, the manufactory of wool employed, in 1812, 50,000 persons, and the value of the product was 30,000,000 Francs. Both in Saxony and in the dukedom of Berg, casimirs are extensively made. In Berg, in 1812, there were seventy manufactories of cloth and casimir. Brandenburg has also several woollen manufactories. The value of the woollen cloth, of every sort, manufactured in Silesia in 1805, amounted to 4,982,933 Thalers, (L. 830,489. [22] ) A coarse woollen cloth, which is the usual wear of the peasantry, is made in all parts of Germany. Sometimes it is made by the bauers, and sometimes by regular cloth makers.

That the manufacture of woollen cloth in Hannover has decayed, is evident from the fact, that formerly there were not less than 800 clothmakers in Göttingen; now there are but two manufactories, which do not altogether employ 400 persons. When I visited them it was autumn, and all work [II-159] was fully suspended, that the people might gather in the harvests. Here, again, we see the advantage of machinery. We can bring the wool of Hannover to England, manufacture it into cloth, and send it back there for sale.

Paper is made in considerable quantities in all parts of Germany, but it is chiefly of the coarse kind. The finer sorts are made on the Rhine. Thirty-three paper-mills are enumerated in Hannover, seven of which belong to the crown, and paper making is on the increase.

Ironstone is found in most of the mountains and hills of Germany. The principal places, however, where iron founderies are established on an extensive scale in northern Germany, are the Harz, Westphalia, particularly in the neighbourhood of Siegen and Altenkirchen, and in Silesia. From the mines of the Harz belonging to various sovereigns, no book is known in which the whole of their products are enumerated. Those which belong to Hannover are divided into three districts or berg amts; 1 st, That of Clausthal, all the mines and founderies of which deliver 21,357 marks of silver, 22,597 hundred weight of lead, 582 hundred weight of copper, 100,338 hundred weight of various sorts of iron, yearly; 2 d, That of Cellesfeld, the mines and founderies deliver 10,841½ marks of silver, 16,144 hundred weight of lead, and 142 hundred weight of copper, yearly; 3 d, [II-160] That of Goslar, the products of the mines in this district belong to Hannover and Brunswick in the proportion of four-sevenths to the former, and three-sevenths to the latter. The quantity of their yearly produce which belongs to Hannover is estimated at 6½ marks of gold, 2039½ marks of silver, 3205 hundred weight of lead, 1416 hundred weight of copper, 2987 hundred weight of zinc, and some hundred weight of sulphur, copperas, and potash. Hannover also possesses some other iron and copper works, which may supply 700 hundred weight of copper, 500 hundred weight of brass, and 2000 hundred weight of iron. [23] These products are not the tithe of what the north of Germany supplies. While I regret not being able to furnish a correct account of the whole, enough has been said to prove that it is deficient in none of the materials of a manufacturing country.

Porcelain and common earthenware are made in various parts, particularly in the royal manufactories at Meissen in Saxony, and at Berlin. Some of the potteries of Hannover presented rather strange examples of the imperfect manner in which labour is yet divided. At one which I visited, near the small town of Münder, five men were at work, who made, in the course of a year, 26 fuder of a coarse earthenware. Each fuder contains 36 [II-161] hundred weight. The workmen had to bring the earth they used three miles. They went every summer and brought as much as served them the whole year. The only machines they had to prepare the earth were knives, with which they cut it into thin slices, and thus were enabled to separate all the stony and rough particles. It was cleaned by the same hand that dug and moulded it, and that placed it in the oven. Other examples have already been given of an imperfect division of labour, which must undoubtedly be considered as a cause of the slow progress of many of the manufactories of Germany.

One of the manufactories whose increase deserves to be mentioned is spirits. In every part of the north of Germany distilleries have increased and brewhouses decreased.

The wages of the workmen in iron have been mentioned in the 10th Chapter of the First Volume, and I shall here add such other wages of manufactural labour as I learnt. Carpenters and such trades gained in Hannover from 18d. to 2s. a-day. The latter was, however, for extraordinary work. Shoemakers working by the piece earned from 3 to 4½ Thalers (10s. to 15s.) per week; tailors about 13d. per day and their breakfast. A law of the guild of tailors forbids paying them by the piece. Glassblowers working by the piece make, when trade is brisk, between 4 and 5 Thalers, [II-162] 13s. 4d. to 16s. 8d. per week; coal-miners, who were paid at the rate of 28 gute groschen for every himpten of coals, made, on an average, little more than a shilling a day. It is, however, to be remarked, that many of the journeymen live in the families of their employers, and then receive so much per year. I have found the sum given varying from L. 5 to L. 8 Sterling per year for journeymen mechanics. From some accounts which I have seen of the wages of labour in the year 1796, they appear not to have increased since then in nominal value, and to have decreased in real value. In fact, the rate seems remarkably equal and steady throughout Germany.

The fact mentioned above, that many of the journeymen tradesmen still live with their employers, is a specimen of the equality and homely state of society in Germany. The progress of refinement, if such an alteration can be called refinement, seems to be to banish this homely state. It once existed in England. Both masters and journeymen, I believe, like our present mode better, and an individual cannot decide that their judgment is wrong. I can but remark, however, that when masters describe the former state as a “grovelling situation,” they like the present one better, chiefly because it ministers to their pride; and, while they boast their democratic feelings, it lessens the distinction between them and their employers, [II-163] and makes a more marked boundary between them and their journeymen. It renders more perfect that aristocracy of wealth, which is already stronger in our country than in any other. It can only be known from the experience of future ages, if this aristocracy, now first coming to its full growth, be not more pernicious than that aristocracy of birth which is sinking to decay, and which has so long been the plague of the world.

After visiting the greater part of the manufacturing establishments of Hannover, it would have given me pleasure could I have recorded any thing of them that indicates rapid improvement; but to me it appears as if they were yet in a most backward state. There is not a single steam-engine in the whole country, and, with the exception of the rolling machine at Oker, and the boring machine at Konigshütte, I know of nothing that deserves the name of an improvement. The greater part of the people supply their own wants, and make little or nothing to exchange. It is admitted by German authors, that Hannover, and a great part of Germany may be added, is not a manufacturing country. They attribute this to a want of enterprise in the people; they admit that it is an evil, but they charge it on the natural character of their countrymen. Other persons follow on the same ground, and the indolence, which is perhaps derived from other causes, is all attributed [II-164] to nature. To me it appears to be of much more importance to rescue nature from those unfounded imputations, which ascribe to her the characteristics of evil, and which, classing man as little better than a sloth, make him worthy to be a slave, than merely to enumerate the number of iron bars or bolts of linen which are made in a year: and I shall, therefore, here offer some observations on the causes which have impeded the manufactural industry of the Germans.

When we turn our view to the localities of Germany, and find the most valuable metals, such as iron, copper, lead,—the most useful minerals, such as coal, lime, salt,—and the most beneficial plants scattered profusely throughout the country,—and, at the same time, merely glance at what is performed in it, we must conclude that its natural advantages have never been adequately employed. This is indeed an admitted fact, and the Germans themselves attribute it to a natural heaviness of character. It has already been mentioned that this characteristic does not apply to the people of Hamburg, who are as keen speculatists as any of the world; and if we turn our view to the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, we shall also be convinced that it did not then form any part of the character of the inhabitants of the free towns of Germany. Then the inhabitants of the smallest towns, such as Stade, Lüneburg, Uelzen, to say nothing of [II-165] the more distinguished Nuremberg, Magdeburg, and many others, and the progress they made in industry and the arts; were distinguished by a commercial and enterprising spirit, which equalled that of any other people of Europe. In proportion, however, as these towns came to be governed by a self-elected magistracy of lawyers, or fell under the power of some sovereigns, their trade decayed. Many of the motives for which men desire wealth were destroyed by the change in their political relations, and their enterprising spirit ceased with their freedom. Prior to the seventeenth century the Germans were next to the Italians in mechanical ingenuity and the useful arts. Southern Germany then surpassed northern Germany, but since the Reformation, which brought freedom with it, or rather protected, in some measure, what before existed, the latter has surpassed the former. At present, the inhabitants on the Rhine do not want enterprise. The Germans who emigrate and cultivate Russia and America, and the individuals who acquire fortunes in other European lands, are as enterprising as any people of the world, and an opposite characteristic only distinguishes those who live in Germany from the numerous governments of that country regulating and hampering every branch of industry.

Some examples of the minuteness of their interference have been given in the chapter on Government, [II-166] and to these may be added the fact, that no man can establish any new species of industry in almost any part of Germany without the royal sanction. The monarchs are manufacturers and monopolists, and they allow nothing to be undertaken that might render the value of their monopolies less. The monopoly of salt is a striking example, and I have been informed, that the principal motive why the coals, which are found in abundance in Saxony, are not permitted to be imported into the territories of Prussia, bordering on the Elbe, is, that the importation would reduce the price of the domanial woods. When it is considered that every sovereign of Germany is a monopolist, and that the principle of regulating every branch of industry is in full operation in every one of its numerous governments, we may rather be surprised that, under such a disadvantage, any portion of the Germans should have retained either enterprise or industry, than that they should be slow and indolent.

Several individual instances have fallen under my observation of enterprise whenever there was room to exert it. No persons are more accused of wanting this quality than the bauers; yet, whenever they have had an opportunity, they have adopted the cultivation of tobacco and summer fruits. They have improved much within this last fifty years. I may also quote the enterprise of an [II-167] individual who was rather favoured by government. Mr Chief Factor Schachtrupp has lately established at Osterode a white lead and a shot manufactory, which is not only complete as a manufactural establishment, but is built with great neatness and taste. The vinegar for acidifying the lead was made in the house, the grinding mills, though all the machinery was of wood, were very good, and the article was entirely prepared for sale in the same building. Shot were made after the English method, by being dropped from a great height, and might possibly compete, as it was evidently the proprietor’s intention they should, with English shot. The bags in which they were to be packed were marked with the king’s arms, and “Patent Shot, London.” Numerous attempts, also, which have been made without success, to establish manufactories, are proofs that the people do not naturally want enterprise. This acknowledged feature of their character is rather to be attributed to their governments, than to nature, or original sin; though these are the imagined causes to which all men refer those evils which they are either too indolent to inquire into, or too vain to imagine can be brought on by themselves.

It has not been from a want of wish to promote the manufactural industry of their subjects that the sovereigns of Germany have erred, but from ignorance. They have established boards of trade [II-168] and departments of ministry for its encouragement, they have given premiums on particular productions, they have directed how linen is to be made, and that people must not burn their cloth in pressing it. In short, every manual art seems to have been more subjected in Germany to prescribed forms than in any other country. The monarchs have carried the tactics of the camp into the concerns of commerce,—they have tried to drill it into neatness and order;—they have constrained and partially destroyed it, till little more remains of it than the drill-serjeants. There was a time when our own government was equally ignorant, when it prescribed all the arts of life, but the intelligence of our people has surmounted the difficulty it threw in their way, and we have grown rich and ingenious in spite of regulations. To this day in Hannover both woollen cloth and linen must be made according to prescribed forms, and they are both examined to see that they are so made. This regulation, which was made by consumers, was intended, according to the declaration of the law [24] itself, “to ensure the consumer good cloth at a reasonable rate.” With such restrictions, we surely need not seek in nature for any occult [II-169] cause why the Hannoverians are neither enterprising nor ingenious.

It was a part of this same system of policy to fix the price of every article consumed. Formerly the magistrates of the towns did this on every article of food which was sold. At present, it is done by the police, and prices are regularly fixed by it on meat and bread. The facts on which its judgment is founded are unknown, but “the wish to procure good articles at a cheap rate,” is undoubtedly the motive for the interference. We can hardly say the police is to blame in doing this, for it only fulfils the wishes of the inhabitants. They all think the markets ought to be under the control of the magistrates. On the same principle strangers are forbidden to purchase any thing in the market at Hannover before twelve o’clock, on pain of being fined. Every body who purchases to sell again is also forbidden to lay in his store before the same hour, and this is also done that the inhabitants of the town may buy cheap.

There may be traced, not only in the present regulations, but in the regulations of times past, a constant opposition of interest between the towns and the bauers, and it is still an opinion of their inhabitants, that, but for these regulations, the bauers would impose on them. They trust nothing either to the interest or the virtue of men, but expect everything good from the interference of the magistrate. [II-170] These minor but impolitic regulations seem not to be sufficiently remarked. Most of the enlightened writers of Germany are inhabitants of towns, and it is probable this circumstance has had an influence on their judgments. They do not seem to be yet interested in procuring a free market for all sorts of produce. The bauer is himself ignorant of his rights and his interests. He belongs to that class which has nobody to speak for it, because it can reward nobody. He neither reads, nor buys books, and literary men as necessarily suit their commodities to the market as any other sort of labourers. It is the inhabitants of towns and rich people who reward the labours of the literary man; and while a few writers are found who flatter the passions of the mob, by much the greater part of them flatter the prejudices and passions of the wealthy and the powerful. It is one of the most absurd of modern opinions, that they who have nothing to give will be the general objects of adulation; and that they who have both the power to punish and reward will always be told disagreeable truths. The passions and prejudices of the pen-holding and wealthy part of every society seem to be sacred idols, to which the passions and prejudices of the rest must submit without inquiry. They have long been exclusively worshipped, and are now become the legitimate guides of all men.

It must be from the natural resources of a country [II-171] that its manufactories can be established, and if the whole of these are seized on at the outset by people who produce nothing, it is obvious that the country never can be manufactural. Sovereigns can never manufacture to advantage. Every person they employ is necessarily destitute of that impulse to exertion which is derived from individual interest, and subjects can have neither enterprise nor ingenuity when all the materials on which they can be exerted are monopolized by the crown. One great material of manufactories is metal, and this is monopolized by the sovereigns throughout Germany. When the mines themselves are not the property of the monarch, yet all their produce must be delivered to him; and sometimes, as is the case on the Harz, at a fixed price. Most of the sovereigns of Germany are manufacturers of cast and wrought iron, makers of porcelain, and salt, the owners of large portions of territory, and sole proprietors of most of the forests. The sovereign of Hannover is both papermaker and miller. He fattens his own fowls, and makes his own butter. He has lime-kilns at Lüneburg, and brick-kilns at Herrenhausen; he employs factors in various places to dispose of his products; in short, he is the only extensive manufacturer and merchant in his own dominions. All the original sources of wealth are, therefore, monopolized by the sovereign, and as these are employed in supporting [II-172] an idle state, it is impossible that the people can be manufactural. If the produce of the country were the property of individuals, it would only be consumed by those who were employed in creating more. The interest of the sovereign not only operates on him to make laws which check and restrain the industry of individuals, but he monopolizes the whole resources of the country, and he can at least have only himself to blame that they are ill employed. According to the genius of his government, most of the produce of the country is divided in small, very small portions, amongst his numerous servants, who are obliged to support a certain dignity of appearance, and can never accumulate capital. In truth, he is the only capitalist of his dominions. His monopoly and his laws are two of the great causes why the “exertions of his subjects do not keep pace with his wishes for their improvement.”

It is a strange prejudice which makes nobles think themselves disgraced by being farmers or merchants, and honoured if they receive from the monarch an appointment to inspect his salt-works or his mines, or to manage one of his estates. It seems to be still stranger, that they should imitate the sovereign in all things but one, and disdain to be merchants or manufacturers when he is the greatest merchant and manufacturer in his dominions. But this may have its source in a dread of competition; he honours soldiers with medals, but [II-173] a noble who should engage in trade would be excluded from royal favour. Men have unfortunately brought themselves to reverence the decrees of sovereigns somewhat more than the laws of nature, and hence the honours sovereigns bestow on some occupations have brought dishonour on others. Tradesmen, mechanics, and merchants, are in general both poor and despised in Germany; they are promoted to no dignified places;—they receive no honours, and they acquire very little wealth. No merchant whatever has any political power, and hence his occupation is contemned. A gentleman of Hannover, who held a situation under government without being a nobleman, told me he had taken what was considered as a most extraordinary step, in sending one of his sons into a counting-house at Hamburg. Not merely nobles, but all those persons who may be called professionalists, look on manufactures and on commerce as degrading. And hence all the ingenuity of the people is directed to the army, to the law, to literature, or to medicine, and every one seeks to escape from dishonoured employments. There can be no question that this opinion has originated in the rewards bestowed by the sovereigns on particular professions, and it must be considered as one cause of a want of mechanical skill, ingenuity, and enterprise.

I have dwelt perhaps rather longer on these [II-174] causes than I ought, but nothing seems to me so likely to be pernicious to the welfare of our race as an unfounded opinion, that nature gives us those bad qualities which are caused by systems of government; and that, at the same time, teaches us to look to government to remedy an evil which, if it be really natural, must be beyond its power to cure.

The manner in which the capital of Hannover is disposed of prevents accumulation. Persons who can live on profits are rare, and what would be called a rich merchant or manufacturer in Britain, is unknown in Hannover. I am far from thinking that large capitalists and numerous destitute workmen are desirable. A large quantity of useful machines, and of necessaries, and luxuries, divided into tolerably equal proportions, are much to be desired, but when they are collected in the hands of a few, they neither minister to greater production, nor to happiness and morality. Hannover wants the benefit of a large capital, but she is equally free from the curse of large capitalists.

It cannot be supposed that the people who are both farmers and weavers are less happy than those who only plough or weave;—that it diminishes the enjoyment of the individual both to prepare the clay and mould the jug, but the imperfect division of labour which has been mentioned, must [II-175] be considered as a cause of less production. The minute division of labour which exists in our country, and the direction of the labours of many to complete one article, is what is wanted in Hannover. This is generally obtained through the means of large capitalists, but they are by no means necessary to its existence. We must distinguish, therefore, between the two things, and while we wish the mild and gentle people of Germany may acquire a large capital, and adopt a more minute division of labour, we must hope they will so acquire the one, and adopt the other, that their produce may not centre in the hands of one or a few individuals.

The chapter on Manufactories seems to be the proper place to say all that may be necessary on the trade corporations, Zünfte, of Germany. It is not necessary minutely and particularly to describe them, because similar corporations exist, or have existed, all over Europe; and I shall only remark those particulars in which they appear to differ from the corporations of the rest of Europe; and which must have had, and must still have, a powerful influence on the skill, ingenuity, character, and manners of all the mechanics of Germany. You meet travelling on foot on every road a great number of young workmen; some are dirty and ragged, others are decently clad, some have money enough to pay their expences, others are privileged [II-176] to beg. All these are set in motion, and kept in motion by a law common to the corporation of every trade. According to this law, every apprentice is obliged to travel, or, as it is called, wandern, for three years from the expiration of his apprenticeship, in search of knowledge, before he is allowed to settle in any city as a master in which guilds are yet in existence. This is one of the most important regulations of these guilds in which they differ from the corporations of our own country.

From the minute division of landed property which has been described, it might be expected that Germany would be, like Ireland, overrun with a famished and a degraded population. It is certainly far less so than our sister island; and possibly much of this evil may have been prevented by the wisdom of a regulation also common to all the trades. This is, that no journeyman shall marry. If he do,—if he even impregnate a woman,—he is banished from their society, he can obtain no employment in the trade, and he has no resource but common daily labour to save him from starving.

These two regulations, which seem very important, are not, however, invariably praise-worthy. It is not a rational objection to a man marrying, that he is a journeyman, though it be a very rational one, that he is not able to maintain a wife and family; and many men set up for masters [II-177] before they otherwise would, in order to obtain the privilege of marrying. Most of the mechanics and tradesmen throughout the countries where the guild laws are in existence, have seldom more than enough, with their labours, to support themselves and family. I have met with shopkeepers who were comparatively rich, but opulent mechanics, though the nation be frugal, are extremely rare. Part of the eagerness which has been remarked to become masters, may be attributed to the restraint on journeymen marrying.

There is possibly no method by which men who have a sufficient stock of previous knowledge, and who desire to increase it, may improve themselves more than by travelling. It appears to have been from this idea that the law was made which obliges every young man, after his term of apprenticeship is expired, to seek work abroad as a journeyman, for three years, before he can settle as a master. Many people of this description, however, must be perfectly unfit to travel, and it leads them into much dissipation.

It is degrading, and often destructive to the upright independence of young men, to wander about the country with a privilege to beg. I have had various opportunities, in fact, of witnessing the dissipation which the practice of wandering produces, to say nothing of the idleness necessarily occasioned by so frequently being out of employment. [II-178] All the trades have different rules as to the manner of treating their wandering brethren when they arrive at any town in which guilds are established. Some make it a rule to give them only a lodging, others a lodging and a certain sum of money, and others, as the smiths, assemble at their house of call whenever any brethren arrive, and pass the night in jollity and mirth. All travelling journeymen have regular passports called wandering-books, and the regulations by which they are to be governed, such as not to stay longer than twenty-four hours in any one town, if they do not find employment, such as to beg in a regular manner, and apply to the magistrates for what is called the Zehrpfennige, subsistence-money, are printed in the first page. Such passports were formerly given by the magistrates of the towns, and were then called certificates. I have reason to believe, from some police reports that I have seen, that a great part of all the persons sent out of different towns as vagabonds are wandering journeymen.

The German mechanics, from seeing various cities, from mixing with a variety of men, possess in general a great deal of knowledge, and of freedom in opinion and action; but they are poor in spirit, averse to labour, and more given than the other classes of the society to joviality and dissipation. The advantages of travelling, when men themselves [II-179] like it and choose it, and are fit to travel, are very great, but to compel the whole of so large a class of men as the journeymen mechanics to travel, by a law, is so absurd as to prescribe precisely the same regimen to the sick and to the healthy. When it was first made, also, there was little other communication between towns than what arose from people visiting them; there was no post, no press, and no periodical publications to give an account of improvements; and then, compelling the younger members of the guilds to travel in search of knowledge was much more rational than at present. One great advantage, apparently, of this law is, that it keeps the journeymen on a level with the demand for their labour. The assistance afforded them by the corporations when they are compelled to wander, protects them from absolute distress, and, constantly circulated about the country, they are always conveyed to the spot where they are most wanted. Yet we know from experience, that this beneficial effect can be produced by the mere demand for labour, without a law to enforce and compel men to go where they are wanted.

The makers of guild laws have erred, as almost all law-makers err, from not distinguishing two things which are in themselves essentially distinct and different. These are, a desired line of conduct, and a law to compel that line of conduct. [II-180] It is one thing, that a man ought to do a certain action, it is another and a perfectly distinct thing to make a law to compel him to do it, or to punish him if he neglect it. It is, for example, much to be desired that bank-notes should not be forged. The effects of not doing this are confidence in the bank, security to property, and preserving a very convenient money in circulation; but it is perfectly a distinct thing to make a law that men shall not forge bank-notes, or to sentence them to be hung if they are detected in doing it. The effect of this is, to encourage a line of conduct directly contrary to that desired. Experience has shewn it; and when men are told they must not do any certain action under the penalty of being hung, they are immediately persuaded that it will be a great advantage to them to do it, provided they can escape detection. Neither the makers of guild laws, nor the makers of laws for nations, will ever make good laws till they seize and preserve this distinction, nor till they invariably ascertain what will be the effect of making a law forcibly to produce a desired line of conduct.

The guilds are not at present universally established in Germany, though formerly there was not a single trade through the whole country, not even that of floating rafts down rivers, but what had its own guild laws. Whether this corporation compelled their apprentices and journeymen to wander [II-181] in search of knowledge, I am not informed; but it monopolized the management of all the floating wood, and nobody dared conduct a raft on the Danube or Elbe without being one of the brethren. Guilds are abolished through the whole of the Prussian territories, and in Bavaria. The monarchs have laid a tax on every trade, by requiring every person to pay for permission to exercise it. They pay soldiers, but tradesmen must pay them. Guilds were abolished wherever the French power reached, but they are now again restored in various places, in Hannover for example, to all their former privileges. There are some towns free from them, but they are the offspring of towns, and are still generally found in all the large ones. They were originally combinations of men, so well for political as for other purposes, but they have long ceased to take any part either in the government of the towns, with the exception of the Hanse towns, or in the government of the country.

Two of the guild laws, whose influence is most important, have been mentioned. A third regulation is, that every person wishing to practise any art, whose members form a guild, must serve three or four years as an apprentice to learn that art; and there is no one, not even that practised by merchants, which has not a guild; so that every species, almost, of industry, is subject to this restriction. [II-182] No journeyman can be employed who has not served a regular apprenticeship. Some trades, such as butchers, bakers, chimney-sweepers, are called close trades. Others are open. In the former only a limited number of masters is allowed in any one town, from a supposition that more could not obtain a living; in the latter the number is not limited. Some curious examples are known of the former mode. For example, in Lüneburg the privilege of brewing was attached to particular houses, while the right to distil brandy was hereditary in twelve families, and no other person than the twelve representatives of these families could keep a distillery. Such limitations as these, which were very general, appear to have been made by masters in order to secure themselves a subsistence. After serving an apprenticeship, and travelling as a journeyman, every person who wishes to establish himself as a master must first make some finished piece of work, called a Meisterstück, to prove his capability to work. If he is not the son of a citizen, he must buy the right of citizenship in the town where he wishes to settle. The price, of course, is various in different towns. It has long been a law that certain trades shall be only carried on within the walls of towns, and no journeyman dare do a piece of work on his own account. He must be employed by a master regularly established in a town. Formerly this privilege [II-183] was confined to fewer towns than at present, and formerly those masters who settled in the country were obliged to enrol themselves in the guild of some town, and contribute to its expence. There were formerly still more hindrances to becoming a master. A man was obliged, for example, in some towns, to have a house of his own before he could be a tailor, and to prove himself not to belong to any family which had been ennobled.

These regulations were originally made by members of the trades themselves, and not by the governments. They have failed in their laudable efforts to ensure good workmen by sending them to travel, and by making them give proofs of their ability. I can safely assert, that all the common trades, such as tailors, shoemakers, bakers, smiths, have not attained so great a degree of perfection in Germany as in England. What may also possibly be deemed a proof of their uselessness is, that milliners, who have no guilds, are as clever in Germany as in other countries. It has been justly observed, that most of the great improvements which have of late years been made in the machinery and manufactories of England, have been made by persons not apprenticed to the arts they have improved, consequently, even the fewer restrictions as to apprenticeships which are found in England than in Germany, by hindering ingenious [II-184] men from following the bent of their inclination, have been pernicious to improvements. The most manufacturing part of Germany is the country about the Rhine, and there, I believe, guild laws have been long abolished. The guild laws, therefore, of Germany, extending to every trade, may be considered as having in part caused the Germans not to make the same progress in manufactures as we have made. And as they regulate so many of the actions of men, they may also be regarded as aiding to produce that unenterprising character which is ascribed generally to the Germans.

The partial abolition of these regulations, and the works which have been written in Germany on the subject of guilds, prove that our neighbours are sensible of their injurious nature, and that, in this respect, so well as in respect to many other minor regulations, they are making a rapid improvement. In looking, however, at what has been written, it is impossible to avoid remarking, that the observations have been chiefly or wholly made by men whose profession was learning, and that it would be difficult to find an instance where the mere citizens in Germany have thrown light on this subject, as they have in England. In fact, I have talked to several tradesmen on the subject, and never met with but one individual, and he was a journeyman, whose years of wandering were expired, [II-185] and who could not get settled, in which the tradesmen did not approve of the guild laws. The momentary abolition of them by the French gave a sort of licence to journeymen. Every one who could pay the tax on trades set up for a master, and a vast deal of poverty and misery were the consequence. This fact by no means proves the wisdom of the guild laws, though it throws some light on the effects of abolishing them by an arbitrary decree. It is, indeed, at present, an admitted fact in Germany so well as in Britain, that all such regulations as the guild laws prevent much good.

The organization of men according to their trades, gave the citizens of the middle ages a spirit and a power which enabled them to protect themselves and promote civilization. At present every man finds protection in general opinion supporting the laws of the society, and these combinations now do nothing but promote monopoly. It ought not, however, to be the government which should abolish them. Its interference is above all things to be deprecated, and its only duty on this subject is to refuse its support to them, and leave them to be abolished by the rest of the society refusing to submit to them.

CHAPTER VII.
hannover.—commerce.↩

Number of ships formerly.—Facilities for trade.—Commerce of rivers.—Regulations and tolls on the Elbe.—Regulations on the Weser.—Tolls.—Vessels employed on the Aller—on the Leine.—Limitations to the trade on the Ilmenau.—Tolls on roads.—Impediments to commerce in Germany.—Advantages of Britain.—Effect of Hanse towns on the commerce of Hannover.—Canals.—Roads—Posts.

The causes which impede the productive power of any country, necessarily limit its commerce, and that of Hannover is, therefore, not of much importance. The great mass of the inhabitants supply their own wants; they desire nothing, and have nothing to give; and though this may promote individual independence, it makes commerce unnecessary and impossible. It is a matter of surprise, and even of wonder, when the manufactories of Hannover are so trifling, that a department or the Hannoverian ministry should be set apart for them, and that a college of commerce should have been in existence when there was little or no commerce to regulate. It was imagined that the industry of a nation was to be directed by its rulers; and they, therefore, began by making regulations [II-187] for what did not exist. Before the acquisition of Papenburg and Friezland, the commerce of Hannover was almost nothing. Its people made several attempts to carry on trade, but they seem all to have failed. They have at various times fitted out ships to participate in the whale-fishery; the sovereign has supported these enterprises; they have been continued for a season or two, and then laid aside as unprofitable. These efforts seem to have been regarded as something very mighty,—as synonymous with the expedition of the Argonauts, or the voyage of Columbus. The ships have been accurately described; the quantity of stores they required was carefully enumerated; and no circumstance concerning them, which could serve to give posterity a correct idea of the mighty enterprise, seems to have been forgotten. In 1796, the electorate of Hannover possessed, exclusively of one or two whalers, two vessels that were employed in carrying goods on freight. Their united tonnage did not exceed 300. [25] Now that Papenburg and Embden are united to Hannover, she is almost elevated to the rank of a ship owning nation. The former want of ships has not been owing to the government not having encouraged the [II-188] people to build and navigate them. It has given premiums for both. Nor has it been owing to any want of good harbours and rivers.

One side of the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, and much of both sides of these rivers, in their course, have for many years formed part of the old dominions of his Majesty. The situation of the two free Hanse towns diminishes in some measure the value of these rivers; but, while they oppose no natural obstacle to the trade of Hannover, more than the advantages they derive from the freedom of their government, they ought to promote competition, and enrich rather than impoverish Hannover. Hannover has other ample means of communication. The Oste and the Medem, which are both navigable for a considerable distance, flow into the Elbe, so near to its mouth that they may rather be said to flow into the sea. The Oste is navigable for more than thirty miles, and communicates with the heart of Bremen. Ships can enter it and be perfectly safe. Hannover also possesses more than twenty rivers, flowing into the Elbe, the Weser, and the Ems, which are navigable for some considerable distance; and the Aller, the Leine, and the Ilmenau, are navigable into the very center of the land. Nature every where provides some sort of compensations for apparent evils, and she has sent so many gentle streams through the flat sands of Hannover, that [II-189] it appears one of the countries best adapted for inland navigation of Europe. I shall here quote the opinion of a German to strengthen my own. He says of Hannover, “that its situation and qualities favour manufactories and commerce. Situated in the north of Germany, a great part of the foreign trade of all the southern parts is carried on through it. With large navigable rivers on the east and on the west,—with the open ocean to the north, surrounded with fertile and rich lands, and possessing itself various products, it ought to be both a manufactural and a commercial country. Yet it is neither.”

Nothing more will be said of the external commerce of Hannover, than that the whalers have long since been laid aside, and that Papenburg and Friezland may together possess 500 vessels of all descriptions. Friezland alone had, in 1813, 280 vessels, which together carried 22,000 lasts, and were manned by 1750 men. In 1817, 54 vessels were employed in the herring-fishery, and as many more in other fisheries; but I have been assured both these branches of industry have decreased. No later accounts of its commerce have been met with than for 1781, which are given, I believe, in Oddy’s European Commerce. The trade on the rivers of Hannover is not only of more importance as to its quantity, but it displays more accurately the impediments which have [II-190] been thrown in the way of the commerce, not only of this country, but of Germany, and the remainder of this chapter will be confined nearly to it.

It appears from what has been written on the subject, that one principal motive why the government of Hannover was anxious to acquire Friezland was, that it might have a sea-port. In fact, Hannover before possessed sea-ports, but the people had never adequately employed them, or profited by the advantages of their situation. This is to be attributed to the nature of the government; and it is not to be expected, that when it has prevented its ancient subjects from having commerce, that it will be able to augment that which its newly-acquired subjects before possessed, and which it has been the great object of its ambition to acquire.

This commerce is divided into two parts, that which centers in Hannover, and that which passes through it. The territories of Hannover intervene between the two Hanse towns and southern Germany, and most of the commerce which these two towns carry on with the rest of the country necessarily passes through Hannover. A portion of it is performed by land, and a portion by water-carriage. The Elbe, the Weser, the Aller, the Leine, and the Ilmenau, are the rivers which principally serve this latter purpose.

Although Hannover has little to do with the [II-191] commerce of the Elbe, some little facts are known connected with that commerce, which deserve to be mentioned. It is a regulation of the Prussian sovereign, that all commodities, with the exception of millstones and pottery, coming from Bohemia or Saxony, by that river, must be unloaded at Magdeburg and loaded in Prussian vessels, navigated by Prussian seamen. It may, therefore, be inferred, that the greater part of the commerce of that river is carried on by vessels belonging to Magdeburg. In 1815 Magdeburg possessed 75 boats and barges of all descriptions. In 1818 a steam-boat was established to pass between Hamburg and Berlin. In America such useful inventions have been established on many rivers for several years. There is no possibility of ascertaining exactly the whole commerce of the Elbe, but, after seeing its waters almost unemployed, I should suppose, that on some of the rivers of America there is as much commerce as on the Elbe. The rivers of America are free; the Elbe has always been subjected to various princes. Riesebeck says, in his 46th letter, that the King of Prussia at one time laid such heavy tolls on vessels going from Hamburg to Saxony, as entirely to stop all the commerce between these two places which was carried on by means of this river. It then went through Hannover and Brunswick. Other sovereigns have probably laid tolls on it as heavy as [II-192] those of Prussia, and probably they may be as numerous as those belonging to Hannover, which amount to six. With such impediments, notwithstanding the length of its course, the fertile and various countries through which it flows, and the number of ages its banks have been peopled, it is not at all surprising that there is probably more commerce on some of the rivers of America than on the Elbe.

Before 1806, it was calculated that 364 vessels arrived at Münden by the Weser, 104 by the Werra, and 128 by the Fulda, yearly. And the manner in which these vessels, at least those which pass between Bremen and Münden, are regulated, is one of the most curious measures of policy I have met with. Nothing is left to competition or to alacrity. The most idle and most neglectful boatmen are as often employed as the most industrious and skilful. The banks of the Weser belong to different sovereigns, and it is to give a portion of the trade to the subjects of each, that the regulation has been made. First, a boat belonging to Prussia is loaded, then one belonging to Hannover; the third belongs to Prussia, and the fourth to Hannover; the fifth must belong to Hesse Cassel. The subjects of these three powers alternate in this manner till the thirty-fifth boat, which must belong to the town of Bremen, and so must the fortieth, when the rotation is again resumed, and is in this manner [II-193] perpetually repeated. This is not all; the right to navigate the different rivers Fulda and Werra belongs to different people. The Hannoverians and Hessians may both navigate on the Werra, but only Hannoverians are permitted to use the Fulda. In Münden, to which the principal part of this commerce, so far as Hannover is concerned, belongs, a certain number of barge-owners only are allowed, and it is probable a similar regulation exists in the other towns that take part in this trade. This is not the only impediment. There are no less than twenty-two tolls on the Weser betwixt Münden and Bremen, seven of which belong to the sovereign of Hannover. There are also some below the latter town, one of which, at Elsfleth, [26] has already been mentioned. At every toll every vessel is stopped and her whole cargo examined. On an average, more than one hour is employed at each toll to examine each vessel; so that every one loses one whole day in passing between these two towns. This is mere waste, a loss of time to all the parties, more injurious probably than the duties which the merchants have also to pay. I have been informed that not one of the sovereigns who levy these tolls, except the King of Prussia, has ever employed one farthing of the money thus collected in clearing the river. [II-194] It is exacted merely to enrich them, or rather to employ and pay a certain set of dependants. It is said the expence of collecting the tolls equals the receipts.

Münden is the most considerable trading town of Hannover, sending yearly to the other parts of Germany 450,000 centner of goods; 150 waggons and 600 carts go from it to South-western, and 14 waggons and 118 carts to South-eastern Germany. The linen sent to Bremen is estimated at 1,000,000 florins yearly. The other articles sent to Bremen are, colours, dry goods, tobacco, potash, lamp-black, paper, Nuremberg ware, iron, wood of various kinds, millstones, and Rhenish and Necker wines. Coffee, sugar, and other colonial products, are the principal articles brought from Bremen.

There are about forty vessels employed on the Aller, the greater part of which belong to Bremen. There are three tolls on this river, between Celle and where it unites with the Weser, and all belong to Hannover. In the year 1791, Bremen sent to the town of Hannover, by the Aller and Leine, goods to the amount of 342,804 Reichs Thalers; to Celle, goods to the amount of 438,472 R. Thalers; and to Verden, goods to the amount of 32,047 R. Thalers. The three towns at the same time sent goods to the amount of 401,527 R. Thalers to Bremen. The town of Celle, which stands on the Aller, has some transit commerce. [II-195] In 1807, 10,849 waggons, drawn by 57,319 horses, passed through the town. Goods to the amount of 775,000 florins were at the same time conveyed by the Aller.

On the Leine, about twenty-four vessels capable of carrying eighty tons each, though they are seldom more than half loaded, pass and repass in a year between the towns of Bremen and Hannover. They are about sixty miles apart, and there are no less than five tolls in this distance. Every vessel is stopped and examined at each one of these. They all belong to the sovereign, but are let by him, so that his own goods must pay his own tolls. On an average each vessel has to pay in descending the river about 200 Thalers, or more than L. 30 Sterling. In ascending the charge is double.

The number of vessels trading on the Ilmenau has been already mentioned when speaking of the town of Lüneburg. [27] They are divided into three classes, and each of these classes is limited by an express regulation to carrying certain commodities only. The number of barge-owners is strictly limited. Fifteen possess the exclusive privilege of employing their boats in carrying merchandise; and there are six others who are allowed to participate in this when there is an abundance of goods to be conveyed. Twelve are allowed to trade with [II-196] corn, and eight have the exclusive privilege to convey salt, and bring back wood. Other regulations prescribe, that no boat shall take more than a certain quantity of goods on board; though, when they are plentiful, it is allowed to take a greater quantity. [28] These are to be considered as regulations of the people themselves, rather than of the sovereign; and they may be taken as specimens of the manner in which they have blindly endeavoured to monopolize all trade, and prevent all fair and honourable competition. It has before been mentioned, that the trade of Lüneburg has gone to decay; and this is partly to be attributed to the unwise monopoly. It made carriage dear, and induced the merchants to seek a cheaper road. The following regulation, however, was made by the sovereign. An individual lately employed a boat to convey goods from Uelsen by the Ilmenau to the Elbe. He had no sooner adopted this method, than the government made him pay a tax for his boat, and so completely took away his profits, that his enterprise received no reward. The motive for the tax was, that the royal tolls on the road might not suffer. Lüneburg is supposed to gain 33,275 R. Thalers by the transit commerce, and to employ a capital of 217,000 Thalers in its own trade.

[II-197]

I cannot give the reader any very accurate general account of the quantity of goods conveyed on these rivers; but the above are some specimens of the impediments under which the river navigation of Hannover labours. Similar tolls and impediments are known to exist on every river of Germany; and most of them, like those on the Weser, are taken for the benefit of the sovereigns. They are in general domanial, or the private property of the crown. Their proceeds are never accounted for, but employed as the sovereign pleases. A remarkable example which I met of these tolls was on entering the territories of Hungary. Because it formerly had a different master, tolls had been established at its confines, and they were still exacted. In passing by water between Vienna and Presburgh, the vessel was stopped and examined at the borders of Hungary. The examination occupied two hours, though the boat had been loaded at Vienna. The cargo of the raft on which I passed from Munich to Vienna was nothing but trees, deals, and three bales of goods; yet we were frequently detained both in Bavaria and Austria for hours, to have it examined. [29] Boats whose [II-198] cargoes were more complicated than ours were sometimes detained half a day. Such are some of the means by which the commerce of the rivers of Germany is yet impeded.

Tolls on roads are perhaps not less numerous, though less pernicious, than tolls on rivers. The loading of a waggon is much sooner examined than the cargo of a ship. If these tolls were analogous to turnpike gates, and the money collected at them was employed to keep the roads in repair, they ought not to be objected to; but they are in general domanial tolls, the produce of which goes into the pocket of the sovereign, and he repairs the road or not as he pleases. I do not know what number of these may any where exist, but I can state, that in Hannover they are numerous, and rigidly levied. Because the sovereign’s tolls [II-199] might not suffer, the government of Hannover recently gave an order that all the commerce between Bremen and Celle should be carried on by a certain road only. [30] Such domanial tolls are common on all the roads of Germany, and in some parts they belong to nobles. One instance has been mentioned; [31] and in the whole of Prussia there are yet eighteen noblemen who possess the right to tolls which are already levied, though I believe they have no power to levy new ones, or to increase the old. In Saxony there is also one, but in Hannover all the tolls at present belong to the sovereign. Tolls are generally heavier for foreigners, under which term is included the subjects of other German powers, than for natives; and sometimes it appears that the sovereigns cannot agree on the conditions under which their respective subjects may be allowed to traverse the dominions of each other. Thus, the post which ought to go from Bremen direct through Oldenburg to Embden, a distance of seventy miles, goes all round by Osnabrück, which is at least twice as far; and it requires three days, without employing a messenger expressly for the purpose, to convey a letter from one of these two towns to the other.

At present there is no government of Germany [II-200] that permits goods coming from other parts of Germany freely to enter its territories; and many of the governments prohibit some of the productions of their neighbours, as salt, from entering their dominions. Formerly this state of things was much worse. More tolls were levied than at present; and the greater number of petty sovereigns which then existed almost limited the market for every commodity to a few square leagues. Let any person conceive what would be the effect on the commerce of the Thames if there were twenty tolls between London Bridge and the Nore, and that every vessel which ascended or descended the river had to stop and be examined at every one of these tolls, and he may know accurately the extent of the impediments which the water tolls of the sovereigns of Germany throw in the way of the commerce of the country. It is true that none of the rivers of Germany are frequented so much as the Thames; but it is at the same time certain much more commerce would have been carried on by means of them but for these tolls. Let any person further conceive custom-houses placed at the borders of every county in England, custom-house-officers examining every loaded waggon; and let him further conceive tolls at other places not the borders of counties, where every waggon must be equally examined, and he may then also know accurately the impediments [II-201] which the land-tolls of the sovereigns throw in the way of commerce.

Germany has been in these points peculiarly unfortunate. It has been divided into many petty governments, each of which has been anxious to raise a revenue by all manner of exactions, and to acquire superiority by impeding the rise of others. Each has endeavoured to check the prosperity of its neighbour; and thus, there is not and never has been a free intercourse between all parts of Germany. Neither roads nor rivers are free; commerce is free only in a few square miles; and the merchants of Germany have always wanted an extensive home market, and have rarely been able to engage in foreign trade, because they could never acquire capital enough to live on it till the returns came from abroad. It would be a much greater benefit to the Germans to have a free intercourse with all parts of their own country, than to restrict the importation of English goods. Their interest would be more promoted by the abolition of tolls and border custom-houses than by the utter exclusion of foreigners from their markets. Possessing a fine country adorned with the noblest rivers of Europe, speaking the same language, and forming, in fact, but one people, they ought to have a most extensive commerce. Nature has not divided the Prussians from the Austrians, and the Austrians from the Bavarians. [II-202] They are all equally her children. She has given them rivers without a fall in their whole course, as a means of communication. She has made the products of the different climates objects of desire where they cannot be produced. She has given them minerals in their mountains, vines on their hills, and corn in their plains; but the proper enjoyment of all these advantages is denied to millions of active and intelligent beings, by the petty cares and petty avarice of two or three dozen princes and their ministers. It may be right to respect these personages, but it is treason to ourselves not to respect much more the whole race of mankind of which they form so small and so insignificant a part. [32]

It is from attending to the state of other countries that we learn properly to appreciate the advantages of our country; all our rivers and roads are in our own territories, and we have long enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a free intercourse with one another. The unrestricted commerce [II-203] which the inhabitants of every part of Britain carry on with every other part is an advantage which no other number of persons equally large enjoy in Europe. Even France, now that the Revolution has knocked off so many of the shackles which ignorance, and tyranny, and avarice, had imposed, does not yet enjoy absolute freedom of communication. Articles consumed in towns are subjected to a greater duty than those consumed in the country. It is consequently necessary to examine all loaded vehicles that pass through them, in order to ascertain that they do not contain any of these articles which they may leave behind, and defraud the revenue. Our unrestricted commerce, and the power of making roads, of establishing public vehicles, and of conveying goods in them at pleasure, which is enjoyed by our people, but which is monopolized by the crown in every other European country except Holland, are the real causes of much of our superior prosperity. It is of importance to remark, that this greater prosperity has been occasioned by the mere absence of governing. The comparative poverty of Germany arises from its being too much governed; our government has had about as much influence on this part of our welfare as it has had on sunshine and rain; in fact, it has done all it could to augment its interference, and thus to diminish our prosperity. Whatever it regulates becomes bloated or withered, [II-204] and what it leaves to the unfettered sense of the people prospers.

It is from Germany, also, that we may learn how dreadfully pernicious to the welfare of man the numerous governments of the world have been. Not one of the rivers or roads of Germany can be profitably employed, because they all pass through the territories of different sovereigns. When we trace the commercial advantages which are derived from men being united under one government; when it is clear, from national animosities having ceased whenever different nations have been united under one sovereign, that they all arose from their having different governments, how much may it be desired that all the world should have but one government. All men have a similar interest, and there is no natural or good reason why our sympathies should be bounded by the Channel any more than by the Tweed; nor why a name and an imaginary line should make men the enemies of each other. They need but to chase away their numerous masters to make them all sensible that their interest is every where the same. I should not wish to flatter either the cunning of statesmen, or the ambition of conquerors, by persuading them that they might accomplish so desirable an object as uniting all men under one head. It is not desirable that the maxims of a Castlereagh or a Hardenberg should become the laws of [II-205] social intercourse, nor that we should all be beat into one square mechanical form by the leaden sceptre of some peaceable usurper of dominion; nor all drilled into the same shape, appetites, and opinions, by the medals and rations of some active and iron-hearted conqueror; nor is it even desirable that the profound wisdom of our House of Commons should dictate the conduct of the world, but it may be hoped, that, as the race advances in knowledge, it will lose the idle reverence with which it now worships some individuals, and submit itself only to reason as its natural lord and sovereign.

The commerce of Hannover, however, labours under one disadvantage peculiar to itself. This is, the situation of the two free Hanse towns on two of its principal rivers. Two such cities as Hamburg and Bremen should naturally only give activity to the commerce of Hannover. They ought to promote competition, and they possess no advantages of situation greater than many places belonging to Hannover, and situated on the same rivers. Harburg might be equal to Hamburg, and many places at the mouth of the Weser superior to Bremen. But the inhabitants of the two Hanse towns govern themselves. Commerce has long been their only pursuit, and they knew at a very early period how to protect and encourage it. They left it tolerably free. Their governments gave them advantages over places situated in the territories of [II-206] Hannover, and while those which had formerly some commerce as Stade, and Lüneburg, and Lehe, have gone to decay, Bremen and Hamburg have continued to flourish. The situation of these two free towns thus drawing to themselves all the commerce of these two rivers, for all the inhabitants of Hannover command whatever they want from abroad through them, has had a pernicious influence on its commerce. They now possess so much capital, that, while they preserve their independent political existence, competition on the part of the inhabitants of Hannover is hopeless, and success impossible. But, under the present circumstances, they are wiser than to attempt it: they would rather share the advantages of these two towns, and they no sooner accumulate a little capital than they hurry from the restrictions of the monarchy to the security and freedom of the republics. This is not a supposition. I have met with several instances of natives of Hannover settled at these two towns, and I have been assured of the fact by a Hannoverian gentleman of considerable knowledge.

The only canal in the old dominions of Hannover, exclusive of some trifling cuts to supply towns with water, is situated in the province of Bremen. It was planned with the very wise intention of uniting, by means of two small rivers, the Schwinge and the Hamme, the Elbe and the [II-207] Weser, and also of uniting the Oste to the Hamme. It was begun in 1766, rather more than half a century ago, and not yet completed, has hitherto served no other purpose than to drain the morasses of the neighbourhood, and bring some more land into cultivation. It seems to have been a wise undertaking, and has only failed from having been the work of the sovereign instead of the subjects. There seems to be a singular fatality attending the measures of sovereigns; they rarely undertake what is useful to the community, and when they do, it is seldom that they accomplish it. It has been already mentioned, that, in the newly acquired territories of Hannover, particularly in Friezland, canals are frequent and much used.

The roads of Hannover are often complained of by travellers. In fact, a great part of the road which extends from Hamburg to Hannover is made in the sand, without any stones being laid, and is, therefore, very bad for travelling. It is, however, improving. The same may be said of the roads which go from Hannover by Hildesheim, and by Peina into Brunswick. Though roads are at present making in these directions, they must as yet be considered as mere tracks, where carriages and waggons follow one another, but the drivers of each choose, in a space of almost a quarter of a mile wide, which track they will follow. From Hannover to Göttingen, and so on to Cassel, the [II-208] road is good; that to Bremen and to Cuxhaven is in many places like that to Hamburg, a track in the sand, and where this is compact, it is good, where not, execrable. Under the government of the French, a regular stone laid road, to extend between Hamburg and the town of Bremen, was begun but never finished, and now being out of repair, rather annoys than benefits the traveller. A good road is begun from Hannover to Stade. Excellent roads lead from Hannover to Hameln and Münder, and Minden. The road to Osnabrück may be classed among middling good roads. The country roads of the marsh lands, particularly Hadeln and of Friezland, are good, but in general all the bye and parish roads, or, as they may be more properly called, amt roads, are every where very bad. Communication is slow, and in some places difficult, yet, in general, it is tolerably regular through all parts of the country.

Letters are carried by boys or men on horseback; this is called the riding post, and they leave Hannover for all the different parts of the country, twice, thrice, or four times a-week. Coaches, called the travelling post, fahrende posten, resembling the double bodied coaches of London, but stronger and heavier, with a cabriolet, as three covered seats are called, and a large boot behind, leave Hannover for Hamburg, and that neighbourhood, for Hesse Cassel, and southern Germany, for Bremen, [II-209] and then Holland, Friezland, &c., for Brunswick and Prussia, for Lüneburg and Lubeck, for Hameln, for Hildesheim, for Minden, twice a-week. These coaches are hung on springs, and generally carry six persons very comfortably in the inside, and two besides the coachmaster, or conductor, in the cabriolet. They travel, including stoppages, at about the rate of four miles per hour. As treaties relative to communication exist between the different governments of Germany, packages may be forwarded by this conveyance to any part without any sort of mistrust.

The Post belongs to the crown, of which it is considered as regalia; it is under very precise regulations, and the hours appointed to set out and arrive are punctually attended to. To prevent imposition, it is positively regulated how much money is to be given to the postilions at each stage. The postmasters, who live at different places, and provide the riding and the travelling Post with horses, provide horses also for those travellers who use their own carriages. There are no other coaches resembling stage-coaches but this fahrende Post. In most of the towns, however, where there is much traffick, carriages with two or three horses, called Gelegenheiten, and possibly companions to go wherever you wish, may generally be procured. These are not, however, so certain, nor do they go so quick as the travelling post. When there are [II-210] so many persons going by the travelling post that a seat must be accepted in what is called a Bey Wagen, a covered cart without springs: travelling by this conveyance is very unpleasant. When a seat, however, can be procured in the cabriolet, or the coach, the fahrende post is, after walking, or your own carriage, the best mode of travelling, not only in Hannover, but in Germany. Waggons, and sometimes carriages, may also be procured at the post stations.

CHAPTER VIII.
hannover—schools.↩

Education promoted by the clergy.—Regulations concerning.—Children obliged to go to school.—A learned landlord.—Institutions of the town of Hannover.—Lyceum; date; description; two customs of.—Palace-school described.—Hofrath Feder.—Girls’ school of the old town; of the new town; an opinion of the inspector.—Parish schools.—Orphan-house.—Sunday-school.—Military and Garrison-schools.—Seminary.—Bottcher the founder who; for what intended; described; self-teaching principle at; good effected by; small funds of.—Quantity of children taught on the whole.—Manner of teaching.—Precision of.—Head reckoning.—A novel method of teaching reading.—Religious instruction; effects of on children; on young men.—Punishments.—National education.—Observations.

Venturini has remarked, that “the Reformation in the northern parts of Germany came not from the princes, but from the people, and that no persons followed and promoted the new doctrines with greater readiness than the inferior orders of the clergy. They saw themselves poor and despised by the higher orders, who revelled in superfluity, [II-212] and who, possessing wealth and political power, could only be successfully attacked by the aid of the people.” [33] To bring them to support the new doctrine, it was necessary to convince them of its value. Hence numerous preachings, and hence it was in the towns, where the people had knowledge sufficient to judge of the reasonings which were presented to them, that the Reformation made the most rapid progress. It was soon discovered, that many of the people to whom it was necessary to appeal, were unable to read. The clergy laboured earnestly to instruct them, and so early as the year 1559, the church ordinances for the principality of Kalenberg, enacted by the influence of the clergy, contain directions for the establishment and support of schools throughout the country. It is said to have been at a later period that the princes first became thoroughly sensible how much education promoted that obedience which they are accustomed to regard as the first of virtues. Certainly the clergy of the north of Germany began the business of educating the people, and were afterwards supported in it by the governments.

Were it not a well-known truth, that nearly all [II-213] the founders and reformers of religious systems have been always, in part, incited to their exertions by the love of worldly dominion, it might be invidious to remark, that we owe one of the great improvements of modern society to this passion. The reformers struggled for influence or for empire over the minds of their countrymen, and to change the form of the church government. To effect this, they needed the support of the people, and were obliged to teach them to enable them to judge of the claims which the reformers made for their support. This was the origin of the labours of the clergy to educate the people, not only in the provinces which now compose the kingdom of Hannover, but in all the north of Germany; and since then they have prosecuted this good work with constant attention, and a considerable degree of zeal. This is a fact which seems to justify all the praise which can be bestowed on the simplicity and efficacy of the government of the church in Hannover.

According to existing regulations, every person is obliged, before the age of eighteen years, to undergo the church ceremony of confirmation, the examinations previous to which are very strict. They suppose an acquaintance with the church catechism, and to become acquainted with this it is necessary to read. Consistency demands, that when a service of any kind is required, the power to perform [II-214] it should either be possessed or be given, and care has therefore been taken to supply the population of Hannover with the means of instruction. No village of any consequence is destitute of a school, and several, such as Langenhagen, not far from the town of Hannover, have more schools than churches. Some resemblance to Scotland will be found in regulations which compel the inhabitants of two or more villages, one not being populous enough to support a schoolmaster, to unite for this purpose. When no dwelling-house is provided for him, he lives and feeds with the inhabitants in turns, according to fixed regulations; though I believe no instance of an itinerant schoolmaster is at present to be found, as formerly, who has no other school-house than the village inn.

In order to ensure support to the schoolmasters, all the inhabitants of every village who are capable are obliged to pay for the instruction of their children, from the time they are six till they are fourteen years old. And so rigid is this regulation, that people have sometimes been obliged to pay the schoolmaster of their parish for the children they have had instructed by some other person. These payments, though small, together with a house and garden, which the parish is obliged to provide, are generally the only support of the schoolmaster. It belongs to the clergyman to decide if any of the people are so poor as to be unable [II-215] to pay for the instruction of their children, in which case, in conjunction with the head men of the parish, when there is no specific charity, he provides out of the common fund for their instruction.

There is also a law which subjects those parents who neglect to send their children to school to a trifling punishment, at the discretion of the magistrates. Fortunately, however, parents are becoming sensible of the value of instruction, for there is now much less necessity to enforce this law than formerly. It is so old as 1681, and, in compliance with it, lists are kept by the schoolmaster of the children who attend, and these lists are submitted to the inspection of the magistrates.

When people are compelled to pay a schoolmaster, it is right he should be qualified to instruct them, and no person is, therefore, allowed to take this office on himself who has not previously been examined and found qualified. Generally village schoolmasters are educated at the Seminary, an institution to be afterwards described, and they are selected from there, and appointed to the different parishes by whoever is the patron of the school. Sometimes a nobleman is patron, but more generally the patron is the consistorium.

Schools for the poorest of the people, in which the teachers, though appointed by the consistoriums, are paid by the scholars, are found in all the towns [II-216] as well as in the villages, and there is no town of the least importance in the whole kingdom in which better schools are not found. These are known by the name of Lyceums, or high-schools, and in general they have been established by the citizens and magistrates, in whose hands, at present, the control and the appointment of the masters remain. Here the classical languages are taught to a certain extent, and the first foundation of that education is laid which is afterwards to be completed at the university.

In the towns of Celle and Hannover there are medical schools, in which regular professors give instruction in medicine, surgery, and anatomy. Dissection is performed. With these schools are combined institutions for the instruction of midwives. None of the latter are allowed to practise without having studied at such an institution for six months. This regulation seems likely to ensure something like a decent one to every considerable part of the country. [34] There are schools [II-217] for the instruction of veterinary surgeons; and care is even taken to give a regular and systematic education to gardeners. The celebrated university of Göttingen, which is in the kingdom of Hannover, completes the means of education. It deserves also to be mentioned, that many young women, of genteel families, and but little wealth, go into other families as boarders, for the purpose of learning house-keeping, of which they afterwards make their account by superintending the house-keeping of more wealthy people. There may be even said to be a sort of mania for schools. They have been instituted in some parts of Germany under the direction of the government, to instruct in all sorts of arts; from cooking to making shoes, and from rearing bees to jumping with skill and grace. People, who may be classed almost as poor, have private teachers for their children. Music is almost invariably taught. As I have sometimes seen [II-218] fingers that contrasted finely, from the dirt imbedded in them, with the ivory of the piano-forte, I have wondered at the strange combination of ragged clothes, naked feet, and want of cleanliness, with so elegant an accomplishment as music. Most of the innkeepers, who, with their families, are generally dirty, may be called accomplished people. A learned landlord whom I met at a village called Mehly, may be quoted as an example. He addressed himself to us in French, to his children he spoke Latin, and to his dog Russian, or something we did not comprehend. He gravely assured us, and appeared inclined to prove, that a miserable close room was a very elegant apartment, and when we could find nothing to eat but eggs and beersoup, that every thing was to be had at his house. He then retired to another apartment, and, apparently unwilling that we should go away ignorant of any of his accomplishments, he sang a song, and accompanied himself on the piano-forte.

Sufficient means are therefore employed to educate the people throughout the kingdom, but a more correct idea will be obtained of the present state of education, if that of the town of Hannover be more fully described, and taken as a criterion for judging of the whole. When the number of children instructed can be calculated,—when the population of the town is known,—when what is taught, and the manner of teaching, [II-219] are described,—then a tolerable correct judgment may be formed of the general state of education in the whole country. It is probable, from a variety of little circumstances which may be easily imagined, that the number of children educated in Hannover is somewhat greater than may be found in other towns not capital towns; but it is still certain, that in all the other towns the children educated bear a large proportion to the whole population.

The Lyceum, or high-school of the old town of Hannover, dates from the year 1500, and was one of those schools in which the instruction was regulated after three principal heads. “It was commanded, first, that piety should be taught, next knowledge and art, and, lastly, politeness and manners;”—a mode of proceeding directly the reverse of modern boarding-schools. This school was established by the citizens and magistrates for the education of their sons; the funds which support it,—the regulations of the school,—the appointment of the masters, and its entire control,—all belong to the magistrates of the old town. It has before been shewn in what manner the government influences and controls them, and, connected as they are with the government and with the consistoriums, one of these magistrates being actually a consistorial counsellor, this school, though nominally under the control of the magistrates, may [II-220] be considered as under the control of government. Although it was founded so long since, as it has not the privileges of a corporate body, and is subjected entirely to the living magistrates, it has been constantly altered so as to keep pace with modern improvements, and it is not behind the knowledge of the day.

Two hundred and fifty boys are educated here, who are not exclusively sons of the citizens. Some few come from the country, and five out of the whole were children of noble parents, but generally their parents occupy the middle ranks of society, and they are chiefly intended for the learned professions. They were generally between the ages of seven and eighteen years. The course of instruction which is here followed is considered as preparatory to going to the university, and consists in the Latin, Greek, French, and English languages, mathematics, history; literature, [35] declamation, religion, and music.

The expences of this school are, for boys of the first class, about L.3 Sterling per year, and there are gradations between this and L.1, 6s. which is paid by the youngest scholars. The regular salary of the director is about L. 200 per annum, and [II-221] there are several gradations for the other instructors, till the lowest is reached, which is not above L. 60. There are ten different teachers at this school.

The parents of the boys are subject to another little expence, and the masters receive some more profit; but as this is made and received as a voluntary offering, it is not mentioned as salary. The scholars of each class subscribe a small sum, and thus make up a purse of money, which is then presented to the teacher of their class on his birth-day, in rather a solemn manner. They collect in the evening at the school, and, having previously provided a band of music, march in procession to his house, and compliment him on the day. Their offering is accompanied by a suitable address, and accepted with suitable thanks. If the teacher is not the director, the whole procession goes first to his house, and the music is played under his window, and he also must come forth and return thanks for the honour conferred on him. Such little ceremonies and pleasures appear well calculated to smooth the rugged paths of instruction. Parties so different in age and pursuits as scholars and teachers, and who so often regard each other as instruments of annoyance, are thus united by mutual pleasure. The youngsters are pleased with the music, with the procession, and with the public thanks of the master; the master receives a handsome [II-222] present, and is honoured in the minds of his fellow-citizens by the respect of his scholars; and by such means, trifling as they may appear, the necessity of coercion, and the feelings of hatred for instruction, are entirely banished. This custom of making presents, and going with music and torches to salute the masters, is common to most German schools, and certainly deserves the praise of being a very useful custom.

There is another little custom which appears to me to be full of all that is endearing and good. On the anniversary of the burial of one of the former teachers, the teacher who had supplied his place, accompanied by all the young men who had attended the instructions of the former, visited his grave, crowned it with garlands, and the teacher spoke an eulogium on his predecessor. This honour is only paid to those gentlemen who behave well, and he, therefore, who pronounced the eulogium, must find in his own act the strongest hope of a similar honour, and the strongest incitement to deserve it. There can be no doubt that such little ceremonies are much superior to the commemoration dinners of English schools.

There is also a better sort of school for boys, in the new town, in which about 200 are instructed. This has not been founded more than thirty years. It is supported by the funds of the new town, and is placed under the control of its magistrates, and of [II-223] the consistorium. It has been already mentioned, that the magistrates of the two towns of Hannover are distinct, and that those of the new town are appointed by the crown. The members of the consistorium are also appointed by it; in fact, the chief magistrate of the new town is also a consistorial counsellor, and this school, therefore, is entirely under the control of the government. The boys are between the ages of five and fourteen years; they are divided into four classes, and are taught the Latin language, history, geography, grammar, reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and singing. It costs for each boy from 10s. to 15s. per year for instruction, books, &c. The money is paid to the rector, on account of the magistrates, who pay all the expences. It has four instructors, none of whose salaries exceed L.70 per year, with a house to live in. Three out of the four have, however, other employments, and the fourth, the rector himself, receives children to board, to whom he gives private instruction.

The palace-school was founded about twenty years ago, by Mr Salfeld, the present Abbot of Loccum, and has gradually increased, from very small beginnings, till it is capable of educating 200 children of both sexes. Actually 180 boys and 74 girls receive instruction here. The sexes are placed in different apartments; a mistress presides over each of the rooms in which the girls are taught, [II-224] though the instructors are often the same for both sexes. They are both taught the French and the German languages grammatically, reading and writing accurately, arithmetic, geography, the outlines of natural history, drawing, religion, and singing. The boys learn English, Latin, and mathematics; the girls knitting, sewing, and other useful arts proper to females. Some few children are educated free of expence, and it costs the others, for the first class, about L. 4, 3s. per year; for the second class about L. 2, 10s.; for the third class about L. 1, 10s.; and for the fourth, or youngest class, nearly L. 1 Sterling per year. The money is paid on account of government, which provides a building, and otherwise pays all the expences.

The inspector of this school is an amiable and venerable old gentleman, whom I have before mentioned as royal librarian, and to whose politeness I believe every stranger who visits Hannover is indebted. Chance rather made me known to him. If the character of nations can only be known from the character of individuals, and if no man should judge but from his proper experience, I might say there are no people with which I am acquainted, who exceed the inhabitants of Hannover in politeness of heart; and I might quote the venerable Hofrath Feder as one of the best specimens of his countrymen. He is known among his compatriots by the epithet of Noble, and the tribute [II-225] of respect which I am here allowed to pay him does me far more honour than him.

The instructors of the palace-school have all some other means of subsistence than their salaries, which are therefore not great. They depend on the quantity of lessons they give, and seldom amount to more than L. 30 per year.

The children instructed are from seven to fourteen-years of age, and they are generally of the middling and better classes; they are, however, of all descriptions, and some Christians might possibly be edified by contemplating the mixture with the children of Jews. In all these schools, children of all the religious denominations which are in Hannover are indiscriminately mixed. Even the Catholics and the Jews attend what is called the religious instruction of the Protestants.

In a school for girls, in the old town, 400, divided into five classes, are educated. They are between the ages of four and fourteen years; women teachers preside in each room, and teach female work, while masters give instruction in those branches of knowledge which have been mentioned as taught in the palace-school. This school is for children of the middling classes of citizens, and its expences are not more than thirty shillings per year, for children in the upper classes, and fifteen shillings for those in the under ones. The school-house was built in 1802, at which time also this [II-226] school was first established. It was both an instructive and pleasing spectacle to see so many young girls collected in large airy rooms, and the whole attentively occupied with learning. This school is under the superintendence of the magistrates, who also pay, out of the funds of the town, all extra expences.

There is a school for girls also in the new town, similar to that of the old town. It educates 350 children, who are generally of the middling and poorer classes. It costs, for each child, from twelve to eighteen shillings per year, and they are taught all those things which are taught in the palace-school. The inspector, who very politely gave me all the information I wished, informed me, “that formerly the girls learnt embroidery, but he thought it rather unfitted them for plain work;” and our aim, said he, and the same aim characterizes the whole instruction of Hannover, “is to make the children fit for good mothers and good housewives. They are taught nothing beyond their sphere; but as I know a constant use of words alone is not good for the young mind, I introduce plants and flowers into their school-room, whose names and qualities are explained to them, and which they must cultivate and attend. This familiarises them with nature, and teaches them what no books can teach them.” The person who thus spoke was a consistorial counsellor, and superintendent of the new town of Hannover. Of course he was the judge of what [II-227] was the proper sphere of all the children of the school. It is pleasant to see age and dignity at the good work of instructing children in so delightful a manner. These large schools for girls seem a peculiar part of the education of this country.

Schools where the expence does not amount to more than about five shillings a-year, and in which the children are taught reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, outlines of geography, and natural history, and religion, are found at each of the five parishes into which the town of Hannover is divided.

There is an orphan-house which educates sixty children, and even the few either idle, depraved, or neglected beings, who are found in the workhouse, are formed into classes, and receive instruction.

There is a school, also, where young men are taught, on Sundays, the elements of mathematics, and of design, with reading, writing, arithmetic, &c.

A military school is established for persons, either intended to enter the army, or already serving in it. All the officers, even the non-commissioned officers, are obliged to attend this school, and it is open to all the private soldiers who please to seek it. To frequent it recommends a soldier to his superiors. This school is perfectly unlike [II-228] the pompous institutions which are called military schools in other countries. The teachers, with the exception of the language-masters, are all officers, who have few other emoluments than their pay. The whole expence does not exceed L. 200 per year. The French language, mathematics, fortification, military and civil architecture, with chemistry and natural philosophy, as far as they are connected with the military profession, are taught or explained.

If report may be relied on, some Hannoverian officers who were educated here, although the expence is so small, were amongst the most useful of any in the whole army of the Duke of Wellington. It certainly puts our stupendous establishments to shame; and, while the officers are obliged to learn, that they may obtain the honour of teaching, it proves that economy in forming institutions is valuable for other things besides the mere saving of money.

There is also a garrison-school, supported by the government, in which the children of soldiers are educated.

By far the most important, however, of all the institutions of Hannover for the purposes of education, is that which is called the Seminary, and which deserves a more detailed description. Ernest Christopher Böttcher, a retail tradesman of the town of Hannover, was the founder of this institution, as the funds which he bequeathed to it [II-229] continue to be one of its principal supports. He was born at Great Lafferde, in the bishopric of Hildesheim, in the year 1697; he is described to have been a very pious noble-minded man; and he died at Hannover in the year 1766. He had projected something like the seminary so early as the year 1746, and from that time till his death he was constantly engaged, in conjunction with several good men, in endeavouring to realise and give value to his project.

He was assisted in his labours by a Dr Goetten, at that time a consistorial counsellor and first court chaplain. In fact, he was the intelligent man, whose knowledge and activity carried into effect the views and wishes of the other. The original regulations for the masters of the seminary were of his writing. Teaching was first commenced in the year 1751. Many changes have been made in the modes of instruction since then, but the main principle which distinguishes the seminary, namely, that of combining a school for schoolmasters with a school for children, remains unchanged. Various and considerable improvements have been suggested and carried into effect by some of the most distinguished members of the Hannoverian church, who have been either teachers or inspectors of this school. Among them the name of Koppe may be mentioned, who, while he was animated by a sort of ambition to make himself, as his contemporaries said, the [II-230] Pope of the North of Germany, did not disdain the humble and useful labours of inspecting the instruction of the seminary, and suggesting methods to improve it.

It consists of two distinct parts, a school for children and a school for schoolmasters. In the first 500 boys and girls of different ages, divided into classes, are taught reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, church-music, knitting, sewing, &c. &c. It is optional with the parents of the children if they pay for this instruction or not, and it does equal honour to the goodness of the instruction, and to the judgment of the people, that many who are able, do pay for their children, and send them to the seminary to be educated. The whole sum, however, which has been so contributed in any one year, has not exceeded L. 20, and generally has not amounted to more than the half of that sum.

The persons who are instructed so as to qualify them to teach others, are divided into two classes. The first is composed of young men who wish to become teachers; the second of the best of these young men, selected after some months examination and study, and now destined to be the future schoolmasters of Hannover.

The first are called Preparandi, and are very generally the sons of schoolmasters, who desire to follow their father’s employment, or of small tradesmen. In the spring of 1818 thirty-three of these [II-231] received instruction. Each one pays, on entering, one pistole, about 16s. 8d. and for this sum they have food, lodging, and instruction, given them for six months, which are always the six winter months. The best amongst them are selected, at the end of this period, to fill any vacancies there may be in the other class, and the remainder return to their homes, or seek employment in parish schools. As the greater part of the schools for the poorer classes are provided with masters from this establishment, such a manner of selecting only intelligent lads, appears likely to secure a constant supply of clever schoolmasters. In summer, the children of the poorer people are allowed to remain from school in order that they may assist in the labours of the field; and during this period the village schools are not unfrequently committed to the care of these young men, while the masters repair to Hannover to improve themselves in the Seminary.

The second, or superior class, amounting to thirty, selected as mentioned, are called Seminarists. They dwell constantly in the house, and have lodging, food, and bed-linen found them, and when any of them are employed, as the oldest and best amongst them are, in instructing the children of the Seminary, of whom they are in fact the only teachers, they receive a small gratuity of 1s. 8d. per week. They are allowed by the inspector to teach in private houses, when this can be done without [II-232] interrupting the lessons they are obliged to attend. They are much sought after for this purpose, and many of them fill the stations of subordinate teachers at all the schools I have before described.

Both these classes of young men are taught those things which they are afterwards to teach to others, and they are taught, and severely, and much practised in the best known methods of teaching. They are taught reading and writing correctly, grammar, arithmetic as far as algebra, geography, natural history, Latin, church-music, singing, both vocal and instrumental, particularly organ-playing, calculating by the head, or without the help of slates or books; they receive some instruction, in a little compendium which has been published, of the laws most useful to the countryman, and, above all things, they are perfected in what is called religious instruction. A great opportunity is also afforded them of acquiring more knowledge, but the aim of the institution is strictly confined to make them good schoolmasters for the people. A piece of ground belongs to the Seminary, and here they not only raise the greater part of the vegetables they consume, but they are taught to graft trees, to cultivate a garden, and such other similar things as may be useful to themselves and others.

One practice which is very good, is the manner adopted of making each of them in turn play the master’s-part with the others. One of the lessons selected [II-233] for this is religious instruction, which, as it is a sort of catechism, necessarily demands a great attention to the use of words, and great accuracy of thought. Each one in his turn has to teach, or rather question the others. He gives to the inspector, the night before, an abstract of the questions he means to ask, and informs him what part of the catechism he proposes to talk about, and explain, and the manner in which he intends to explain and enforce it. This allows the inspector to know before-hand what faults he is likely to commit. The whole of both classes assemble in presence of the inspector, and the young man whose turn it is begins catechising, and when he has finished, he sits down, and is informed by the inspector, in the presence of the whole, in what he has erred, either in his matter or in his manner, and thus the whole, by questioning, teach one another, and from the lecture of the superior, which was well given, each profit by the excellencies so well as by the faults of all.

This is a frugal establishment. The young men learn and practise economy; a complete system of superintendence is established; and every attention is paid to forming their minds for their situation, and to make them moral good men.

There is an instructor for arithmetic—another for singing and organ-playing; and these, with two inspectors, are the only instructors who are paid both [II-234] for the schoolmasters and for the children, except the trifling gratuities which are given to the elder seminarists. The two inspectors must have been educated for the church; and some of the most respectable members of the church have filled these situations. The present curator of the seminary (a person who, without receiving any salary, is the chief of the establishment, who examines the accounts, and answers for the conduct of all the inferior parties to the consistorium, and who is the first dignitary of the church of Hannover) once filled the place of inspector of the seminary, and rose to eminence, like many of his brethren, by the useful labours of teaching charity children. In fact, whatever opinion may be formed of the education of the north of Germany, the clergy of that country deserve most of the praise or of the censure which may be thought to belong to it. They have needed no rich bishopricks to stimulate them to do their duties, and they afford a shining proof that large money emoluments are not necessary to make a set of men either useful or dignified. The salary of the inspectors is about L.60 per year, and apartments—a very small sum to support a gentleman, which the inspector is considered to be. Yet such a salary, and few of the teachers in the whole town have more, seems quite large enough to encourage in the gentlemen who are employed in teaching a great deal of zeal.

[II-235]

The seminarists remain three years to study. The inspectors have a power to recommend them into families as private teachers, and to retard or promote their advancement. Joined with occasional reproof, this power is sufficient to produce perfect obedience. The first inspector keeps a regular journal of what the young men do, and notes their progress or their neglect; which enables him to know how every one has conducted himself during his residence in the seminary. When any school vacancy occurs throughout the kingdom, an application is generally made to him for some person to fill it, and he recommends those who are most deserving to the best places. This journal also is shewn the curator, and from it he forms his judgment of the character of the young men, and of the management of the institution. He may be appealed to by any scholar who thinks himself injured by the inspector, and he can lend the whole weight of his authority to support the decisions of this gentleman.

Since the establishment of the seminary, it has educated, or improved the education of, more than 2000 persons, who have been employed in teaching others; and, during the same period, it has probably educated 10,000 children. There is no better method for improving a whole people than this of instructing schoolmasters, and the good is therefore incalculable which has been accomplished [II-236] by this establishment of the illustrious Böttcher. The whole people appear to have but one opinion of its utility, and perhaps no stronger proof can be given of the improvement which it has effected in schoolmasters than this. As a stranger I could always distinguish the moment I heard any teachers whether they were educated in the seminary or not. What made them conspicuous was a clearness of method, a great gentleness of manner, precision in all their words, and a great extent of useful knowledge. They almost merit the title of perfect teachers for common schools. I may quote as an example the teacher of the common school at Göttingen. This gentleman taught or explained to a class of 200 girls, for the purpose of shewing their progress to some gentlemen, in the space of two hours, reading and writing correctly and grammatically, natural history, geography, arithmetic, and calculation by the head, all in a precise neat manner. Then he pitched the time, and joined the whole school in singing a psalm.

To effect all this good, the whole funds of the seminary, bequeathed to it by Böttcher, enlarged by the gifts of the government and of several well-disposed persons, amount only to a capital of 40,000 thalers, or at five per cent. an annual income of L.1333, 4s. [36] —a sum that would not suffice to pay [II-237] one of the teachers of some of the charities of Great Britain. So much good in the way of instruction has rarely been effected by such small means, and it is only to be regretted that the general state of the country does not allow the seminary to be used as a means of spreading accurate political knowledge;—that the good it already does should not be enlarged by the young men being taught those sciences whose truths have been methodised and made the property of the race by Smith, Say, Malthus, Paley, and Bentham.

This institution has been the parent and the model of many similar ones in many parts of Germany. There is scarcely a capital town, and certainly no kingdom or country of any part of the north of Germany, which has not at present a seminary [II-238] for schoolmasters; and certainly the plan of uniting a school for masters with a school for children, carried into effect as it is here, deserves, from its utility, to be as well known throughout Europe as any institution it contains. But admirable as it is, and much as the names of Böttcher and Goetten deserve to be celebrated, they are little, if at all, known beyond the confines of their own country; while those of Bell and Lancaster are every where heard of. It is the daily and free press of Britain which, recording all our actions, has made the names of our countrymen known; which has added to the value of our literature, and made its stores be examined by every other people. Without a free press, therefore, even virtue and utility remain concealed, and lose much of their efficacy, because nobody is encouraged to imitate them. The governors of the world, and the makers of laws, illustrious as they are, will never have their names transmitted to posterity but by means of a free press. There is no foreigner of the least political reading who is ignorant of the names of the conspicuous members of our House of Commons; and Maddison, Jefferson, Monroe, are known all over Europe. But who has ever heard of Claus von der Decken, or Frederick Franz Dieterich Bremer, the ministers of the mighty kingdom of Hannover? And there is nobody perhaps who is [II-239] not sensible that if the names of its sovereigns descend to posterity, it will only be as kings of a country in which the press was free.

The present curator of this establishment is the chief of the consistorium of Hannover, and one of this body is always appointed by it to this office. This institution, therefore, and, with it, from the influence which it exercises over schoolmasters, prescribing what is to be taught and what must not be taught to them, the education of the whole of the poorer people is placed under the direction of the church, and under the control of the government.

The institutions for education in the town of Hannover, independent of boarding-schools, provide means of instruction to at least 2100 children, the great mass of which are between the ages of six and fourteen years, and belong to the middling and poorer classes of people. The whole population of the town does not exceed 21,000, and certainly, therefore, the means of instruction are abundant and cheap. In fact, there are very few children to be found who do not go to school, and hardly any grown-up person who is unable to read and write. I have heard it remarked by a clergyman who had been catechising all the children of his parish, that he was surprised to have found a very few who hardly knew how to read. This was for him a singular circumstance, and proves the extent of instruction. [II-240] Girls share in all the advantages of these schools, and they are by no means behind boys in their acquirements.

The whole of these are day-schools. The children live with their parents, but go regularly to school for instruction. Boarding-schools are only used by the children of the upper classes. The children acquire book-knowledge from their teachers, but their habits of action are learned from their parents. They do not grow up unlike them from living with strangers. For the destruction of all the love of children for their parents, which is the basis of so many virtues, no system of education, except that of Sparta, was ever so well calculated as our present system. And among the causes for the immorality of our people must be enumerated our plan of educating children in boarding-schools. Parents cannot be surprised when children are undutiful, for they allow strangers to perform all their duties; and they wilfully separate themselves from their children during all that part of the life of the latter, in which their character and opinions are indestructibly formed. The whole of the school buildings are good, and all the rooms airy and healthy; and care is taken of the health of the children, by allowing them a short time to jump about between the hour of entering the school and returning home.

From the trifling expence of these schools, it [II-241] may be imagined that they are something like the preparatory schools of England—a cheap method of amusing infants; but the quality of the education which they supply is of a superior kind. I visited nearly all these schools with a wish to observe them. I was every where politely received, and nothing left me to desire but a better memory to retain all the information that was cheerfully given me. One scheme of instruction, one sort of method, more or less perfect, according to the talents of the master, prevails in them all.

It has already been mentioned what the children are taught at the different schools, and it may here be repeated, that, in the meanest of them, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, and the outlines of geography, are taught. Singing is never neglected, and many of the younger boys, and all the girls, are taught knitting, and the latter are also taught sewing, shirt-making, &c.

The children are all divided into classes according to their age, and the time they have been at school; and each of these classes has a different employment for every hour; consequently, no lesson lasts more than one hour without interruption. In the better schools each class has a different master, and different instructors for the different branches of learning, or at least only two or three similar ones are taught by the same master. In [II-242] the minor schools, however, there is but one instructor to the whole school.

When what is to be taught is any thing which can be learned alone, such as the rules of grammar, a portion of the catechism, or the facts of geography, the teacher selects a portion of it, which he reads to the class; and they often write it down after his dictation, and this they are obliged to learn when they are out of school. On the following day the instructor examines the whole class to know if they have learned the lesson. The examination is promiscuous, or made in such a manner that no one is sure he will not be questioned, although but few are. The probability of being questioned, and the reproof which the children receive if they are not capable of answering, obliges them all to learn; and the frequent repetition which even those who are not asked hear made by others; even the mistakes of the inattentive, when rectified by the master, serve to inform the whole class, and fix all that has been taught in the memory of all. In fact, a great part of the teaching is examination; the pupils learn alone. Very often the master proposes the question, and allows volunteers to answer. Now begins a struggle for distinction: The volunteer rises from the seat, or stretches forth the little hand as a signal of readiness; often the whole class are on their legs, or their little hands are extended with an earnest prayer, Ich bitte bitte,—to be selected [II-243] to answer; and nothing gratifies them more than this favour, except the praise bestowed on their success. Here the first seeds of emulation are sown, and all struggle to reach the goal of honour without unfairly jostling their neighbours. Hundreds of little children, with blue eyes and fair hair, who appeared almost too timid to speak, struggled through the whole hour for a good word, or to be thought well of by the stranger. If the men who doubt the efficacy of instruction and honour on man,—who drawing from their own polluted bosoms continue to affirm he is made to sin,—who desperately persevere in the use of whips, prisons, and the gallows, as the only means of making him righteous, were frequently to see such scenes as these of the schools of Hannover, they might probably mistrust their barbarous institutions; and acknowledge that they themselves were the exceptions to the human race, not the criterion by which it was to be judged.

What is very good in this method is the precision which belongs to the plan of question and answer. Grammar is one of the things thus taught, and those who know how complicated the German grammar is, must be aware that he who has learned it perfectly has made no inconsiderable progress in the knowledge of words. By this method all the children acquire such a knowledge, which is undoubtedly one cause why the Germans in after life learn [II-244] foreign languages so readily. A great degree of precision pervades all the descriptions which this people give. I have noticed this quality repeatedly in the conversation of all classes, particularly when I have been visiting their institutions; and have, in general, found the description so accurate as almost to render seeing them of little or no service. This quality is derived from their education. Precision, in a very high degree, is the characteristic of the instruction given at the seminary, and may therefore be described as common to the instruction of the whole kingdom.

The question and answer method also gives the scholar the use of his knowledge; it gives constant practice. Boys and girls repeat them to each other. It gives fluency and ease in the use of words, and seems altogether much better than the mere learning long pieces and passages by heart, which are repeated to the master.

Most of the schools for the poorer people are called Arbeit or Industrie-schule,—work schools. They are so named, because the females are taught hand-work, as well as instructed in books. The mistresses shew them what they are to do, and they do this while they are listening to the instructor, or answering his questions. This has the great merit of calling many useful talents into employment in very early life, of keeping the children quiet, of fitting them to earn a livelihood, and of [II-245] reconciling the poorest parents to sending their children to school. They are not only able to make something useful to themselves, but oftentimes of earning so much by their little labours in school as they could do by going on errands, herding cattle, &c. What the children gained by their outdoor labours was always the excuse made by the parents, if not the real motive, for not sending them to school.

Two brothers of the name of Wagemann, in Göttingen, and the consistorial Rath Sextro of Hannover, have been the means of introducing this plan into practice. I was assured by many people, as well as by Mr Superintendent Wagemann himself, that this method has done a great deal to improve the industrious habits and morals of the people.

What I have called calculating with the head (Kopf-rechnung) deserves to be further noticed for its utility. The master proposes questions, complicated in proportion to the previous knowledge of the pupils. In the earlier stages of instruction the children are obliged to repeat aloud all the steps of the calculation till they find the answer; afterwards they merely think over them themselves. The questions are generally something suited to life; and the children, particularly the females, acquire a great dexterity in answering them. They find this of very great [II-246] utility in shopping, as they are able to calculate oftentimes quicker than the tradesman with his slate.

Singing, and the elemental parts of music, are also taught to classes; and this deserves notice from its obvious utility. It seems possible that much, even of the practical part of music, such as placing the fingers on instruments, so as to produce certain sounds, may be taught to several persons at one time. And it is certain, that when any part of it is taught to one person in the presence of others, and when several are taught the elemental parts together, the power of audible perception is improved in all, and the acquisition of any part is facilitated to all. There can be little doubt that the quantity of music, and of musical instruction which exists in Germany, refines the ear and the taste of the whole people, and facilitates to them the acquisition of the power to play on any instrument. This may deserve the consideration of those persons who are engaged in teaching music. There is possibly no one but wishes the knowledge of it was more general in our country than it is, and that the present very expensive method of teaching it by one master to only one pupil at a time could be improved and made cheaper.

There is also a method of teaching to read, which deserves, from its philosophical accuracy and efficacy in practice, to be mentioned and explained. Men spoke before they wrote, and though the first [II-247] inventors of an alphabet might have made a separate written sign to correspond with each simple sound of their own language, yet these signs at present, or modern alphabets, do not stand for the most simple sounds into which any European language can be reduced. Many signs for simple sounds also stand for other sounds. Some vowels have several sounds; and no consonant, though each is a distinct sign, stands for a simple distinct sound. The name we give to single letters is not that sound which they have when they are combined into words. Any person who pronounces the letters of any word separately, and afterwards pronounces the word, must immediately perceive that no one word is composed of, or has even much resemblance to the sounds or names of the separate letters with which it is written. Written words are composed of letters, but spoken words are never composed of the names of the letters. Hence, when we have, with labour to ourselves, and sometimes torture to our children, taught them to read and pronounce our alphabets, they have to unlearn this pronunciation before they can read and pronounce words.

The method here mentioned, divested of all its tabular forms, and all the nonsense which has been employed to give extra importance to what is of itself a very simple and valuable scheme, proceeds on this principle. The children are taught to pronounce consonants only when they stand in conjunction [II-248] with vowels. When standing by themselves, they are considered as inarticulations, which cannot be expressed by any other written signs. When children have learned to know the letters by sight, and, from hearing words, have learned to pronounce them as they are combined, they know ever afterwards, when they meet these letters so combined, how to pronounce them. In neglecting, therefore, to teach a distinct articulation for consonants, it was necessary to supply some abstract of the general manner of pronouncing them, both before and after vowels.

A Mr Oliver, of Dessau, has been at the pains to make such an abstract for the German language, or, in fact, to teach a new series of simple sounds as the component parts of spoken words. Clearly the abstract of the simple sounds of any one language can never be adopted in any other. It is the principle only which may be transplanted; and each nation must endeavour to find out and classify the most simple sounds of its own language for itself. These alone ought to have a separate sign; or an alphabet of any spoken language should consist of a distinct and separate sign for each and for all the most simple sounds which can be found in it. As the whole spoken language is made up of these simple sounds, every word could also be written with the corresponding signs. It is certain that the present alphabets of Europe, borrowed from the languages [II-249] of other people, though they serve the purpose of writing, are by no means correct; and this principle, followed out, would dictate to each nation an endeavour accurately to classify all the sounds of its language, and employ a more correct set of written signs to signify them.

The rector of the boys’ school in the new town of Hannover, Mr Fromm, has improved Oliver’s method, and continues to teach it with great success. Children of four years of age learn by it to read in four or six weeks. The method meets with opposition; though it is widely spread. I met it both in Dresden and Hannover; and the inventor continues to employ it at Dessau. It is said to impede the children in learning to spell and write correctly. But this is owing much less to the method itself than to the circumstance of its not being universally adopted. The writing-masters continue to follow the old plan of spelling, and as the children do not learn this, they of course find some difficulty in writing correctly.

In all the schools something is taught under the name of religion, and this term signifies so many different things, that what is taught under this name requires further explanation. It is that part of the instruction of this country on which the teachers lay the greatest stress. It is united with the severest censure and the warmest praise. They describe it “as forming the heart.” It must have a [II-250] great influence on the moral character of the Germans, and it therefore deserves to be explained.

The Lutheran religion consists less of an exposition of incomprehensible dogmas than almost any other, and, therefore, what is taught the children under the term religion is very generally morality. It is found principally in the catechism, and a variety of books called the Children’s Friend. Of course, the commonly received principles of Christianity are taught; but as these are not susceptible of continued exposition to children, much of the catechism illustrates the duties of life. I transcribe a portion from where chance has led me to open it.

“Instructor. —The world must have an author, by whom it has been created; why do you judge so?

Pupil. —The smallest house must have a builder; how then can the world, this great and beautiful dwelling-house for innumerable creatures, exist without a wise and powerful author?”

Another place, p. 94, treats of attention to the body, of a good name, &c.

“I. —Can we promote the perfection and felicity of the soul when we take no care of our body?

P. —No; God has so united soul and body, that, through a careful attention to the body, the perfection and felicity of the soul is promoted.

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I. —What sort of care are we indebted to the body?

P. —The care for life and health, and a proper use of its members.

I. —Why for our life?

P. —Because God has given it to promote our own and our neighbour’s welfare. 1 Pet. iv. 10.

I. —May we not freely destroy life?

P. —To destroy life, when the understanding is sound, is a great sin, because God is the lord of our life.

I. —Does the Christian judge those who, in folly, or in deep melancholy, destroy themselves?

P. —No; but he guards himself more carefully, that he may not fall into such an unsettled state of mind.

I. —Why must we be careful of our health?

P. —To keep us free from pain, and preserve us fit for our occupations, and to continue our life.

I. —How must we take care of our health?

P. —By using good food and drink; by moderation in eating, drinking, and sleeping; by tempering the violent and effervescing emotions of the mind; by labour, foresight, and cleanliness, which are also necessary to our being received in the society of other men.

I. —Why must we keep the members of our body in a certain state and fitness for useful labours?

[II-252]

P. —We make, by these means, our business light. They enable us to move better, and make us more agreeable to others.

I. —What do we want to support life, and to keep us healthy?

P. —A sufficient quantity of nourishment, dwelling, and clothes.

I. —By what means must we seek to obtain and preserve these?

P. —By labour and economy without avarice.

I. —Can we, through our own works and cares, obtain and keep a sufficient degree of nourishment?

P. —No; we must also have the blessing of God, and must unite industry with piety and prayer.

I. —What is opposed to industry and economy?

P. —Idleness, extravagance, and avarice.

I. —Are idleness and extravagance pernicious?

P. —They bring want and contempt, and, at the end, induce to steal and to cheat.

I. —What is avarice?

P. —An immoderate desire for riches without properly using them.

I. —Does avarice make people unhappy?

P. —Yes, very unhappy; for the miser vexes and pains himself, troubles his neighbour where he can, and makes riches his god.”

[II-253]

From the Children’s Friend, I extract the following:

“A mother was once going on a small country excursion. The journey was not long, but she had to pass through a few villages. Her little daughter Regine was with her. In the first village the road was narrow and dirty. Mother and daughter wore shoes and stockings, which they did not wish to soil. The mother could pass without much dirtying herself; but she was unable to do this, and carry over the child. Near at hand was a maiden keeping cows. As soon as she saw the travellers, she ran to them, took little Regine in her arms, and carried her safe into the dry.— Question. Do you not think that this action was worth friendly thanks?”

Such is the spirit of the two principal elementary books used in Hannover and in Germany, to teach that most important of all things for the happiness of man—the proper manner to conduct himself.

They would be scarcely worth mentioning, if, like our own catechism, they were only occasionally employed; but they are used at least for the younger branches of both sexes twice every day, and must have a great influence on their character.

The reader cannot have failed to remark how many of the motives which these books inculcate for virtuous conduct depend on that tangible and [II-254] powerful reason—the worldly advantages to the virtuous person. Nor is the instruction, as carried into effect, at all different from this. I select two specimens from many lessons I have heard.

A miser was described by the instructor, and then he asked, “What did he feel when he was obliged to give money for the necessaries of life?

“P. —He was troubled.

I. —When people made just demands on him, he quarrelled with them, what ensued?

P. —He made himself enemies.

I. —What did he lose by not being charitable?

P. —The greatest joy; hence people ought not to be miserly.”

Second example.

“I. —Why should people not sin?

P. —It was forbidden.

I. —What was the consequence of sin?

P. —Pain here, and punishment hereafter.

I. —A father promised his daughter a nice garden, with all that was good. She, however, told a lie, and when she had received the garden, she was troubled, and could not enjoy it; why?

P. —She could think of nothing but the sin she had committed.

I. —A man with a small garden, in which he had to work, enjoyed it; why?

P. —He was good.

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I. —When virtue produced such good effects, what was it?

P. —A great good equal to health, and next to life.”

In this manner most of the duties of life are illustrated and enforced. The catechism supplies but few examples, but the instructors, who are generally men from the same class of persons as the children, know what will be useful to them, and very often furnish excellent illustrations. The children learn answers from the catechism, but also find, according to the principles of that book, answers for themselves, and thus they are not only taught principles of conduct, but learn very early in life to practise their understanding. They are compelled to find out accurate reasons for every line of conduct, and the best is every hour enforced on them. I have thought it particularly necessary to mention the important place which this sort of teaching holds in the schools of Germany; because we appear in Britain to be rather in the habit of imagining that morality is neglected in every other country but our own. In fact, we have been in general taught to believe, that in Germany both religion and morality were totally neglected. At the same time I am doubtful as to the effects of teaching morality as a science; it seems better to let children learn it in the common course of events, from the example and instructions of parents.

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What is taught in the higher schools, under the name of religion, is different from what has been already described. This consists in reading and expounding, with such critical remarks as the teacher pleases, portions of the Bible, and of biblical history;—in detailing such events as were connected with the establishment and progress of Christianity, and in teaching rather a history of religion than religion itself. As the first mentioned course of instruction makes moral good men, so this may probably make what are called irreligious men. “Religion,” said a German, “is taught in our schools, but neglected in the world.” It is taught there unconnected with all those persuasions to belief with which it is usually combined; it is made a matter of reason, and of cool instruction: it is treated like one of the sciences, and becomes, like them, destitute of all influence, but what it may derive from its truth. This sort of instruction, which is very general in Germany, probably causes some of that unbelief which is so generally attributed to the well educated Germans. [37]

The punishments employed in all these schools are trifling, are never corporeal, and all, of every [II-257] description, are very rare. It is enough not to be selected to answer for having made mistakes;—to be selected to answer for having before answered well; it is enough to be pointed out as intelligent and good, to make all the children attentive and industrious. Public examinations [38] take place every year, which also promote good conduct. Entering the school at improper hours is repressed by the disapprobation of the scholars themselves, and regular attendance appeared to be secured by the value of the instruction, or, at most, by the punishment of being placed in a corner, and by not being allowed to participate with the others in the lesson. The severest of all punishment is a total expulsion from the school.

Excellent as the school education of Hannover is, it is lamentable to connect it with the progress which the people have made in the arts and comforts of life. These have been, or will be, in other places more minutely described, and here it can only be remembered, that a large portion of their country [II-258] is waste,—that its trade is as nothing,—that all machines, beyond the most common ones, for abridging labour, are unknown,—its literature is at best trifling,—the people read little more than novels, or employ themselves in the classification and arrangement of insects,—and its government and laws are by no means good. Scarcely a great man is found in the country; and when this education sows the seeds of greatness, they must be nursed into life by a warmer sun and a freer air. Its army is brave, but mercenary, and the people, though kind-hearted and amiable, are in general destitute of all that noble spirit of enterprise which is one of the best qualities of man.

It has been mentioned, when the various schools were described, in what degree the government controls the education. In fact, the consistoriums are part of the government, and, in one manner or other, their members have an unlimited control over the whole education of the country.

A national education, under the sort of control which has been here specified, is good inasmuch as it models the whole community according to the wish of the controllers. Where the nation is entirely excluded from communication with other nations, it produces a certain uniformity of manners, a quiet submission, and a most perfect contentment. But it almost excludes improvement in all the great arts of life, and limits the attainments of the society [II-259] by the attainments of its rulers. It may prevent all the party-spirit tumults, factions, and disorders, which arise in countries partially free, from different political opinions; but it at the same time prevents the people knowing when they are badly governed, how much knowledge they want, and how much they might obtain; it prevents originality of genius, and the growth of individual talent. A national education under the control of governments may fit men for their priests, their soldiers, their lords of the bed-chamber, [39] for their judges, and for their slaves. But until the benevolent Creator of the world shall depute a ministering angel to rule over every nation, it may well be doubted if an education so controlled is useful to mankind.

The subject of a national education, provided by a government, and controlled by it, is one of very great importance, but which appears not to be thoroughly understood. I do not mean to discuss it, but only to remind the reader, that when a government is allowed to interfere, it never knows when to stop, and the people have never power enough to resist it without causing confusion. The following fact is a proof of the extent to which governments [II-260] are disposed to go, and it shews how jealous we ought to be of giving them any power over education. The Elector of Hesse, in the latter end of 1818, ordered that no person in his dominions, beneath the rank of a counsellor, should give their children a learned education, or send them to his university; and that no clergyman should give his sons, except his eldest son, a learned education. Such a fact speaks volumes against allowing princes to control education. They will only control it to educate men for slaves. It is unfortunate, that in Germany clever men profusely praise the sovereigns for their cares on this point. If they be encouraged to patronise education, they will assuredly control it, and if this be wrong, they ought not to be supplicated for their bounties.

The seminaries for the instruction of schoolmasters which have been established in Germany, and most of the methods I have mentioned as followed in the schools of Hannover, have all been either established, invented, or improved, at comparatively recent periods. The practice of instructing young men, while they instruct children under the inspection of a master,—of making them teach and examine each other,—and the general plan of questioning some scholars of a whole class, so that all may in turn, and in the course of some few lessons, be examined, and all profit by every examination, make this method of education, though [II-261] not the same as the Lancasterian method, resemble it very much, and equal it in wisdom. Neither of these methods was copied from the other, but in both countries a want of something better was felt, and in both countries improvements were the consequence. Their simultaneous origin proves that they were the natural consequences of the state of society, and that something of the same kind would have taken place even if the illustrious individuals whose names they bear had never existed. It is consolatory thus to see the improvements of the species depending on general laws, and that they are not subject to the accidents of time, nor submitted to the control of any individual.

The education of the other parts of Germany resembles the education of Hannover. Schools similar to those described, similar school-books, similar methods, with some little alterations, and even the schoolmasters, for they often change from one country to another, are common to the whole of Northern Germany. Each town has its Latin school, and each town has other schools, in which all the poorer children are taught at little or no expence. If the education of Bavaria resembles that of Hannover,—and I believe it does,—there may be some reason for the states of that country having decided, as they are said recently to have done, that there was no occasion to disturb the existing establishments to introduce the improvements of Lancaster and Bell.

CHAPTER IX.
university of gÖttingen.↩

German universities founded by sovereigns; professors not attached to any particular sovereign.—Difference between German and English universities.—Funds of Göttingen.—Manner of living there.—Privileges of German universities.—Tribunals of Göttingen.—Number of professors; celebrated ones; what they teach; manner of teaching; specimen of minuteness; effects on character; salaries; honours.—Degradation of professors.—Consequences of patronage.—Number of students; what they learn; their importance; separation from the other classes of Society; manners; their comment; eccentricities; their unions.—Disturbance at Göttingen; by what occasioned.—Remarks.

Fashion seems to be followed in seeking places of study, so well as in dress, and novelty in both has more influence than convenience. At least it appears so in Germany, where the comparatively modern universities of Jena, Göttingen, and Berlin, are crowded with students, while many of greater antiquity, as Helmstädt, Wittenberg, Rinteln, and Erfurth, are forsaken and suppressed. This is chiefly owing to the patronage of monarchs, each of whom, in his day, sighs for the “song of praise,” [II-263] and strives to secure the admiration of posterity by bounteously rewarding those learned men who are the keepers of the records of the world.

German professors and students, and I may add soldiers and statesmen, have never had, time out of mind, any other country but Germany. While they have professed the most profound obedience to their sovereigns, they have always served that one who paid them best. These tradesmen offered their wares to the highest bidder, and seldom asked any other question of the purchaser than if he were a Catholic or a Protestant. This well known fact is mentioned merely to explain the sudden rise or fall of German universities. Every tradesman should carry his industry to the best market;—teaching,—guiding armies,—conducting affairs, are all species of industry, and no love of country, and no sacred duty towards it, can imperiously command the services of subjects when its name and character are habitually usurped and prostituted by princes to the purposes of their own ambition. No love of country, therefore, ever keeps a German professor within the dominions of the sovereign under whose sway he was born.

By offering sufficient rewards, each sovereign is thus enabled, when he has determined to patronise any university, to bring to it the cleverest men of the whole of Germany. In some countries, those persons who are candidates for any public situation [II-264] must study in the university of those countries. For example, in Darmstadt all the people who choose to study, must go for two years to the university of Giessen. With this exception, the students have no attachment to native universities, and they who can bear the expence choose that place to study at of which the reputation of the professors is greatest. Celebrated professors are invariably sought and followed by a multitude of students, and the reputation of a university is thus established when they can be procured. The King of Prussia has recently founded a university at Bonn, and already the professors’ chairs are said to be all filled, and the halls to be attended by students. In 1810 he also founded a university at Berlin, which has since then been much frequented. The university at Göttingen was founded by George II. [40] in 1733, and learned professors were brought to it from all parts of Germany. It has since then become known to all Europe, and, owing to the continued favour of the sovereign, has enjoyed a reputation far beyond the oldest universities of Germany.

[II-265]

Accustomed as we are to regard our ancient universities as an integral part of our constitution, which it would be almost sacrilege to amend or destroy, this rising and sinking of universities, so that they sometimes scarcely last longer than the life of their founder, appears very strange. The facility to change is derived from the institutions being the mere bubbles of the monarchs’ will. Griefswalde, in what was formerly Swedish, but what is now Prussian Pomerania, is an exception to this. It has funds of its own, and is said to be richly endowed. The consequence is, that it resembles an English university. It has twenty-two professors and teachers, and sixty students. Now that it is Prussian, these gentlemen will assuredly not be suffered to fatten in idleness. Leipsic also has funds of its own, and many of the others have stated incomes, though dependant on the sovereign. The sovereigns retain the power to appoint and reward professors, though the faculty may recommend them,—to alter the laws and regulations,—and they generally keep the funds for the maintenance of the establishment in their own hands. In every state of Germany there is a department of the ministry under which the universities are particularly placed. And the sovereigns alter and regulate them at their pleasure. German universities are, therefore, essentially different from the universities of England, which are corporate [II-266] bodies, regulated by laws of their own, possessing large revenues, and independent of every thing but the laws of the land. Some part, however, of this facility to change, seems common to all corporate bodies of Germany. Religious corporations, corporations of towns and guilds, all of which are regarded with a sort of veneration in England, have been swept away in Germany at the will of the monarchs.

That philosophy which considers the control of sovereigns over the education of society as an evil, regards this state of the German universities as a matter of deep regret. But while it allows them to be altered and improved as men improve, it may possibly be regarded as a less evil than if they were regulated by laws which cannot be amended. Universities which living men can alter are better than those which slumber on, century after century, and take no note of all the improvements that rise on every side. German universities can always be so organized as to answer the ideas which the sovereign of the day has of what is excellent in universities; but unalterable corporate bodies, with Gothic regulations, answer no man’s ideas of excellence but those of their own well-paid members. Without placing much confidence in sovereigns, it may at least be supposed, that, checked and informed as they now are by public opinion, they are as capable of organising a university as the same class [II-267] of men were three or four centuries ago. It is at all times to be regretted that an undue veneration for the regulations of men who are almost forgotten should allow the immense sums, or rather quantities of the labour of the present generation, which they appropriated for education, to be wasted in producing very little good. There is probably no country of Europe in which larger funds are appropriated to this purpose than in England, and, owing to our rigid adherence to Gothic regulations, there is no one in which so little good is effected by them. The revenues of the two universities of England are probably greater than all the sums expended in the whole north of Germany for the education of the people. In one country they serve to maintain a few individuals in idleness and luxury; in the other they have diffused knowledge and morality among the poorest of the people.

The whole expence of Göttingen, and, compared with other German universities, it is magnificently endowed, is for books, for the salaries of professors, for buildings, and all other expences, about 70,000 R. Thalers, or somewhat more than L. 11,000 Sterling per year; a sum that possibly equals the incomes of four of the heads of houses in one of our celebrated seminaries. At Göttingen there is no other expences than paying the teachers, and providing books, instruments, &c. A few students are educated at the expence of some [II-268] towns, and of the sovereign, and they have a free table and lodging given them; but Göttingen has no good things to bribe its younger members to a continued adherence to taught opinions. There is no warm and well-lined stall of orthodoxy, and no means are taken to influence the students’ conscience through their stomachs. They believe according as they discover truth, and not according to the prebends, and bishopricks, and fellowships, which reward a particular faith. The German universities are said to teach theology very well, but they cannot gild it and render it delightful, as other universities do, to many learned and estimable men. The Germans do not squabble, therefore, who shall have it. Notwithstanding the want of large incomes, the Germans are, however, some of the most learned theologians of the day, and the most heartily charitable and tolerant of all the people of Europe.

The only builings belonging to the university at Göttingen are, the library, a museum, an observatory, and a council-house. Several others belong to the medical part of the university. There is a lying-in-hospital, a botanical and agricultural garden, and one large hall, where some of the professors give lectures; but the professors and students live scattered about the town, and, in general, the instruction is given in the houses and private rooms of the former. In Göttingen almost every house [II-269] is a lodging-house. The students board where they lodge, or their meals are procured from some cook’s shop, or they feed in taverns; but they are never collected at a common table, and fed from the public funds. It is a general characteristic of most German universities, that the professors and students live where and how they please.

When teachers and students are collected in colleges, as in England, they may need a particular code of laws, and ought, perhaps, in all things which regards college discipline, to be subjected to the tribunals of the university alone; but the mode of living in German universities neither calls for such a separate code, nor justifies giving the students regulations and tribunals different from the common laws and tribunals of the country. Yet the separation, in Germany, of the members of a university from the other citizens, is more complete than in England. When professors are appointed, and when the students have paid their matriculation-money;—when they have received a copy of the university-laws, and have given their hand— Handshlag —to obey them, they are both, from that moment, with all their families, domestics, and dependants, university citizens— Academische Bürger,—and they are both, from that moment, set free from the control of the civil magistrate, and rendered entirely independent of any other laws or tribunals than those of the university. This is an important fact, [II-270] because it partly explains in what the freedom of the universities of Germany consists, when they are, at the same time, dependant on the sovereigns. The great substantial privilege of both professors and students is, that they are subjected, in no case whatever, to any other tribunals than those composed of the professors themselves. This is an admirable security for the professors.

In every university there is more than one teacher for any particular branch of knowledge which is much studied. Although the professors are appointed, and, in general, paid by the sovereign, much of their income, at the same time, is derived from the fees which the students pay to hear their lectures. Of course, each professor is anxious to have as many hearers as possible, and all are careful, in their capacity of magistrates so well as in their capacity of teachers, never to irritate or offend the students. There is both a competition amongst the different professors at the same university, and a competition amongst those of different universities; and the students are sometimes tempted to choose the place of their study rather by the indulgences allowed than by the reputation of the professors. Thus Jena is praised by them, because they can enter the class-rooms in a morning-gown and slippers,—and Göttingen because they are there treated with more gentlemanly respect. This situation of the student relative [II-271] to the professor, thus ensures him the protection of this latter, who is his only judge and master; and herein consists the freedom or the licence of all the students of Germany.

Because a professor is not limited to one state, and because the sovereigns have been greatly desirous to be praised for their patronage, the latter necessarily protect the former. There is a competition amongst the sovereigns who shall have the most learned professors, and which of their universities shall be best attended. The consequence is, that the professors, and with them the students, are protected against that power of the monarch, which is the only one superior to both. Another thing which has given importance and freedom to the members of German universities, is the immunity which they have long enjoyed to print whatever they please without their works being subjected to any other censure before publication than that of the faculty of which the person printing was a member. It is a great advantage that the censors should be brother professors, and without any power, either over hope or fear, to produce the suppression of a truth. In these points consists that independence of which the members of German universities are so deservedly proud.

In most cases, the laws of the society are the laws which are administered by the tribunals of a university; [II-272] but there are also separate regulations for the conduct of the students. They prescribe almost every trifling particular of their conduct, not only in their class-rooms, but in their private life. They forbid them to collect in multitudes, prescribe how much money they may be trusted for confectionary, and how much for clothes. A man who shaves them may give them twelve months’ credit; while he who only dresses their hair, as this is a luxury, must not trust them for more than six. They forbid them to wear tassels of a particular colour to their pipes, and they fix the time for which they can hire a room. They must not give or hold large entertainments without permission. In short, if the conduct of the students is not inimitably correct, it is not for want of most minute and precise regulations. [41]

There are three university courts in Göttingen to administer the laws and regulations. A certain portion of the professors form the four faculties of learning; to each faculty there is a dean, who is changed every year; and the resident chief of the university is a pro-rector, who is changed every year, and who is taken alternately from each of the faculties. The first court is called the university-council. [II-273] It is composed of the pro-rector, president, all the members of the four faculties, and the actuary and the syndicus of the university, who are both jurisconsults. It meets once a-month, and transacts business relative to the whole university, so well as tries important causes, which may involve a serious punishment.

The second court is called the university deputation. The pro-rector is president. The deans of the four faculties, and when the pro-rector is not a jurisconsult, the person who is next in turn to be dean of the faculty of jurisprudence, with the syndicus and actuary, compose this court. It meets whenever it may be necessary, and it decides in cases of importance relative to justice or to discipline.

The pro-rector, the syndicus, and the actuary, form a little court, and meet twice a-week to hear and decide complaints of lesser moment. All complaints against any member of the university, or against their wives, families, and servants, must be made to one or other of these tribunals. The university itself can be complained of only to the government, under whose special superintendence it is.

An extraordinary feature in German universities is the number of professors. At Berlin, in 1818, there were 55; [42] and at Göttingen there were [II-274] 35 ordinary professors, 5 extraordinary ones, and 30 persons who were authorized by the government, and gave lectures or instruction on some topic or other. A dancing, a music, a fighting, and a drawing master, with a person to teach architecture, and another to teach the French language, are all nominated by government, and considered necessary to complete the education. Seven of the professors, and other licensed persons, teach theology; 14 teach jurisprudence; 13 the healing art; and 33 what is called philosophy, which includes history, languages, mathematics, political science, metaphysics, &c.

A more minute account will shew precisely what is taught at a German university. I shall therefore give in the Appendix a scheme of the studies for one half-year; which will also shew accurately the manner in which teaching, as a branch of industry, is divided in Germany. The courses of lectures and examinations amount in one-half year, and they are not less numerous in the other half, to 148 different ones. A few professors give only one course of lectures, but most of them give more; and the most popular read three, and sometimes four, lectures daily. There is no branch of school-knowledge, therefore, however numerous its twigs, which [II-275] has not at this celebrated university its appropriate teacher.

The most celebrated of the professors at present at Göttingen are Messrs Hugo, for civil law; Meister, for criminal law; the venerable Blumenbach, for natural history; Osiander-Himly-Langenbeck, in the healing art; Stromeyer, jun. for chemistry; Eichhorn, the elder, for philology and theology; Sartorius, for political philosophy, statistics, &c.; Gauss and Harding, for astronomy; Hausmann, for mineralogy and geology; Heeren, for history and ethnography; Bouterwek, for metaphysics and moral philosophy; and Thibaut, for mathematics and natural philosophy. Each of these gentlemen may have improved the science which he teaches, or the method of teaching it. They have compiled a vast body of information, which, from being collected, is afterwards more easily diffused through the world;—but, except some philological observations made by Professor Eichhorn, some trifling discoveries in chemistry made by Professor Stromeyer, and the elucidations of some passages of the Roman law, by Professor Hugo, I am not aware that any one of them has materially enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge, or added to human power. Professor Heeren has followed the steps of his illustrious predecessor Spittler, and has added considerably to historical literature; and Professor Sartorius is doing much towards spreading [II-276] proper notions of political economy, the science of which he has deeply studied. The great merit, however, of all these gentlemen rather consists in having better arranged the knowledge which was already in existence, and in having corrected many learned errors of their predecessors, than in having discovered any valuable truths. Even this is a great merit; for between the discovery of a valuable truth, and the rectification of a learned error, there seems to be no other difference than that the former may become the property of the whole race; while it is scarcely possible that any of the latter, except those which a class of men may be set apart to teach, should ever be extensively diffused. The errors which learned men rectify, and the ignorance which they enlighten, are merely the errors and the ignorance of other learned men, and rarely those of mankind.

The list of what these gentlemen teach, the manner in which the sciences are divided and subdivided, will suggest to the reader the spirit of what is taught. There seem to be no outlines which the student can fill up at his leisure—no large and comprehensive views, whose subordinate parts, acquired by secret industry, make knowledge valuable, by making it truly the property of the individual. Every thing seems explained to the very utmost limit of minuteness; and the plan of teaching rather resembles the manner in which schoolmasters [II-277] repeat trifles to their scholars, than that of great philosophers giving hints for study, which industry must adopt and improve. Many of the lectures on theology and jurisprudence consist in mere verbal criticism, explanations of different readings, restorations of corrupted passages, and all that can make the old books, whether of law or of religion, intelligible to the young hearers. I am aware of the presumption of censuring, even in the most remote way, the pursuits of men who are distinguished in the world, and who only do what has been done and applauded for ages. Yet I cannot avoid thinking that very much of what is here taught is the veriest trifling which idle monks ever adopted as an amusement, and which the learned world has believed to be an heritage of wisdom from them long after their other doctrines and themselves are forgotten. It is trifling with which any man may innocently and rationally amuse himself, but which no man can be paid by a government for teaching without a waste of the national substance; and which no man can be induced, by extra rewards, to learn without a most deplorable waste and perversion of his talents.

Sciences and arts must be valued by their utility; and they possess two sorts of utility. They are useful to the people who profess them, and they are useful to the society. But in what way are geology, mineralogy, ontology, zoology, philology, mathematics, [II-278] and, in short, all those branches of human knowledge which are dignified by the name of the sciences, (the fine arts may also be added,) so much more useful to the society than the common mechanic arts, than agriculture, and weaving, and shoe-making, that the funds of a nation should be appropriated to pay their professors? The very circumstance, that the professors of many of the sciences and arts cannot find any reward for their labours in the common markets of the world, is a complete proof of their inutility to the society. That which is useful to men they will most assuredly reward. In general, the utility of these sciences and arts to those persons who are conversant with, and who practise them,—the pleasure which they give the individuals who have long studied them,—and the importance which they thus acquire in their minds,—have been substituted for their utility to the society, and governments have thus been persuaded to reward what is of no general use. The character of these sciences and arts has been always given by the persons who professed them. They have held the pen for the rest of mankind, and have written their own opinions as the opinions of the world. Far be it from me to doubt the positive and ultimate utility of the sciences and arts. I know what a beautiful and innocent amusement they are—how they enlarge, and soften, and improve the mind; but poetry, and novels, and music do all this, and no professors are required [II-279] to teach how they should be written. It is, in fact, because some of the sciences and arts are useful that they do not need any extraordinary rewards. When these are bestowed they only stimulate a part of the system into diseased action, and its greatest beauty changes into monstrous excrescences that render the whole ugly in the sight of every sensible man. Thus collecting worms, impaling insects, and all the veriest trifling that ever amused children, become classed as art and science.

If it may be doubted whether the sciences and arts are so pre-eminently useful, that they ought to be encouraged by greater rewards than they receive in the common market, how much more may it be doubted of that particular science which is known as jurisprudence; whose professors, after having imposed shackles on mankind, must be paid for teaching how to rivet them? There is no greater evil than that the word of a man in all bargains and contracts should be of no value unless it is attested by lawyers. What should we think of rewarding a set of men to teach priestcraft to others—to teach them how to enchain us in ignorance? And assuredly lawcraft, or the dominion of lawyers over the understandings of men, is not a less evil than priestcraft was when it was in the pride of its power. There are no less than fourteen persons at Göttingen, the greater part of whom are appointed and paid by the sovereign to teach how to lengthen [II-280] processes, how to confound right, and how to make a mystery and a property of justice.

It can be of no consequence to the present race of men how the Romans decided in any particular case; by referring to their decisions we are only prevented from examining the merit of the particular case, and deciding according to it. After the experience of so many ages, after so much knowledge has recently been accumulated on the rights and duties of men, if those of the present day are not better able to decide on any question of right than the wisest lawyers of the days of Justinian, it can only be because our guides have always confined us to the decisions of these ancient lawyers. People who please may study the Roman law as an amusement; but it is certainly absurd to bestow any of the national funds on those who do study it, and still more absurd to direct, by artificial rewards, the talents of a nation to so barren and pernicious a study.

It can also be of too little consequence to the present generation how the Greek language was constructed, and how the Jews spelled and wrote, and what the half-formed and barbarous jargons of these barbarous people signify, that professors should be employed to teach and to explain them. These are rational praiseworthy studies for individuals, but most certainly they are not what a nation should honour and reward. But a [II-281] large part of the professors at Göttingen are paid for explaining the writings of Jewish priests and of the Greek poets.

It is a part of the system of instruction to explain all these things in a most minute way. An explanation for every verse may occupy an hour, and the tablets and the memory of the students are amply filled, however their understandings may be neglected.

Among the lectures which it is necessary for the students of jurisprudence to hear is one on the public law of the confederate states of Germany. It was numerously attended. I should have thought I was unlucky in the time of hearing it, and I should not have judged of the whole from a part, had I not known several students of jurisprudence who assured me that what I had heard resembled the whole; and they defended the professor against my remarks on what I thought his trifling nonsense. He was speaking of the post regulations of Germany; and he described them to such a degree of minuteness, that he omitted neither the horses, the conductors, the postilions, nor their uniforms and badges. He dwelt particularly on the certificate (Post Schein) which is always given to every person who either takes a place or sends a parcel. Professors ought to teach something difficult to learn which they had themselves acquired by years of labour; but, in this instance, something [II-282] was taught of which no stranger who had ever travelled by the post coach could be ignorant. There was no international law to be elucidated by this. The whole regulations of each individual Post being made by the different sovereigns, and, like the notices of our own coach-offices, are printed on every certificate.

When the utility of the studies at this university is estimated, they give but small hopes of any accelerated improvement in mankind from the labours of the learned. The “lights of the world, and demi-gods of fame,” are employed teaching what is of doubtful utility; and most of the elite of Germany, the future “lights of the world,” are wasting the precious hours of youth in acquiring a veneration for trifles that abides by them through life. When the course of instruction for youth places equal value on the subtilities and chicaneries of jurisconsults,—on composing Greek verses,—on discriminating between stones formed by fire and by water,—on the hues of an insect,—and on the proudest lessons of moral and political wisdom,—need we wonder that men so instructed substitute the lessons of lawyers for plain honest wisdom, or that these subtilities become the rules of national councils; need we wonder that, classing the phenomena of magnetism, collecting and preserving intestinal worms, and impaling and arranging butterflies, should be deemed objects of great importance? A [II-283] great many of the occupations of the learned in Germany are the merest trifling; and their love for this is chiefly to be attributed to a course of instruction at their universities, in which every thing that bears the name of a science, without any regard to its utility, is indiscriminately taught. There can be little doubt that, whatever is wrong in this system, is to be attributed to the patronage of sovereigns, who have equally rewarded every learned pursuit; or rather they have done all they could to encourage trifling, that the attention of men might be diverted from more important objects. The pleasure of the prince has been substituted for the good of the society, and his views have been made the criterion of general utility.

Although most of the professors are paid by the government, very few of them lecture gratis. The students are, in general, obliged to pay for every course of lectures they wish to hear. The price is one pistole, or 16s. 8d. for each course, though there are some of the medical courses which cost double, and even treble, that sum. The salaries of the professors are unequal, depending, in a great measure, on their reputation, and on the necessity the university or the sovereign has for them. Some of them are said to receive 2000 Thalers per year; others have not above so many hundreds; and some are contented with the mere honour of the appointment. Some of the best paid professors [II-284] may, at the same time, make 2000 Thalers per year by the students, which makes the highest money reward which is probably acquired in Germany by teaching, amount to about L.670 per year. For this, however, many of them labour very hard; they read three or four lectures a day on five days of the week. In point of industry they are surpassed by no literary labourers of the world. Professor Eichhorn the elder, who is probably the cleverest man of the whole university, has been for many years in the habit of reading four lectures a-day on five days of the week; and he is also the author of more than eighty volumes of printed works on various subjects. Such a labourer can have had no rainy days.

Numerous as the retainers of every German government are, it is impossible that they can be well paid, compared with the servants of the British government. I am rather disposed to think that the emoluments of German professors, compared with the emoluments of other people in Germany, are large. L.600 or L.700 a-year, as the highest reward for teaching, is, at the same time, very little compared with what many schoolmasters and professors make in Britain. This poverty, if it really be poverty, is, however, compensated to the German professor by the honour to which teaching sometimes leads. A professor of theology in one of our universities may become a bishop; but, in [II-285] Germany, the professors are frequently called to situations of dignity in the ministry. Spittler, who was professor at Göttingen, was afterwards one of the principal ministers of Wirtemberg; and Mr Martens, the present ambassador from the court of Hannover to Rome, was professor at Göttingen.

The greater part also of the professors enjoy the honorary distinction of Hofräthe, and no less than nine of those of Göttingen are knights of the order of the Guelphs. No mere teacher at any of our universities has, I believe, been honoured with knighthood. This fact shews in what manner the want of large emoluments may be compensated, and also the manner in which teaching is honoured in Germany. This is not an example that we ought to wish imitated. Whenever monarchs take learning to their embraces, her illegitimate progeny are all rickety, ill-formed, and diseased; her offspring are only healthy when she lies in the arms of freedom. A gay ribbon may go farther than a pecuniary reward, and warp that knowledge to trifling, which is now dispensed in our country with a great regard to truth and utility.

This honour has not, however, saved these gentlemen from a species of degradation. A work that may be regarded as proceeding from the ministry of Hannover, said of the tumults of the Göttingen students, “that no official information had been given of them at Hannover, because the superiors [II-286] of the university, it was well known from experience, loved rather to preserve silence than to make any reports that might be displeasing to the students.” [43] These same superiors also “begged of the commissioner, with great earnestness, when the students withdrew, that he would order away the hussars, and invite the students back.” [44] In short, a great many proofs may be found, from the manner in which the learned men have treated the students, that they are rather in a state of degrading dependence on them. In spite of the patronage of the sovereign, therefore, or rather in consequence of it, these learned men suffer a degradation to which no common schoolmaster of Britain would submit. Loaded, as I am afraid the reader will already find this book, with discussions, I would not say a word in explanation of this fact, were it not that a great body of men are constantly demanding of sovereigns more patronage for learning, and that this degradation appears to me to be occasioned by such a patronage.

Through every department of industry, wherever an artificial stimulus, that is, a stimulus greater that the natural demand, has been applied to encourage the production of any commodity whatever, the effect has always been, that a greater [II-287] quantity of talents and of skill have been directed to its production than could at length find a proper profit or reward. The artificial stimulus is either withdrawn, or it is insufficient, and the people who have been induced by it to employ themselves in a particular way, are sure to fall into poverty and distress. The same fact is true of many of the manufactories of Britain, to which a larger portion of the skill of the nation has been directed than would have been but for the frequent unwise encouragements of the Legislature, and the manufacturers are now involved in distress. The same fact is true of the artists of Italy and France, who have been seduced, many of them, from mechanical pursuits, by the patronage which has been bestowed on the arts. All the minor artists of these countries, and under this term musicians, comedians, buffoons, and such people, must be classed, are some of the most degraded of the population of those countries. They have no other means of procuring a miserable subsistence than by flattering the lowest passions and the vilest lusts of degraded people. And the same fact is true of the learned of Germany, and perhaps of Europe.

Learning has long been patronized by princes, and they have patronized a learning not always saleable in the common markets. This is thought to be an honour for learning, and has induced a far greater number of men to follow it as a profession [II-288] than princes could reward, or than the funds which the opinions and the wants of the world have destined to learning, could maintain. It is this sort of patronage, much more than any natural desire to study, or than any dazzlings of genius, which has directed so many people to follow learning as a pursuit; and more have engaged in it than could possibly be rewarded. Hence the little value paid for teaching and for authorship, and hence the complaints of the learned of their poverty. This cause has operated in Germany more, perhaps, than in any other country, from the number of sovereigns, all of whom are ready to patronize learning. The consequences are the immense number of professors at each university,—their competition one with another, and, at length, their dependence on the students. Did no extra stimulus, such as the bounties of the sovereign, induce a great number of men to follow learning as a profession, and to collect at one place, open and public competition would be admirable. Did no law of the society make these gentlemen who are thus dependent on the students, at the same time their judges, they could have no opportunity and no power to tempt the students to attend their lectures by any other means than superior teaching. And, without being patronized, and without having this power, they never could have been degraded as they now are; nor could the tumultuous [II-289] conduct of the students, which has been in a great measure occasioned by the dependence of the professors, have ever brought the whole universities of Germany into one moment’s disrepute.

The manner in which the professors lecture is the same as that adopted at the university of Edinburgh. Each lecture lasts an hour, and, generally, the professors deserve credit for slowness and distinctness of delivery. The diligence of a student is measured by the quantity of notes which he makes, and, to permit them to do this, the professors are very particular in dividing their discourses into separate heads, and in waiting some time under each division, that, at least, the title may be written down, and the general topics known. I cannot in general praise the eloquence or the elegance of the manner of delivery. Professors Hugo, Sartorius, Bouterwek, Thibaut, had paid some attention to the graces of speaking; but most of the professors seemed to me, so utterly had their voices lost all the intonations of feeling, or of passion, much more to resemble speaking machines than men. [45]

[II-290]

The professors are easy of access, and polite to strangers, whose notice, indeed, they are said “to court as a sort of honour.” [46] Before meeting with this remark, I had thought they seemed so accustomed to be visited, that they calculated on it, and were ready, like sovereigns, to receive the homage of every stranger who requested to see them. There may be a little vanity in this, but they are always extremely polite. No stranger need be shy in approaching any one of them, for he is sure to be received with urbanity and kindness, and to have every information given him he may wish to obtain.

The number of students at Göttingen, in 1818, was 1158.

It deserves remark, that, compared with a former year, the number of students in theology has increased as 1; in jurisprudence as 14; in the [II-291] healing art as 12; and in philosophy as 10. It is not affirmed that this is a constant proportion, but there is reason to believe, from a comparison of several years, that the alteration in the number of students who study different sciences is not inadequately expressed by these numbers. [47]

The list of what is taught, which is given in the Appendix, is also, in a great measure, the list of what is learnt; but, as some of the branches of knowledge there mentioned are more studied than others, it is necessary to make some observations on what is most generally learnt. Although the students of theology and of medicine may have a great influence on the whole society, they are not likely to have so much as those who study jurisprudence; [II-292] for almost the whole of the efficient legislators and governors of Germany, the advocates, the judges, the professors of this science, and all the young men who are candidates for any office under the government higher than that of a copying-clerk, write their names down for three years to study jurisprudence.

From the list which has been given of the studies under this head, it will not be expected that, however much learning may be got from them, they will give much wisdom. In fact, much of what is taught under the head of jurisprudence may be described to be a knowledge of ancient systems of law, or of existing systems of law, both of which inquiring and wise men very generally allow to be far from perfect, if not absurd. Many things which are of themselves useless, are learnt from a necessity which exists, derived from these systems being established to learn them. Although it might be easy enough, from a knowledge of nature, and from mixing with the world, to learn what is deemed right in any society, yet it requires a particular study to know, in every case, what was deemed right by the Romans, and what is ordered by the laws, and hence a necessity arises from establishing foreign, or complicated codes of laws, for a large body of men, to devote their whole time to studying them. Of themselves they are a barren study, and when they require such a quantity of talent as we [II-293] see devoted to them in Germany, it is surely a proof that they are a great evil. What might all the powerful minds which have been wasted on them not have effected for the human race had their talents been directed to some useful and productive study? The Roman laws have done much to ungermanise Germany. They have deprived the people of their particular usages, and much of their national character. Their own legislators have taken them as models, and there is not a single modern regulation or law, I believe, of the whole country, without expressions of the Roman law. With a constitution totally different from that of Rome, Germany has been deeply inoculated with the poison of Rome’s worse institutions. This is one of the many instances to be found in our times of a blind imitation of the ancients. To follow the Roman law at present is as rational as it would be to follow the Roman methods, if they be known, of weaving and of making war.

The students have no settled general plan of studying which can be accurately delineated, further than that each one attends those lectures he thinks will conduce most to his improvement. It is necessary for every young man to undergo a certain examination before the professors, and to receive a certificate of his qualifications, before he can procure any situation either under the government, or as an advocate, or as a surgeon. To obtain [II-294] any respectable situation, it is necessary to study three years at some university; but, during this time, the student chooses for himself those lectures which he will attend. The young advocate must attend lectures on the Institutes, on the Pandects, on criminal jurisprudence, and on the elements of practice. In like manner, there are certain lectures which the medical and theological student must hear; there are others, such as those on general history, on statistics, and on geography, which they attend if they please; but, in general, all the students attend those professors principally whose reputation is great. Out of 1150, the number at the chemistry class was 39, at the political class 100, and at the class for the public law on Germany, it was still greater.

There is no good student who does not attend three—most of them attend five, and some of them six—lectures in one day. They write down every thing which is said; they are never idle or inattentive; rigid laws amongst themselves prevent one from disturbing the others; and, on the whole, their industry is equal to the industry of the professors.

Some few students are older than the others, but in general young men go to the university between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. They may go after being confirmed, which always takes place at fourteen, and they generally do go immediately their studies at the upper schools are completed, [II-295] which rarely extend beyond their seventeenth year. Latterly, owing to the disturbed state in which Germany and all Europe has been for so many years, and owing to a large part of the young population having being obliged to serve in the armies, a greater number of young men of a more advanced age have become students.

The students of Germany have lately occupied so much of the public attention, that I am tempted to give a more detailed account of their manners and conduct than I should have otherwise thought it right to give of a few young men, or rather boys, who, through injudicious treatment, have acquired a momentary influence in society. The community is in a diseased state when the voice of the young alone is heard on political questions; when their organized bands are so powerful that they are regarded as superior to the laws of their country; and when they fill the public ear and occupy the public mind, we may be sure that the rest of the society are submissive, degraded, and oppressed.

“Wir alle sind Brüder und einander gleich,”—We are all brothers and equal to one another,—is the motto of the students, and the sign of their university equality. And there is a freedom of intercourse amongst them that teaches, at least for the moment, both the future prince [48] and the future [II-296] citizen to respect man more than his artificial dignities. The rich and the poor students have necessarily different sorts of lodging, different companions, and seek different amusements; but, whenever they meet there is amongst them a perfect equality, and all are, as they themselves say, brothers. It is one of the best features of their character, that they are always ready to help one another, with their hands, their heads, or their purses.

Mad. de Stael has truly remarked, that men of letters in Germany are more separated from the rest of society than in any other European country. The separation is fast diminishing; learned men mix more with the best society; they are called to offices in the state: but the distinction is yet so strong between the learned and the mere citizens, that it will be many years before it can be obliterated. It is perhaps one of the most singular circumstances in the life of Kant, that one of his most particular and oldest friends was a merchant. For, in general, there is little or no communication between such different classes of men. Most of the universities of Germany are in retired corners and small towns, where the learned are completely the superiors of the whole society, and never see any persons but their subjects, unless it is the passing stranger, who rather ministers to their vanity, by laying at their feet his homage of their talents. The tradesmen are, in general, in Germany, poor [II-297] and despised; the farmers are bauers and stigmatized;—but few merchants are opulent; but few soldiers are learned; and, therefore, when a university is not in a large city, the learned necessarily live in their own circle, and quite separate from the rest of the society. In Germany also every class forms a Stand by itself. Guilds were common to all trades, and, though they have been in most instances abolished, the guild of the learned yet maintains itself with all its ancient privileges and powers.

This unhappy separation of the learned from the rest of the society, if it be not chiefly owing to the constitution of the universities, is yet much widened by it. The professors, with their separate privileges and tribunals, can have no common interest with the rest of the citizens; and the student, by this constitution, is made at once something which is not a citizen. At the beginning of his literary career his interest, his privileges, the laws under which he lives, are all different from those of the rest of the society; and if he do not afterwards fill some situation in the public service,—if he continue a literary man, he remains separate from the rest of the people through life. I met a literary man in Dresden who knew nothing whatever of the tribunals or administration of justice in his own country. And a learned professor at Göttingen was ignorant of all such matters in Hannover. From [II-298] this separation, the learned have troubled themselves very little with the common concerns of life. Hence much of their learning is nothing but dreaming and mere words; it has no relation to the affairs of the world, and is of no other use but to amuse the learned. This separation is therefore mutually mischievous. The learned want common sense, and common men want learning. The recent political circumstances have done much to unite the classes. The writings of the day begin to have more wisdom, and the people more useful knowledge.

With this separation the learned, particularly the students, combine very naturally, from their superior privileges, an idea of being greatly superior to other classes. Fichte, a celebrated philosopher of the Kantian school, said, many years ago, “that the students speak of themselves as the elected of God, and that all other men are the rejected. Every other class must give way to them. Each person must be pleased with what they do, and nobody dare to displease them. Every person not a student, with the exception of their teachers, and the magistrates under whom they are placed, must speak them fair and honourably, and must recommend himself to their favour by carefully avoiding whatever might offend their delicate ears. This is the duty of every person towards them; but, from their exalted freedom and feelings, they may treat [II-299] all persons unworthily. This is their right against every man.” They are not only, therefore, separated from the rest of the society, but they have learned to despise it. The contemptuous manner in which they speak of every body not a student, whom they call Philisters, (Philistines,) while they are the chosen of God, shews this unamiable part of their character in its full light.

They have no academical dress, and they therefore seek to distinguish themselves from the Philistines by any and every absurdity of clothing they can invent. Some cut their hair and dress themselves like Cossacks; many let both hair and beard grow in unpruned wildness, and have a costume peculiar to themselves, consisting of immense green trowsers, a red waistcoat, and a sort of white or grey coat, with some curious coloured cap. Most of them, however, are clad like the old Germans. Their hair is suffered to hang in ringlets on their shoulders. Neck handkerchiefs are rarely worn; but their white shirt collars, of which they are very proud, are doubled back also on their shoulders. Their little caps, (Mütze,) fastened under their chins by a leather strap, often assume somewhat the appearance of an open vizor, and give their scared faces, and flaxen ringlets, a curious appearance of ferocity and effeminacy.

This capricious violation of common fashions may appear to be of no consequence to those Germans [II-300] who believe in the separate existence of a “noble, moral, and transcendental man.” But morality is, in general, little more than an obedience to the opinions of the world; and he who disregards that in trifles, may more easily be led to despise it in matters of importance. Men deviate from its fashions; they laugh at it when it reminds them of their follies; and at length they spurn it when it reproves their vices. German students differ from the rest of their countrymen in their manners so widely as in their dress; they are rude and boisterous; and seem to have put on with the dress of the Cossacks, and of their ancestors, all their harshness and unamiability. On ordinary occasions they abuse and ill-treat the servants of public places; they are ready to take insults and to insult; they walk about the streets in parties, singing and making hideous noises; they clatter with their heels and sticks on the pavements; they strike against the window-shutters of the Philistines; they not unfrequently cheat, [49] or, as they call it, prellen, the [II-301] citizens; and, without being wicked, they seem to forget all the common civilities and little rules of life. The frequency of duels amongst themselves, from which results their scared faces, is well known, and is of itself a proof of their general character. Some gentlemanly steady young men are, of course, to be found amongst them—some who are afterwards to fill professors’ chairs, and be the ornaments and instructors of their age. Some I have known whom I yet love and respect; but these are the exceptions, and the general character of the students is what has been described.

Perhaps this character strikes a person more forcibly who has lived some time in Germany. He becomes accustomed to a high degree of gentleness and amiability in the elder people, and to such softness in children, that the contrast with the students is very great. The master of a respectable academy, who had frequently had English boys to teach and to educate, told me he always found them so ungovernable that he would rather have ten German boys than one English one. German boys are, in truth, compared to ours, extremely mild and soft, and these amiable qualities are put off whenever they become students. Three years of the life of a German are passed in total freedom from all other laws but the “Comment.” Before that he is a gentle child under the roof of his parents; and after that he is lost in the greater circle [II-302] of the world, and follows implicitly its strict and regular rules. “A few years are allowed him between the discipline of the schools, and the restraints of office, in which, while he is taught, he may also indulge himself, and preserve a joyous remembrance of accomplished follies.” [50]

That they may be countenanced in their absurdities, they have a set of rules made by themselves for their conduct, (the Comment,) which prescribe to them to demand satisfaction of any person who insults them, by applying to their conduct such epithets as foolish, strange, extraordinary, wonderful, monstrous, laughable, and all such other terms. In short, they seem to have proscribed every term of reproof that they might indulge unrestrained in every whim, and in every folly. According to this comment, all duels must be decided by the sword; and the weapon in common use is short, and made only to cut. No more than a certain number of rounds is permitted, so that the affair seldom terminates in any other way than in disfiguring their faces. This comment is the only law which is rigidly obeyed. Its violation is visited by the severest punishment the students can inflict. The culprit is put in Coventry, (in Verruf,) and during this time no person will associate with him, nor can he demand satisfaction for any insults he may receive. They [II-303] have sometimes extended this Verruf to tradesmen; and, by depriving them of all student custom, have brought them to ruin, and rendered the whole of them extremely obedient and fearful.

Their conduct is marked by many eccentricities, of which the following is an instance:

In 1812, one of the students, either involved in debt in town, or in love in the country, retired from the town, and built himself a hermitage, in the neighbourhood of a house of amusement called Maria Spring. He made a very neat little place of it, planted a little garden, and lived here for nearly two years. It is said the great attraction was the daughter of the house from which he used to procure his provisions and other necessaries. Certainly he lived in this retirement for a considerable time, and then, I believe, went clandestinely away, leaving the daughter and parents to mourn over lost virtue, money, and happiness.

The separation of the students from the citizens, and their mutual differences and quarrels, gave originally occasion to the former to unite in a body for defence and aggression. The students are collected from different parts of Germany, many of which have different dialects. It was natural for the natives of any particular place to associate with their townsmen or countrymen more than with strangers. The inhabitants of the different parts are distinguished by something peculiar in their [II-304] dress. From these causes there came to be formed amongst the students different little societies called “Landsmanschafts.” They were originally societies for pleasure, for amusement, for defence against the citizens, and sometimes for defence against other students; but they were originally and long remained destitute of any political aim whatever. Some of the young men in such societies acquired more influence than others, and thus each society soon came to have something like a leader; and through these leaders and these separate societies, the students were frequently brought to act together. Their power was soon felt, and many attempts have been made, by ordinances, and by severe punishments, to suppress the societies. The sovereigns, however, only gave importance to them by recognizing and forbidding them. They were founded in a natural feeling of attachment; they were strengthened by the power which uniting conferred; and they appeared only to have been rendered formidable by the multitude of decrees which have been issued against them.

Recent political events have, in some measure, tended to destroy the petty dissensions and divisions of the Germans. In the recent contest against the French for freedom, it was proposed in some political journals that the students should change their Landsmanschafts into a general union or allgemeine Burschenshaft. Some universities, [II-305] as Halle and Jena, adopted this; others, as Göttingen, retained the old plan of Landsmanschafts. The French conscription had extended to many parts of Germany. Many of the young men belonged to the Landwehr. In 1813, the sovereigns called the students to the field, and led them to the combat. All these causes, together with the present tendency of the writings of several German authors, have combined to give the meetings of the students a political aim. University communicates with university; and all the students, whether united in Landsmanschafts or Burschenshafts, have recently been taught to act in bodies, and without any settled and fixed aim, they have spoken and acted decidedly in favour of freedom.

It is this union of purpose which has given to the German students, when there is no other body of men united for a common end, a power of making themselves heard and distinguished in the community. They have become more than any other body formidable to those sovereigns whose anxious cares extend to every thing. The ceremony of burning some emblems of tyranny at the Wartburg, in 1817, interested all Germany. Men were rejoiced or alarmed at it, as they were the advocates of freedom or of tyranny. Every newspaper was full of it, and every mouth spoke of it. When the students quitted Göttingen, in 1818, the same attention [II-306] was excited throughout the country; and the ministry of Hannover concealed very ill the alarm which the conduct of the students excited in their bosoms. They mingled in the dispute, and seemed to have acquired no honour.

The students have been regarded by many people, particularly the political writers of Germany, as destined to make a great alteration in the welfare of their country, and to be its deliverers from oppression and slavery. When I had only heard of their processions, and their feasts, and their songs, this view appeared to me in part correct. It argued well when the whole of the future legislators, judges, and ministers of Germany, were the warm advocates of the interests of humanity. Since I have seen more of them, I have doubted if a set of young men, intoxicated by the power and importance which they derive from their momentary freedom, and from their numbers, can ever learn the value of freedom themselves, and I am sure they never can be fit to bestow it on others. In their own societies, they submit to the most severe slavery. A few bold spirits keep the whole in awe. Many of them would have gladly returned to their studies at Göttingen. Many of them wished never to leave it, but they were constrained, on these points, to obey the directions of a few. In the midst of their licentiousness, they are slaves, and they never can give to others that freedom which [II-307] they themselves can never properly value nor possess.

But the students are also all of the privileged classes. The future clergymen, the future jurisconsults, judges, and ministers, are all students; and never did I hear any of them, except one, express any decided opinion against the quantity of lawyers, or the complicated systems of government, which are, in truth, the plagues of Germany. On the contrary, I heard these young men express a greater disdain of bauers and mechanics than I ever heard expressed by any other persons. These are, however, the oppressed classes of Germany, and they, I am quite sure, have nothing to hope from students. Their riots are symptoms of youthful turbulence—not of a love for freedom. They are certainly an evidence of enthusiasm—of a warmth of temper amongst the Germans greater than we are accustomed to ascribe to them; but it is the warmth of youth, the enthusiasm of hot blood and licentious living, and not of a rational and determined spirit.

The disturbance at Göttingen, in 1818, shews this, and it exemplifies their character and conduct better than any descriptions can do. It was of sufficient importance to be noticed at the time in all the public journals of Germany. Several pamphlets were published on the occasion, and it excited a sort of literary warfare. Its effects on the university [II-308] are likely to be permanent; and although it has frequently been mentioned in our own periodical works, it seems to me to be of sufficient importance to demand further remark. I shall, therefore, give a short account of it. I reached Göttingen a short time after its commencement, and remained there till after its termination.

On the morning of July 2, 1818, one of the students, in passing through the meat market, where there was no regular road, and only a narrow covered path, thrust a child on one side, who was talking and laughing with a butcher. The butcher said to him, in no very polite tone, there was no road there. He replied, the “devil take you,”— Kerl, dich soll der Teufel holen. Some scuffling ensued betwixt them. Some witnesses say the butcher gave blows to the student; but this is denied both by the student and by the butcher. The student complained of the insult to the police, and was told, after the matter had been inquired into, that the police could do nothing more than give a reproof to the butcher; and if this did not satisfy the student, he must have recourse to a common prosecution. The student declared to the police magistrate that he was satisfied, but his comrades deemed the dignity of the whole body insulted. After thinking over the matter for nine days, or till the 11th of July, they met in consequence of a public notice, in great numbers, on the evening [II-309] of that day, in a public garden close to the town, and resolved on doing themselves justice. Some of their number addressed them, and encouraged them to be valiant; and they marched in an orderly procession into the town, and demolished with stones and sticks the windows, doors, and some of the furniture of a house belonging to a man bearing the same name as he bore who had affronted the student, but not belonging to him; in fact, the house of another man. They demolished the furniture of the house, after breaking into it, in the presence of the man himself, his wife, and daughter. This gross injury to an unoffending individual, this insult and outrage to females, they called taking that satisfaction which had been denied them for an injury. After threatening the house of the magistrate to whom the butcher had been complained of, they marched, singing their songs of triumph, through the streets, and at length dispersed.

The citizens, alarmed at this outrage, so well as by some previous excesses, and each one fearing that his turn would come next, and the magistrates having no power whatever to protect them, they requested the magistrates to represent the matter to the ministry at Hannover, which was done in the warmest colours. It appears that, although the ministry had not been officially informed of many previous excesses, that it knew of them, [II-310] and had resolved to seize the first opportunity to curb the students, and give to Göttingen a constitution better calculated for the exigencies of the times. [51] This appears to have been the principal motive why it was now resolved thoroughly to sift the conduct of the students, and to make a severe example of the guilty. Mistrusting the impartiality, and knowing the bias of the usual tribunals of the university in favour of the students, the ministry sent a gentleman from Hannover, with the title of Royal Commissioner, to inquire into the whole matter. He arrived on the 21st of July, nine days after the fray, during which time no further riot had taken place. He was followed the next day, very much to the displeasure of the students, by a detachment of Hussars.

The conduct of the Hannoverian ministry was much discussed on the occasion, and it was on account of employing the soldiers that they received most blame. The citizens, of course, who felt the want of protection, and the partizans of military power, justified it throughout. The advocates of the students, and generally the friends to liberal opinions, condemned it. Without being a friend to the employment of soldiers, to sabre any class of people into obedience, it appears to me that, on [II-311] present occasion, there were some good reasons for sending soldiers into Göttingen.

The students had got to so great a pitch of intemperance and disorder, that it would have most certainly been impossible to subject any individuals of them to merited punishment, without the whole breaking out into riot and rebellion. They were resolved to stand by one another; and when the ringleaders of the riot were demanded, a list of nearly all the students was given in. If it were necessary to inquire into the disturbance, to punish the perpetrators of a gross outrage, and protect the citizens, an armed force was necessary. If it were necessary that the students should not be absolute masters of the town, soldiers alone could hinder them; for the civil magistrate had no power whatever. That they remained quiet from the 11th till the 21st of July, when there was neither inquiry going on, nor punishments inflicted, is no sort of proof that they would continue so when their conduct was investigated, and the ringleaders punished. But this part of their conduct gave them great advantages in arguing that the soldiers were not necessary. Whether this step was justifiable or not, it was a measure full of unpleasant consequences to most of the parties concerned.

On the evening of the day when the Hussars arrived, the students walked in great numbers [II-312] through the streets, and sang songs. This is a common custom—only that on this evening the numbers were greater than usual. They were obliged by the soldiers to separate and go to their homes. On the following day, the students petitioned the Commissioner, under promises of good behaviour, that the Hussars might be withdrawn—of course, their petition was refused. They were, on the same day, forbidden, by a public notice, to collect in numbers, either in houses or in the streets, and they were also forbidden to sing in walking through the streets. Such parties are forbidden by the usual regulations of the university, and this order only enforced them. In the evening, however, a great many of them collected near the place where the guard of Hussars was posted, and began singing Schiller’s famous robber song, “Ein freyes Leben führen wir,” —“we lead a free life.” They then ridiculed and reproached the military, and at length pressed around them in such numbers as to impede the patroles from coming in. Something like the report of a pistol was heard, and the Hussars then received orders to drive the students away, and to strike them with the flat part of their swords. The students opposed them for a moment, but soon separated; and eight of them were cut or wounded in the fray. Considering all things, the soldiers appear to have behaved with moderation. I must here remark, that there is a [II-313] great deal of difference between sending soldiers into the town, and the manner of employing them when there. Although I think their presence on the spot was necessary for the protection of the citizens, it is difficult to believe that there was any necessity for guards or patroles in the street; and that it was not wrong thus to excite opposition by an unnecessary display of power. In such cases it is always necessary to consider what the people have been before accustomed to. The students were unaccustomed to be awed by soldiers. Though contrary to the regulations of the university, they were accustomed to amuse themselves by singing through the streets without opposition or remark; and it appears, therefore, to have been most unwise to have forbidden that at this particular time, and to have enforced the decree by the terror of the soldiers. The only justification of sending them into the town was, that they were to protect the citizens; but they were employed unnecessarily to annoy the students. Of course, the students felt themselves grievously affronted by the assault of the Hussars, and talked of arming themselves, and taking revenge. More military were brought into the town on the 23d, the day following, which possibly prevented this determination, and induced the students to resolve on leaving Göttingen. They put this latter resolution in practice on the same day, and retreated to some of the villages, [II-314] and to a little town belonging to Hesse Cassel, called Witzenhausen, which are in the neighbourhood.

They remained here till the 2d of August, negociating with the ministry of Hannover for the removal of the soldiers. As they were disappointed in this aim, they then came to a formal resolution, that all the students who were foreigners should leave Göttingen, and that no foreigner, which includes all other Germans but the Hannoverians, should, under penalty of being put out of the comment of all other universities, and out of the comment of the native students remaining at Göttingen, dare to go to Göttingen to study for two years. To be put out of the comment exposes the young men to all sorts of insult without any redress. This was putting Göttingen in Verruf, and the consequence was, that the whole of the foreigners immediately left the university. The students had no doubt, from this Verruf having been accepted by the students of most of the other German universities, that, till the two years are expired, few or no foreigners would go to Göttingen to study. [52]

Such is the power, and such the actions of the [II-315] Göttingen students. Individuals, both students and citizens, who had displeased them, had frequently before been put in Verruf, to the great mortification of the former, and sometimes to the ruin of the latter. But this, I believe, is the first instance of their having extended their power to a whole university, and of their having decreed it not to be lawful for certain classes of persons to go there to study. This conduct betrays, on their part, no want either of freedom or of presumption. I will not exculpate the ministry; but certainly the conduct of the students must be condemned. They took satisfaction for an imaginary insult, which, in fact, the individual offended allowed to have been satisfied, and, in doing this, they outraged some unoffending individuals, among whom were females; they displayed no contrition at this offence, but insulted the authorities they were bound to obey. Much might, and much ought to be pardoned, in young men; but this single action was but the type of their general spirit, and this was opposed to all the restraints, not only of laws, but of order and decency. This is not a hazardous assertion. I have already given some specimens of their conduct. The quotation before made from Fichte may shew that a bad spirit has long existed. The turbulent character has recently been somewhat augmented by a large number of the students having been in the armies, and then returned to [II-316] study, bringing with them the habits of the camp. A respectable citizen of Göttingen told me, however, that he remembered four instances of the students withdrawing themselves from the town, and they had not returned without stipulating conditions. They had each time re-entered the town in triumph, and they expected, on this occasion, to have done the same. The author of the little pamphlet which I have quoted, whose work was evidently written with a view of justifying the conduct of the government, has enumerated five recent disturbances at Göttingen, in one of which the students routed all the armed guard of the town. This he attributes to the young men having been soldiers; but these were only specimens of their general conduct. They cannot be considered as anomalies in their character, but merely its common features thrust more conspicuously into notice. Göttingen has, however, been long considered as much superior to the other universities of Germany in point of manners. The following is Goethe’s remarks when he was a student towards the year 1765.—“In Jena and Halle rudeness was arrived at its highest pitch. Strength of body, skill in fighting, and the wildest self-will, were there the order of the day; and such dispositions could only be supported and encouraged by the most vulgar riots and turbulence. The relation of the students to the inhabitants of those cities, how [II-317] different soever it might be, helped these dispositions. The rude stranger had no respect for the citizens, and looked on himself as a being privileged to use every freedom, and every impertinence.” [53] Such, therefore, as it now is, has their character long been, and from them there can arise no other hope but that they should pursue their studies, and learn what order and freedom are.

Every Englishman must be astonished at the patience with which the citizens bore, and bear, the insults, contumely, and outrages of these youths. It marks the difference between a German and an English tradesman. Had students conducted themselves in a similar manner to Englishmen, hussars might have been necessary to prevent bloodshed, or to protect the students. The citizens would assuredly have had spirit to protect themselves, and to punish the boys. But the Germans, pounded into submission with the iron pestle of authority, can neither judge nor act for themselves when undirected by a police officer, or an order from the government. From having been over-governed they have become imbecile, and they have changed the activity of intelligent beings for the mechanism of slaves. The citizens of Göttingen, as a free town, in the sixteenth century, were not behind those of Brunswick and [II-318] Hannover in independence. The citizens of Göttingen, as a royal town, the seat of a university, are destitute of common vigour of mind.

There are seven or eight different tribunals in Göttingen, exclusive of those of the university. Yet among all these there was not one which could repress a common tumult, though there is a small armed force under the orders of the magistrates of the university. There was not one of these that was fit, in the judgment of the Hannoverian ministry, to inquire into and decide on the merits of the persons concerned in the riot. The legislators of Hannover must misdoubt their own institutions, and be sensible, after all the trouble they have given themselves, of the unfitness of their own creations to answer the end intended.

When we reflect for a moment on the consequences of such a riot, had it taken place in England, we may be sure that no armed force beyond the common civil power, aided by the citizens, could have been requisite to keep a few students in order. But, where men rely only on the military, they may, and must, use them equally to oppose rebellion or repress a tumult; to stifle the clamours of a nation, or stop the throats of noisy boys. They are instruments of despotism always at hand; and that violence which ought to be the last refuge of the government, is used the moment there is the least question of opposition to its will.

[II-319]

No extraordinary tribunal would be required in Britain to decide on the conduct of a few students; nor can a cabinet ministry in our country ever find it necessary to listen to their complaints. The Hannoverian ministry had to interfere between the students and the laws; they set themselves formally to negociate with them, and degraded themselves from statesmen to police officers. They brought this degradation on themselves by that meddling spirit which compels them always to direct the most minute actions of the subjects, instead of trusting them to the common laws of nature. How much more powerful does the law appear in our country, where it is exposed to examination and to censure, than in this, where it is above inquiry, but rests on the will of some individuals; and where it is an engine of government, and nothing which the people are interested in supporting.

In the dependence of the university magistrates which has been described, there was a very good reason for not allowing this matter to be investigated by them. And their dependence on the students is to be considered as the great cause, not only of this riot, but of all the past, the present, and the growing turbulence of the students. What can be expected from them but excesses and violence, when the persons appointed to govern them not only do not reprove, but are ready to palliate their excesses? And they may well reproach [II-320] the university magistracy for its compliance, and the government for placing it in a situation to fear them. It was from similar offences having been long tolerated that at length brought on them the shame of being put down by soldiers. It must not, however, be argued from the present dependence of the professors, that they should have greater salaries given them to make them above the students. This is not the reformation which is required. This would make them neglect teaching. The students ought not to be removed, as they now are, from the control of the civil magistrate. Both professors and students should be subjected to the common laws of the land, and to the same tribunals as other people. This restriction is perfectly distinct from interfering with teaching. It is much to be wished that this should be rendered wholly independent of governments, rescued both from their patronage and from their control. But it is at the same time to be wished, that the professors and students should not be separated, by different laws and privileges, from the rest of the society.

It has been mentioned, that the reason why Göttingen was chosen for the seat of a university, was the ruined and impoverished state of the town. [54] “The inhabitants were to be maintained and nourished by the professors and students.” [II-321] The consequence of this has been, that the former have become utterly dependent on the latter. The students know this; they know that the prosperity or the ruin of the inhabitants of Göttingen depends on them; they know that the citizens, so well as the professors, fear above all things that they should withdraw themselves, and thus ruin both. This power over the welfare of the citizens of Göttingen, and its consequent arrogance, has therefore been given to the students by that act of the government which was dictated by a wish to render Göttingen flourishing by founding a university at it. It has before been shewn, that a great cause for the turbulent disposition of the students was the dependence of the professors; and this also was originally caused by a desire in the rulers to have the honour of being the patrons of learning.

Another assigned cause for the present turbulence of disposition was the great number of students who were in Göttingen. Lodgings could scarcely be found for them all. In moral reasoning, it is the height of folly to fix all our attention on the last of any series of human actions, and to leave all its causes unexplored and uncondemned; or, in this case, although the students were presumptuous, riotous, and turbulent,—although they had collected in Göttingen in greater numbers than could be accommodated, it is absurd to throw all the blame of such [II-322] dispositions on them, or to attribute their coming in such multitudes to chance. German boys are mild and amiable beings, and students are rendered otherwise by nothing but the constitution of the university, and their relative situation to the citizens. For this constitution,—for this situation,—the government, its vain desires and regulations, are entirely and alone to blame. Presumption and turbulence in young men are necessary consequences of possessing power, and the overt acts of insulting people, and of rioting, are the consequences of such dispositions. The number of students collected in the little town of Göttingen was owing to the patronage of the government, and unless men should be determined not to extend their view beyond immediate causes, they must blame the silly vanity which aspires to the honour of being the Mecænas of the age, and the regulations of the government, so well as those dispositions of the students, which these regulations cause.

These latter observations account only for the arrogance of the students of Göttingen, while a similar disposition evidently now forms, and has long formed, part of the character of all German students. But it must be remembered, the principal causes for their presumption, namely, their independence of the laws of society, the patronage of the monarchs, and their exclusive privileges as a Stand, are common to them all, and that many of [II-323] them share in that particular cause for the presumption of the Göttingen students, which is derived from knowing that the welfare of the little town in which the patronized university is situated depends on them. A class of reasoners are constantly blaming the evil passions of our nature as the causes of our misery. They teach all mankind to curse our common mother. If it were not for fear of being paradoxical I should assert, that what are called our good passions do as much mischief as our evil ones. At least, the evil passions of the students, and, probably, many other of the evil passions of all classes of society, may be clearly traced to that disposition in the rulers of the world which most men applaud as benevolent. Admitting that the intention of patronizing universities is most laudable, it is evident that its effects are most mischievous.

CHAPTER X.
on the german language.↩

Wrong criterions employed to judge languages by.—German language not unmusical; examples.—German articles redundant.—Declension of substantives redundant.—Adjectives absurdly declined.—Changes in verbs redundant.—German language complicated.—Source of the errors.—Is a rich language.—Kant; his merits and peculiarities.

From the influence which language has on the character and on the literature of nations, every foreign language may, with propriety, be made by every traveller a subject of remark; and, therefore, I shall here make some observations on the German language. Most persons pronounce on the merits of any language either by its affinities to that one which they have spoken all their lives, or by its affinities to some one which has been recommended as a standard of elegance and accuracy. By the learned most of the spoken languages of Europe have been called good or bad as they resembled the Latin or the Greek language; one or other of these having in general been selected by them as the model of a perfect language. By the [II-325] ignorant other languages are called good or bad as they resemble their own, or as they are supposed to have some musical properties. It is wrong to judge by either of these standards.

It would be extraordinary if language, which is the master-art of life, should have been carried to perfection when all the other arts and sciences were in their infancy. If the languages of antiquity were more perfect than our own, it might then be supposed that they were anomalies in nature, and were a sort of miraculous gifts. Like other arts, however, language had probably a chance beginning, it has been improved by patient research, and refined by every generation correcting the errors of the preceding one. [55] We have not outstripped the ancients in this point so much as in many others, from the same cause why we have not outstripped them in statuary, architecture, &c. namely, that we have in these arts confined our efforts to an imitation of what they had [II-326] achieved. Our learned people have sought to model the languages, and our artists the buildings and the sculpture of modern times after those of antiquity. If the mechanic arts had been subjected to the same restraints, we should now have wanted, with many other improvements, both the printing-press and the steam-engine.

Thoughts are so intimately connected with words, so few people ever think of separating one from the other, that in general men cannot conceive any other mode of expressing their thoughts than that to which they are accustomed. Use is said to be the tyrant of language. Though it decides whether we shall adopt or reject certain phrases, it can of itself never be of sufficient authority either to justify or condemn them. If usage were to be the only authority for speech, there would probably be no error of language which might not be justified. The German language must not, therefore, be judged of by the analogy of its own modes or usages, nor by its relation to any other language. Neither ought it to be praised or condemned from any vague idea that it possesses musicalness or harshness of sound. Neither of these is an essential property of any spoken language. The poetical, or musical, or sung language, of any people, may, and very often does, differ materially from their spoken language. The Italian language is itself an example. The spoken, or provincial Italian, [II-327] can nowhere, except in Venice, be described as a musical or harmonious language. The most rugged and guttural spoken language may be musical; and if this were not possible, nobody who knows that it was for the German language many of the compositions of Mozart and Hadyn were made, or who has heard the famous little song written by Goethe, called Mignon, or Schiller’s more common Robber Song, sung by a company of common soldiers, but must be convinced, that the German language can with no justice be described as a harsh or unmusical language.

I should be sorry to make a paradoxical assertion, but to my ear the German language does not sound harshly; and I do not know that there are to be found in any language more musical and well-sounding lines than may be extracted (among many other pieces of poetry) from both the above-mentioned songs. For example, the first verse of Mignon, particularly the second, third, and fourth lines, seem to me sounds as soft and musical as were ever uttered:—

Kennst du das Land? wo die Citronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorber steht,
Kennst du es wohl?
      Dahin! Dahin
Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn.”

[II-328]

It must be remarked, that the Germans have a softer way of pronouncing the s than we have. The third line is exquisitely soft and musical, and in the whole there are but three words whose sound is in the least harsh—hoch, möcht, and ich, and perhaps ziehn. The two lines in the robber song,

Ein freyes Leben führen wir,
Ein Leben voller Wonne,

are all vowels or labials. I may add three other lines that I stumble on by chance, from Schiller’s little poem, Würde der Frauen:—

Zärtlich geängstigt vom Bilde der Qualen
Wallet der liebende Busen, es strahlen
Perlen die Augen von himmlischem Thau.

I give these quotations as nothing more than examples of soft and pleasing sound. I do not mean to enter further on the subject, but merely to give some examples as a justification for believing the assertion, “that the German language is harsh and unmusical,” has been probably made by people who have rather judged it from its crooked and strange letters, than from having heard it spoken or sung. I am far from asserting it has no unpleasant sounds, no words that abound in consonants, but with such, it contains as large a portion of musical and pleasant sounds as most of the spoken languages of Europe.

[II-329]

Language is the sign for what we see, feel, or think; every distinct perception, feeling, or thought, ought to have a distinct sign; and no two of them ought to have the same sign. Against the first of these principles all languages offend. No one of them has a distinct and different sign for every different thought, or there would be no ambiguity, though no language perhaps sins less on this score than the German. Most languages also offend very materially against the second principle, and no one more so than the German.

The definite article the (in German der, die, das ) is, in fact, a pronoun relating to some object before designated, or afterwards to be designated. If any three distinct and different objects had the same name, it might be a rational way to distinguish each of them by affixing to it a different article. Thus der Mann might signify the man; die Mann, the woman; and das Mann, the child. All these three beings so nearly resemble one another, and are so perfectly of the same species, that the different genders might as well be marked by those articles which are called the signs of genders as by a change in the name. The Greeks, I believe, had only one term corresponding to our child to signify both boy and girl; and to this word they affixed a masculine or a feminine article to distinguish which of these two were meant: as we say a man or a woman child. From a contrary custom of speech, it [II-330] would now sound absurd to say a male boy, or a female girl: But changing an article when, at the same time, two distinct names designate the different genders or qualities which are to be designated, is as absurd as saying a male boy or a female girl.

Whenever genders are easily distinguished in nature, most modern languages have a different name for each gender. This is particularly true of the German language, which has a syllable (inn) that, added to words designating males, makes them signify the females of the same species. There can, therefore, be no need of any further sign, or a different article, to designate genders. But German grammarians have established a different rule. They have not only different names for the different genders of most animals,—not only a feminine termination, which they can apply to most nouns,—but they have also three distinct articles. They have given a gender to words, and have called them by the fine deceitful names of masculine, feminine, and neuter. German substantives are divided into three sorts, and with each of these sorts of words a different article is used. And so capricious is this use, that there are many words which designate masculine beings, to which the feminine or the neuter article must be prefixed, and vice versa. Das Weib and das Mädchen, for example, words that signify females, are themselves neuter words; while die Bürgerschaft, the citizens, and die Geistlichkeit, [II-331] the clergy, both signifying a collection of males, are feminine words.

The principle on which this practice is absurd has been above stated, viz. that it is wrong to employ two signs to designate the same feeling, perception, or thought,—or the different objects here mentioned are already distinguished by different names, and the relation we mean to designate by the article being in all cases precisely the same; it is absurd to use three signs when one is enough to signify this relation. The principle is justified by the use of the English language, which has only one term for this relation. The French language has only two genders of words, and two articles. The German language has, therefore, one sign for the same relation more than the French, and two more than the English. This extends to all substantives. It is therefore a fault, or an absurdity of principle, which goes throughout the German language.

There is reason to believe that the three different articles of the German language were originally nothing more than the different manner in which the different tribes of Germans pronounced the same word;—and that grammarians, finding three such words in promiscuous use among the people, adopted from the Greek language a scientific arrangement of these three manners of pronouncing one word, and called them masculine, feminine [II-332] and neuter. In many provinces they are yet promiscuously used, and confounded one with another. In the low German, which is an unpolished language, this distinction of words into genders is said to be unknown. And the absurdity seems, therefore, less chargeable on the genius of the language than on the imitation of learned grammarians.

Those relations which, in some languages, are called cases of nouns, and which, in many of the northern languages, are perhaps better expressed by prepositions, [56] may be either signified by prepositions, as in our language,—by changes in the nouns, as in the Latin,—or by an alteration in the article, as is done in the German language; but [II-333] it is wrong both to change the termination of the noun and to use a preposition,—and it is truly absurd to do both these, and, at the same time, also to alter the article. In the German language all the three changes are sometimes—and the absurdity is clearly shewn by they being only sometimes made. Thus the Germans sometimes make two changes to signify our of, or the genitive case—they say des Mannes, ( der Mann is the nominative;) they sometimes make three changes to signify the dative, or our to —they say zu dem Manne; and they generally make three changes from the nominative to signify the ablative case, or our from, of all masculine and neuter nouns—they say von dem Manne. I am far from affirming that our single words to or from do not at times express different relations; but this impropriety is not remedied by the additional changes in the German words. The zu dem and von dem are as indiscriminately applied as our to and from; and the differences which they signify might be signified either by the change of the noun, or of the article, or by the use of a preposition. This unnecessary change and multiplication of signs takes place with each of the articles of the German language in most of their cases, and with many masculine and neuter nouns.

Notwithstanding this unnecessary multiplication of signs, there are some real differences which are not distinguished. Thus feminine nouns are never [II-334] changed in any of the cases of the singular number; and the different relations which we mark by to and of are not distinguished when applied to them. The article der for both these relations is the same. I am far from affirming that every instance in which we use one of these two prepositions, the other could not be substituted in its place. In many it could. In many, however, there is such a radical difference in the relations which der signifies, that they ought to have a different sign. Thus, gehören der Frau, is something belonging to, or possessed by, a woman. But “auf dem Meer der Leidenschaft” is literally on the sea of passion. The relations signified to the two feminine nouns Frau and Leidenschaft, by the word der, is different; and this is a case in which, notwithstanding a great number of changes in their words, the Germans have no change to mark an essential difference.

A single object, or more objects than one, (singular and plural,) requires but one sign to mark this difference. The English language, though there are exceptions, marks it by the addition of a single s. I believe the same rule is followed in some of the low German dialects; but the written and polished German language has no simple general rule like this. It not only has several different manners in which the plural is distinguished from the singular, but it uses in many cases several different [II-335] signs to signify this one and simple difference. The article of all masculine and neuter nouns is changed in the plural, though not of the feminine nouns. Many of them add a syllable or a letter to their nominative, and many change one of their vowels into a diphthong. As an example, der Mann, the man, makes to signify the men, die Männer. Three changes are unnecessary, and two of them are absurd. This is not only proved from principle, from the practice of our own language, but also from those instances in the German language, (all the feminine nouns,) in which one single change in the end of the noun accurately marks the difference between singular and plural, as die Frau and die Frauen.

Adjectives are signs for qualities which are the same in each and every different substantive. Thus the word black signifies the same quality in a man, a woman, or a child. But because the Germans have classed nouns into masculine, feminine, and neuter, and because they have adopted the absurd principle that words ought to accord with words; they change the termination of adjectives;—as they are connected with masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, and as they are preceded by the definite or indefinite article, or not preceded by any article. They say ein schwarzer Mann, eine schwarze Frau, and ein schwarzes Kind. Such unnecessary changes are made in all German adjectives, and in most [II-336] of the cases of those adjectives. With much more propriety the adjective in the English language always remains unchanged, and in this point it is superior to most of the languages of Europe.

I have somewhere read (I believe in a German grammar written by a Mr Steinheil) that there was a time when the terminations of the German adjectives remained unchanged. In many provinces, and amongst uneducated people, they are still used unchanged, or the changes are at least made as chance may direct. The refined form of the error, therefore, by which the termination of the adjective is made to change, according to rules, must be considered as having been introduced and perpetuated by the writings of grammarians.

Of pronouns nothing will be said, because to elucidate them would require a greater space than I can here allow myself to use. It will be enough to remark, that they are also unnecessarily multiplied and confused from the principle of making words accord with words, being followed in using them.

The different persons designated by speech may be signified by prefixing pronouns to the verbs, or by changing the ending of the verb. [57] To prefix [II-337] pronouns as we do, and to change the ending of the verb as the Romans did, is one or other of them a redundancy. In some instances we do both, and so do the Germans, which is proved to be wrong by both not being done in many instances, and yet no ambiguity occurs. Thus there is no difference in the verb of the German language for the first and third persons of the plural, and none in the English for either of the three persons of the plural. Either the use of pronouns, or changing the verb, is unnecessary; and both have only been introduced from following the wrong principle of making words accord with words. A great many similar remarks might be made on the modes of verbs; but, on this point, the German language is not worse than many others, and, like the pronouns, they would require too much space.

It would tire the reader to enter further into the minutia of the German language. The faults which have been exposed are faults in principles. They pervade it, they make it complicated and cumbrous, and they vitiate it throughout. Much time and much attention is required to learn all the artificial rules by which some of the words of this language are made to accord with others. These rules are contrary to the axioms of rational grammar, and they make this language one of the most troublesome instruments of thought which are in [II-338] use amongst the nations of Europe. With all its faults, however, it contains many treasures; and from the progress which the Germans are making in knowledge, it is perhaps as well worth our cultivation and our inquiries as any language of Europe. The terms employed in German grammar, the nature of the errors of the German language, and the fact that many of these were not formerly in use, explicitly prove that most of its complexities and faults have been occasioned by an endeavour to make at least its grammar resemble the grammar of those languages which are called classical. A similar endeavour has materially injured the construction of most of the languages of Europe. Our own and the languages of Scandinavia have had but few of the absurdities of the boasted grammars of antiquity implanted on their own absurdities; and they consequently remain, though very far from perfect, comparatively simple in their construction, and easily used instruments of thought.

There is no want of persons in Germany to write grammars, and to propose amendments and alterations in the German language; but so far as their writings have fallen under my observation, not one of them appears to be aware of the principles which ought to be followed in simplifying their grammar. They are rather botchers than builders, who perpetually make their language worse, from having no accurate conception of what that [II-339] grammar ought to be which they try to amend. It is an opinion of their own that their language is not yet fully formed, (ausgebildet;) but they unfortunately think that what it needs is a greater complexity of false and unnecessary distinctions. In fact, they in general regard all these conformities of words to words (the absurdity of which I have endeavoured to expose) as the great merit of their language; and they regard the simplicity of our language as its greatest imperfection. [58]

The German language has one advantage: this is, that words to signify every idea may be formed out of pre-existing German words. The common signification of the root words being known, the combination is equally well understood. The Germans have introduced a less number of foreign words into [II-340] their language than has been unwisely introduced by most other Europeans into their languages. Hence they have preserved a greater number of their original words; and out of these they can and do make compound words to signify many of those ideas, to signify which we borrow words from the Latin or the Greek. They have preserved, in consequence of this, much more distinctly than we have done, the proper and figurative meaning which is common to almost all words. Auslegen, properly, to lay out, figuratively, to explain, is an example; and many more might be found. These circumstances have probably also been the cause why the Germans have many words, particularly nouns and verbs, for slight shades of difference, which are not distinguished by other people. So far as they signify a real difference, this is a most praiseworthy quality, and it constitutes what is called the richness and the precision of the German language. It is much easier, however, to multiply words than to discover differences; hence the German language has the bad property, in common with most of the languages of Europe, of possessing many different words to signify precisely the same thing. A multitude of words which mark real differences gives precision. They prevent amongst the Germans those equivoques which distinguish the writings and speech of their word-poorer neighbours the French; but they allow them to speak and to write much nonsense. [II-341] When words are changed so often that a recurrence of them does not offend the ear, and when they are placed in that customary relation to each other which usage calls grammatical: nonsense is easily imposed on the world as wisdom. A still greater evil results from this unnecessary multiplication of words. The use of them becomes habitual: what they signify is forgotten; but it is always affirmed that they are all necessary, and accuracy of thought is constantly impeded by inaccuracy of language.

A great part of the praise which has been bestowed on Kant was occasioned by the circumstance that he was one of the earliest philosophical writers in the German language; and his style was grammatical and neat. He was enabled to choose, amongst a great mass of common words, many of which he used with uncommon significations. He created a great many more, and, putting all these in grammatical order, he produced a great many volumes, the greater part of which signify and explain very little or nothing. Such sentences as the following are calculated to impose on a great many people who judge by sounds:—“A transcendental principle is that by which general conditions, à priori, are made, under which conditions things that are the objects of our knowledge can alone exist.” Die Anschauung is one of Kant’s fundamental powers; he defines it thus: By whatever [II-342] art, and by whatever means, any knowledge of any object whatever may exist, that to which it is immediately related, and by which all thoughts as their medium exist, is the Anschauung. If any person is acquainted with any such principle as is here defined, he may be able to tell by what English word Anschauung should be translated. I know of none; neither do I pretend to give the meaning of the first sentence. I merely translate the words. The greater part of the works of Kant are made up of such well-sounding sentences, and they appear to be an admirable illustration of those remarks of Campbell and Hume on the art of talking nonsense undetected. The philosophical writings of many other Germans contain proofs of the same fault, and they are examples of the ease with which nonsense may be written, in what is called a rich language, with a complicated grammatical structure.

The earlier and smaller works of Kant contain much more good sense than his later and larger works. He had the powers of genius within him, but they needed the nourishment of a polished, and well-formed, and sensible society. Königsburgh, where he passed the greater part of his life, did not supply this. He was a king amongst professors and students, and grew inordinately vain of his power of writing. We may smile at his ridiculous peculiarities,—at his holding his mouth shut, and [II-343] breathing through his nose to cure himself of some asthmatic complaint,—and at his eating great quantities of mustard to strengthen his memory. But we must condemn that vanity which induced him to class himself, as a moral teacher, as inferior only to Christ. His disciples, for he yet has disciples in Germany, though, I believe, they are not numerous, praise his abilities at the expence of his virtue. Rather contrary to the opinion of Mad. de Stael, some of them regard his works as supporting, in the strongest manner, the doctrines of infidelity. And they assert that those parts of them which, in any manner, tend to support religion, were the unwilling offerings of his fears on the altars of authority. He was at one time suspended from his professorship on the score of irreligion; and it was then he professed his belief. [59] His writings contain few facts. They consist of arbitrary definitions of terms arbitrarily assumed, from which any thing and every thing may be proved.

There can be little doubt that the complex structure of the German language; by demanding from writers and readers a constant attention to the accordance of words; and its richness, by allowing a constant change of words, have done much towards [II-344] vitiating the philosophical reasoning of the Germans. Many instances more than the above two might be given, not only from the writings of Kant, but also from those of Fichte and Schelling. The instances given, however, may suffice, particularly as metaphysics in Germany are giving place to more important political studies. The structure of the language seems to have had a great influence on German literature; and perhaps the fault of being in general prolix and wordy, is entirely owing to the cheat which is put on the understanding by giving words the properties of things. Men believe, from this delusion, that they have new ideas, when, in truth, they only change their words. And in proportion as these possible changes are numerous, so is the understanding more easily deluded.

The inhabitants of the town of Hannover have the reputation of speaking the German language better than the generality of the Germans. Like the inhabitants of Inverness, who are said to speak good English, the language which they speak is not their native language, but the language of southern Germany, or rather of books. Low German is the language of the north, and it is still spoken by the common people in various places. Not many years ago it was the language in common and general use. Those persons who are acquainted with the Low German affirm that it is more expressive and equally harmonious with the [II-345] High German. Its construction is more simple; it knows nothing of the absurd distinction of words into genders; and, as it was the language of all the little republics which have been mentioned, [60] of a people who were more free than the inhabitants of southern Germany, it may be regretted that it is fast falling into disuse, and that its place should be supplied by the more complex language of a longer enslaved country. The translation of the Bible, by Luther, into the dialect of Saxony, was undoubtedly one cause of making that dialect the written language of the Germans. It is perhaps worthy of remark, that, in the German, as in the English language, the Bible, as it was translated by Luther, is still relied on as good grammatical authority. It may also be worthy of remark, that the written German resembles the Italian language in being nowhere spoken with purity by the mass of the people; though it differs from it in this, that all well-educated people speak it, and, from the rapid extension of book-learning in Germany, it is becoming the spoken language of the whole population. It may be doubted if the written Italian may not be regarded, in some measure, as a dead language, whose treasures we may possess, but which, till that unhappy country shall be rescued from its political and religious degradation, will never be a generally spoken language.

CHAPTER XI.
literature.↩

Drama.—Works of Messrs Oehlenschläger and Grillparzer; of Mr Müllner.—Guilt, a tragedy; King Yngurd, a tragedy; possess the characteristics of German literature.—Historical literature of Germany.—General characteristics of its fine literature.—Its faults and beauties.

Perhaps nothing astonishes a Frenchman, who sees his beloved Racine and Corneille honoured for ages, or an Englishman, who only follows the opinions of his forefathers, in professing an unbounded reverence for the single name of Shakespeare, more than the rapidity with which dramatic authors rise to celebrity in Germany, and then sink into forgetfulness. Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, were honoured in their day, but their dramatic works seem now to be rarely performed. Since they were at the height of their fame, Werner and Körner have glanced on the horizon of literature the meteors of a moment, and are now succeeded by Grillparzer, Oehlenschläger, and Müllner, who shine at present the very suns of dramatic literature. [II-347] Of Mr Oehlenschläger’s works I know nothing; I saw none of them represented, but heard them much praised. They are said to be constructed on the melo-dramatic principle of horror. He is himself a Dane, and writes in both the German and Danish languages.

Mr Grillparzer is the author of a very tame tragedy, which bears the name of Sappho; but his fame principally rests on a sort of melo-drama, called the Ahn Frau,—Grandmother. The hero of this, who is the chief of a band of robbers, commits incest, murders his father, and burns the mansion of his ancestors. All these pretty amusing horrors were told in a short jumping measure, and they gave such delight to the Germans, that they were represented to more crowded houses, in 1817, 1818, than were ever collected to see the works of Schiller. The inhabitants of Vienna were quite captivated with the beauty of the verse and the elegance of the sentiments. The young people learned them by heart; and as they met in society, as they sauntered in the Prater, and on the public walks, they spouted to one another the well-sounding mouthfuls of sentimental horror. The decorations were good, the palace burned very splendidly and pleasingly, and the vulgar of all countries apply those commendations which belong to the pleasures of sense to the sentiments of the mind. Mr Grillparzer was indebted for much of his good fortune [II-348] to the machinist. The success, however, of such a piece, and the popularity of its rumbling poetry, was an evidence of a worse taste among the middling classes of people, in the south of Germany, than I was disposed to ascribe to them.

The two tragedies of Mr Adolphus Müllner, which were most popular, and which occupied most of the attention of the theatrical public, were called Die Schuld (Guilt) and König (King) Yngurd. They are very superior to the Ahn Frau. As it is probable they are not known to the English reader, and as they were very popular, the Schuld having been performed at some theatres for more than thirty following nights, and having gone through several editions, I shall give a more particular account of them. Mr Müllner, the author, lives at Weissenfels, which formerly belonged to Saxony, but is at present under the government of Prussia.

Guilt derives its name from the conduct of Count Hugo, of whose whole life it must be considered as a transcript, though only the last day of it is put into action. The time occupied by the whole does not exceed thirty hours, and in this space the author has contrived, with great art, to give the whole life of his hero. His parents are Spaniards. Before he was born his mother refuses alms to a gypsey woman. The gypsey is displeased, and prophesies to the lady, that she shall bring forth her child with great pain; that, if a boy, he [II-349] shall murder his elder brother, and, if a girl, the elder brother shall murder her. The first part of the prophecy is fulfilled,—Hugo is brought into the world after painful labour; and the mother endeavours to avoid the fulfilment of the latter part of it, by giving him to a noble Scandinavian lady. She carries Hugo to the north, presents him to her husband as his son, but afterwards tells him the secret; and, as he has no other male issue, he procures for Hugo the investiture of his family estates. Hugo grows up to be a handsome hero, a Mars and an Adonis. He leads armies to victory, and, “as the females weave him a myrtle crown, their young bosoms heave with the sighs of love.” Even his supposed sister warms with the holy fire of sister’s love, but which she feels to be impure when she discovers that he is not her brother. He is described,

Aufgewachsen hoch im Norden,
G’rad und stolz wie unfre Tannen,
(Obwohl anderwärts geboren)
Schien er früh schon auserkohren
Zu der Zierde nord’scher Mannen.
Offen, wie des Himmels Blau,
Lag in seinem Aug’ die Seele
Fremdem Auge da zur Schau,
Freundlich, fest und ohne Fehle.
Männer priesen laut den Krieger,
Stark, zu halten einen Thron;
Jungfrau’n, ihm die Myrthenkron [II-350]
Flechtend im verschwiegnen Busen,
Seufzten heimlich nach dem Sieger. [61]

His supposed father dies, and deprives him of his peace by telling him the secret of his birth. The impulse of nature then drives him from Norway to Spain.

Weg von hier, wo niemand mir verwandt,
Zog das Band
Der allmächtigen Natur
Mich zum Land
Goldner Flur,
Das in Dunklen, früh empfangnen Bildern,
Winkend durch den Nebeltag,
Vor mir lag,
Wie die Vorwelt auf der Ahnen Schildern. [62]

Instead of finding his parents, he forms a friendship with a Spanish nobleman, (Don Carlos,) saves his life at a bull-fight, but falls in love with his [II-351] wife, who, having been early betrothed, has no love for her husband, and returns the passion of Hugo. The jealousy of the husband is excited; Hugo fears his revenge, and, to save himself and gain the lady, he murders her husband. He marries her, and returns with her to the north. Here the scene of the action is laid, and the drama opens on the anniversary of the murder, by displaying Elvira (the wife) alone in a large hall, and having just ended playing on the harp. The last tones die away as she speaks. The opening sentence is perhaps one of the best in the whole poem:—

Wie der letzte Laut verklinget,
Der sich unter leiser Hand
Aus der Harfe Saiten schwinget;
Wie’s auf klarem Teichkristalle
Sich von eines Tropfen Falle
Weiter stets und schwächer ringet,
Bis es fern am Blumenstrand
Still verschwand:
So auch möcht’ ich einst verschweben
Und verklingen in das bessre Leben!
Wird mich, fern vom Vaterland,
In der Stürme rauher Wiege,
Wo ich angefesselt liege
Von der Liebe starkem Band—
Wird mich einst des Schicksals Hand
Sanft empor zur Heimath heben? [63]

[II-352]

When this is ended, a harp-string breaks with some noise, and the instrument falls “threatening to the earth.” For even instruments can be made, by skilful authors, to perform a part. This is looked on by Elvira as a sort of answer to the complaints she has just made. Guilt is full of fears. Hugo is at the moment hunting, and she is alarmed for his life, and immediately, though wrongly, concludes, as the usual time of his return is past, that some accident has happened to him.

A curious concatenation of events leads Valeros, the father of the murdered Carlos, to visit Hugo, and to arrive at this time in search of the murderer of his son. He had been in America, and only first suspects that Carlos was murdered on seeing the corpse at his return, when the conviction “flashes on him like the rising of the meteor of the north.” He seeks the murderer with a mingled desire to be revenged on him and to weep on his bosom. Without knowing that Hugo is his son, and without knowing that this son is the murderer of his brother, he feels from

“The secret impulse of nature.”

[II-353]

he knows not what of suspicion, anger, and love. After the arrival of Valeros circumstances lead to an explanation. He discovers that Hugo is his son, and Hugo, at the same time, learns that Carlos was his brother. After talking of dying on the scaffold, after a duel has almost taken place between the son and the father, and after sundry long speeches and plans of the amiable active Jerta, (the daughter of the house which had adopted Hugo,) he and Elvira kill themselves. They exemplify, by their death, the effects of Guilt. All these murders are sometimes called by German critics the necessary rounding of the piece,— “die nöthige Rundung.” The only action, therefore, of this drama, except secondary and unimportant parts, is the arrival of Valeros, the explanation, and the murder at the end. All the rest is narration.

It can scarcely be denied that the whole fable is simple and plain; but these are all its merits. An absurd fatality reigns throughout, that, compelling the agents to be guilty, makes us pity, not condemn, the murderer.

Thun? Der Mensch thut nichts. Es waltet
Ueber ihm verborgner Rath,
Und er muss, wie dieser schaltet.
Thun? Das nennst du eine That?
Oh, ich bitt’ dich, lass das ruhn!
Alles, alles hängt zuletzt [II-354]
Am Real, den meine Mutter
iner Bettlerin verweigert! [64]

The chief incident which is the foundation of all the errors and crimes which are afterwards committed, is evidently an imitation of the prophecy to Macbeth. It is, however, a bad imitation. The prophecy to Macbeth works only on his own passions. It lives in his own knowledge, and moulds his own heart to the evil deeds which he commits. The prediction of the gipsy might naturally have so worked on the fears of the mother as to induce her to part with her child. But Hugo knew nothing of it, and when he was disposed of, all its influence ought to have ceased. It did not exist in his heart, and could have no power over his passions. The author, however, has perfectly fulfilled it, and, by so doing, he has, as far as lay in his power, absurdly lent the authority of reason to the errors of superstition. He makes Hugo, by nature, a hero, and, to fulfil the saying of a gipsy, he degrades him to be the mean assassin of his friend. This hero is also made to faint like a child. He lightens his bosom by confessing his [II-355] guilt, and yet he murders himself. He himself says, “The fire is burnt out, and the house stands in peace.” He may hope for pardon,—he might be contented to live, for the author has already degraded him to be a sentimental driveller; but that would not have answered the purposes of tragedy. He is a high-spirited nobleman, and he is made to talk of seeking peace on the scaffold, which he describes also, in his agony, very poetically. In short, we seek in vain for any thing very natural either in the action or sentiment of this piece; and such a production could only have acquired popularity among a people who were as yet ill qualified to judge of its merits. The approbation bestowed on it came from that same half-in-formed sentimental part of the pleasure-seeking population, all whose feelings are factitious, and who gave so much applause to the author of the Ahn Frau.

The work is written, however, with great fluency and ease. The opening passage, which has already been given, breathes something like the tender melancholy of poetry, and the fears of Elvira, which make her see signs of death in every thing, is also poetical.

Horch, der Wind erwacht am Strand,
Und die Nordsee donnert ferne.
Ausgelöscht sind alle Sterne,
Und vom finstern Himmelsbogen [II-356]
Kommt der Schnee im Sturm geflogen.
Wirbelnd, wie der Wüste Sand,
Stäubt er wieder auf vom Boden,
Und, wie Erde birgt die Todten,
Deckt er das erstarrte Land,
Aufgethürmt zu Grabeshügeln.— [65]

The boy Otto, the son of Elvira, is sketched with all the softness and gentleness which belong to German boys, and both he and the steady Jerta serve as admirable foils to the guilty Hugo and Elvira. Hugo himself appears to be an example of the fact, that the Germans are in general inadequate to conceive any character consistently great. He is a murderer, but a soft, and a subdued, and almost a whining murderer, in whom the agony of guilt amounts to lassitude of body, folding of hands, fainting, and, at length, death.

The work contains some other tolerable good passages. Valeros describes the ship leaving a port,

Günstig linde Lüfte dehnten
Weit des Schiffes Flügel aus,
Und das leicht bewegte Haus [II-357]
Trug die Pilger, die sich sehnten
Nach der Heimath, fröhlich fort. [66]

Hugo describes his friendship with Carlos as like two streams that become a deep water by uniting.

Wie zwei Ströme sich begegnen.
Einzeln schlängeln sich die Brüder,
Kaum den Kalm zu tragen mächtig,
Schüchtern durch der Berge Lücken;
Doch vereinigt rauschen sie,
Reicher jeder durch den andern,
Hochgeehrt durch’s offne Land,
Und mit schwerer Schiffe Last
Spielen leicht die stolzen Wogen. [67]

There is, however, in the work much commonplace, and many truly low and vulgar phrases and sentiments. Jerta compares Elvira to a corpse with open eyes. (p. 46.) Elvira describes her husband as a ravenous beast, and Hugo her as a revengeful fury. (p. 68.) Many passages are written [II-358] only for the sake of the miserable sound. At pages 21, 52, 75, the reader may see specimens of this failure.

I had the pleasure of seeing this tragedy performed, and, notwithstanding its horrors, I felt more wearied than amused. Unfortunately, it derived little embellishment from the performance. The theatre of Hannover is notoriously one of the worst provided with performers of all the theatres of Germany, and on this occasion the whole strength of the company was not put forth.

King Yngurd, though it deserves more praise than Guilt, was less popular. It has the advantage of being in five acts, and it required two nights to perform it; while Guilt is comprised in four, and could be performed in one night. Theatrical amusements are cheaper in Germany than in England, and a proportionably larger part of the population participate in them. On this point the Germans are fast following the steps of the French and Italians. The theatre is a part of the fine arts, and is become to the inhabitants of towns a necessary amusement. Most of the cities have theatres, and there is not a single sovereign of Germany on whose civil list the theatre does not appear as a considerable expence. It was at first a sort of plaything, a doll, for grown-up babies at courts; and, by dint of their patronage and bolstering up, it has now come to be considered as belonging to [II-359] the pursuits and taste of the nation. And at present the Germans encourage the drama as much as any people of Europe.

King Yngurd is entirely the production of the author’s imagination. He tells his reader “not to seek in books of history for the source of his song,” but affirms, “that, in composing it, he has sought after that truth which never was and yet always is.” He means, I believe, to give to his fictitious characters such emblems of our nature, that they may be taken as models, not of individuals, but of the whole species. The characters are not to be found either in history or in nature, though it is possible Buonaparte may have suggested Yngurd.

The era of the fable is 900 or 1000 years before the birth of Christ, and the scene is laid in the south of Norway. Of this country at that period we have no knowledge, and therefore the author was perfectly at liberty to give his dramatis personœ any characteristics he pleased. All that readers or critics can require is, that they should be consistently kept up throughout, and be consistent with one another. The critic can only judge of those works of the imagination which are purely imaginary, and have no real types, as the author directs him. He has no other guide but the work itself.

Yngurd is the son of peasants; he raises himself by his valour to command the armies of Norway. He marries Irma, the daughter of the king,—and, [II-360] with the approbation of the States, he succeeds him on the throne. The king leaves a wife, named Brunhilde, behind him, who, after his death, gives birth to Oscar. Irma spreads a report that Oscar is illegitimate, and he is excluded from the throne. His mother retires with him to the court of her brother Alf, king of Denmark. When Oscar is sixteen years old, his uncle invades Norway to place him on the throne. This is the period when the action commences. He is aided by a party who dislike the origin and severity of Yngurd. “He wants an ounce of royal blood,” and he is always engaged in war, as necessary to support his power.

———Er will den Sieg,
Er braucht den Ruhm, weil’s ihm am Rechte fehlt:
Denn etwas will das Volk, woran sich’s hält. [68]

Through the defection of this party, Yngurd is on the point of losing a battle; and he who had been till then a hero, full of noble and eminent virtues, blinded by anxiety and ambition to maintain the crown, formally asks the aid of the devil.

Weg, Weiber!—Oeffne dich, der Erde Mark,
Und lass mich schauen in der Hölle Glut!
Herauf, ihr Geister, die ihr Böses thut [II-361]
Zum Zeitvertreib—den Bergmann in dem Schacht
Am Rand des Abgrunds blind und schwindlich macht,
Dass sein Gebein auf ehr’nem Grund zerschelle—
Herauf! Eu’r Handwerk treibt an Tageshelle, Bethört der Dänen
Siegestrunkne Haufen, ass sie einander in die Schwerter laufen!

Herauf, du Satan! Was Brunhild’ auch bot
Für deinen Dienst, ich will sie überbieten.
Was kann das Weib dir seyn? Mit meinem Tod
Stirbt ihre Wuth, und sie wird wieder fromm.
Ich bin ein Mann, zu meinem Beistand komm,
Und wie mich Gott verlassen in der Noth,
Dass mich die Knechte knechtisch feig verriethen,
Will ich dir treu seyn über’s Grab hinaus!

Ist es die Wollust, Satan, die dich kirrt;
So komm fortan zu Anslo’s Festgelagen!
Willst du dem Unrecht einen Tempel miethen;
Zieh’ ein damit (die Hand auf der Brust) in diess gewölbte Haus!
Ich bin ein König, der gefürchtet wird,
Ein Wink von mir, und Norwegs Richter zagen,
Und Unschuld wird vom Henkerbeil erschlagen.
Lockt dich des Krieges Sündenreiche Noth,
Die Raub und Mord fell macht um täglich Brot;
Ich kann sie über eine Welt verhängen,
Von ihrem Boden Städt’ und Dörfer sengen,
Wie Haar vom Haupt—und muss ich endlich sterben;
So weckt mein Name, von der Jahre Lauf
Schneerein gewaschen, neue Helden auf,
Und stürst die späte Nachwelt in’s Verderben.

D’rum, Satan, brich dem tollen Weib den Kauf, Und lass dich für den Dienst des Yngurd werben! [69]

[II-362]

Assistance is immediately granted him; he wins the battle; and Oscar falls into his hands. Oscar, from being a dreaming sort of enthusiastic child,

Der weich und weiss, wie das Gewand der Schwäne,
Sich kindlich schmieget an des landes Brust,
———Welcher unbewusst
In’s Herz sich schleicht, gleich einer Kindesthräne, [70]

[II-363]

is converted, by his love to Asla, the daughter of Yngurd, to a hero. He claims his rights before the assembled nobility in a manner that alarms Yngurd, who is now given to the powers of darkness. Evil predominates in his mind over good, and he orders his favourite attendant to murder Oscar. Macduff, a Scotchman, has not courage enough to perform it, but shuts Oscar up in a retired part of the castle, from whence he attempts to escape, and is dashed to pieces on the rocks. Asla jumps after him, and is also killed; and her mother dies with fear and grief. Oscar’s death is attributed to Yngurd. The rebel party gathers strength, and attacks him. He disperses them with his “lion’s voice,” kills their leader, but falls himself by the spear of some obscure warrior. As he dies, he presents the crown of Norway to Alf, who thus unites it with the crown of Denmark. Brunhilde had before gone mad from the effects of heating herself in battle, and from dreaming Oscar was murdered. In the course of the play, therefore, there are only five persons who die, or who are killed, and one goes mad.

This is tragic enough. It is enough to justify classing Yngurd with the other monstrous productions of the German theatre. There are other apparent [II-364] faults in the piece. Asla is rather a lovely and a novel character—an enthusiastic, gentle, and dreaming maiden, warmly attached to her mother and her home till her sixteenth year, when she dreams—

Ein junger Ritter, glänzend wie der Tag,
Zog her von Osten mit bewehrten Schaaren.
Er zog vorüber, und mein Blick ihm nach,
Ihm nach der Wunsch: Entrinne den Gefahren!

Ein andres Heer von stahlbedeckten Leuten
Zog her von Westen, dunkel wie die Nacht,
Und fing sich an im Blachfeld auszubreiten,
Und sich zu ordnen, wie zur blut’gen Schlacht.

Vernichte sie! rief ich empor zum blauen
Gewölb’ des Tags: Gieb Sieg des Ritters Speer!—
Da trieb mich’s achtsam wieder hinzuschauen,
Und ich erkannte—König Yngurds Heer.

Und ich erkannt’ auf Schaumbedecktem Pferde
Des Vaters Federstraus und Helm und Schild,
Und wirbelnd hob der Staub sich von der Erde,
Und Schlachtgewühl bedeckte das Gefild.

Da war’s, als fasst’ es mich mit rauhen Händen,
Und wollte theilen die beklommne Brust;
Doch immer nach dem Ritter sich zu wenden,
Zwang meinen Blick ein schauerlich Gelust.

Und siegreich sah ich seine Fahnen wallen,
Und freudig rasch flog mir das Blut durch’s Herz:
Des Königs Banner sah ich niederfallen,
Der Normann floh—ich fühlte keinen Schmerz.

Doch plötzlich stand die Flucht. Ich hört’ ein Fluchen
Von Yngurds Stimme; sah ihn Löwengleich
Sich wenden, und den zarten Ritter suchen,
Und meine Wangen fühlt’ ich kalt und bleich.

[II-365]

Der steile Fels, von dessen Spitz’ ich schaute—
Als sollt’ ich nicht erblicken, was geschäh—
Wuchs in die Wolken, dass mir schwindelnd graute:
Doch nieder zog mich’s aus der stillen Höh.

Und tiefer stets, halb fallend halb getragen,
Sank ich herab.—Oed’ war das Kampfgefild
Der Ritter lag—der Ritter lag erschlagen,
Zerschmettert! und weit von ihm lag sein Schild.

Und seitwärts sah ich, nach des Waldes Nächten,
Den König fliehn, sein Haar des Sturmes Spiel.
Das meine riss ich wild aus seinen Flechten,
Und rauft es mir, und stürzt’ auf den, der fiel—

Und fluchte dem, der floh vom blut’gen Werke—
Ich wusst’ es wohl, dass es mein Vater war—
Und dennoch—

IRMA (in hochster innerer Bewegnug.)
Oh,hör auf! des Mannes Starke
Hält das nicht aus. [71]

[II-366]

And this dream gives her the power to curse and hate both her father and mother, and to tell them “she could leave them in death.” She says to her mother—

———Ich kann’s nicht mehr gewähren;
Was dich bestürzt, lockt mich, wie süsse Spiele. [72]

This is most perverse, unnatural, and immoral. The language in which all this is told is beautiful, [II-367] but the whole sentiment could only have been conceived and put into words by a person who had always lived out of the reach of good example and sound remark. There are some other faults which are the result of dreaming; for it is only the dreams which the muses bring before the mind that are fit for poetry. Irma, Oscar, Brunhilde, Asla, all dream or prophesy through the piece. It is a fault, also, to make Yngurd fall at once from his high place and thoughts to despicable and deadly fears and deeds. It is only accounted for by the influence of Satan. Poor human nature, tortured by all its evil passions, is not bad enough for the purposes of the poet, and he gives it the devil as a helpmate. Yngurd’s character is throughout noble and well sustained till the sudden fall.

———Er ist des Himmels Flamme,
Wer mit ihm focht, der kennt die Furcht nicht mehr.
Sein ist das Reich, er ist geborner Herr,
Entsprang er gleich nicht königlichem Stamme. [73]

He surprises his nobility, and gains them by a very noble address.—(p. 42.) In like manner, he trusts himself in the camp of his enemy, and behaves equally well. “The peasant trusts when a prince promises.” He is described as such [II-368] by Oscar, and he makes a long prayer; but the moment before that battle begins, in which he implores assistance from the evil powers. “King of kings,” he says, “ruler of the world, thy name is peace. War is the seed of hell. It is thy holy and perfect will that the guilty fall; therefore, in battle, I have never prayed for victory. What is right fulfil; but still the beating of the blood, father of courage. The will of princes is hard like metal; like gold, mixed with dross. There is an eternal war betwixt the heart and the head. Melt the ore here. (Laying his hand on his breast.) Make the soul loose from its bonds. Destroy necessity, that I may be free to choose.”

Yet the author, soon after, fouls the mind of such a man, so noble, so daring, so pious, too, with the crime of murder. With this exception, Yngurd seems one of the most manly of the pure poetical creations of the whole German drama.

This play is, by no means, without gentle sentiments and feelings, some specimens of which I shall add. They principally describe the character of Oscar and Asla.—Oscar says,

———Mich zogen diese Küsten
Mit unsichtbaren, sanften Banden an.
Wie Kinder träumen an der Mutter Brüsten,
Träumt’ ich non Norweg, seit ich denken kann.—

Wie anders find’ ich’s! Mit verworrnem Sinn
Betret’ ich der ersehnten Heimath Boden, [II-369]
Und kann der Ahndung nimmer mich entschlagen;
Dass ich in Norweg nicht willkommen bin.
———Ich sah das Leben
So ungeheu’r im Preisse steigen, und so tief
Im Werthe fallen, dass dem Tod ich rief,
In seinen armen Freistatt mir zu geben.
Ich sah zerreissen aller Ordnung Bande,
Das Mitleid sterben in der Brust; zu Bären
Die Menschen werden um ein schmales Bret,
Und Söhne Vätern Kahn und Balken wehren.

Mir ist nicht wohl mehr, wo ein Athem weht
Von Menschenlipp’, und Mensch seyn, dünkt mich Schande.
———Das Leben meiner Seele,
Das inn’re Leben, zebrt mein Leben auf.
Nach aussen strebt in eurer Thatenwelt—
Nach aussen stets das gierige Beginnen;
Was mir an Kraft ward, wendet sich nach innen,
Und unter Scalden nur bin ich ein Held.
In einem Reich von Bildern und von Tönen
Ringt Geist und Herz dem Grossen nach, und Schönen,
Und meine Thaten find—Gesang und Thränen.
Traut dem Gefühl; das mir im Busen schleicht:
Die schwache Pflanz’ aus spät gesä’tem Kern
Bringt nimmer Frucht auf diesem niedern Stern. Wenn sie erschöpft sich hat in bunter Blüte,
Wenn ihre Kraft in Farben still verglühte,
Senkt sie das Haupt—vielleicht von selbst—vielleicht
Von rauher Hand, vom Hauch des Nords berühret.

D’rum bitt’ ich euch, lasst alles, wie zuvor!
Bin ich ein König für das Volk des Nor,
Das mühsam Yngurds Löwenkraft regieret?
Wollt ihr den Riesen tödten, und ein Kind
In seine ungeheure Rüstung stecken?
Auf hohem Berg die Ceder niederstrecken, [II-370]
Die kaum das Haupt beugt im Gewitterwind,
Und eine Lilie pflanzen an die Stelle?
Du, Mutter, hassest Yngurd. [74]

[II-371]

I dare not venture to quote any more. In its diction, in the vigour of the conceptions, and in the spirit of its characters—in its weaknesses, its sentimentality, and in what the Germans so expressively call “Schwärmery” —in the softness and gentleness of many of its expressions—yes, even in its length and in the vulgar horror of some of its phrases, such as “the mouth of death wide open stood as if he hungered”—Yngurd is a good specimen of the present dramatic literature of our neighbours. Mr Müllner, its author, may be estimated as one of the most rising poets of Germany.

It is by no means consistent with the title of this work to discuss the merits or demerits of German literature. To do that properly would require me to read much more than I have read, and would probably also demand a work at least half as large as the whole of this. But I may be permitted to remark, that German literature has been unjustly condemned in the gross from some few examples of such pieces as those I have already mentioned, and from all the different kinds of literature having been confounded together. At the same time, the lovers of novelty have despised the laws of taste; [II-372] and have praised this literature more than it deserved.

All literature may be divided into two parts, each of which, from having qualities different from the other, deserves to be separately considered. These are the literature of facts, and the literature of imagination. To the first belong such writings as philosophical, political, biographical, moral, and historical—to the other, dramas, novels, romances, &c. The former must be judged of by a standard different from the latter. It must strictly conform to truth; it must be an accurate and complete representation of facts. The other must conform to taste. The former reflects nature as a perfect mirror. The latter rather refracts and transmits her. It changes her correct and her lovely form, but it decks her with all the beauty of colours. Taste is entirely artificial, and is the result of cultivation; it depends on opinion, and varies in every country. The literature of imagination, therefore, of each nation, which must conform to its taste, is different from that of every other nation; while their literatures of facts, though they have still some national differences, resemble one another. The works of Shakespeare and Racine have scarcely any resemblance, though they both bear the name of dramas; and the works of each are vastly admired by the nation in whose language they are written. The historical works of Voltaire and Hume, the [II-373] philosophical writings of Locke and Condillac, of Degerando and Mr Stewart, are all so much of the same family, that there is little other difference between them than the language.

When nations readily and freely communicate with each other, their respective literatures of facts may be so much more readily imitated than their literatures of imagination; and what is excellent in the former is so much easier seen, and so much more certain, than what is excellent in the latter, that the former will always resemble one another much more than the latter. The historical and philosophical literature of the Germans resembles the same species of literature of the other enlightened countries of Europe. Since the year 1770, the Germans have adopted, imitated, and improved the manner of writing history, which was introduced about that period; and their historical literature now equals, and perhaps surpasses, in extent, in accuracy of research, and profundity of thought, that of any other people of Europe. In one point it is superior. The extensive knowledge and the industry of the Germans allows them, in general, to acquire so great a mastery of the subject they treat, that they arrange it in a most accurate, minute, and comprehensive manner. Vivacity and profundity may be occasionally missed, but a misplaced remark is never made. The separate histories of the church, of philosophy, of languages, and of the [II-374] arts, which are written in the German language, are considered to be unequalled for depth of research, and accuracy of arrangement. It is no exaggeration to say, that the historical literature of the Germans equals the historical literature of any other people.

Schlozer and Spittler may be considered as the fathers of German historical literature; and Herren, Luden, and Rotteck, are amongst the youngest and the worthiest of their sons. The two former were professors at Göttingen: Herren has been mentioned. Luden is professor of history at Jena, and Rotteck at Freyburg in Baden. From one of the works of Spittler I have had frequent occasion to quote; and he is also the author of a History of the Christian Church, and a History of Wirtemberg, both of which are very highly praised. He was a native of this latter country, but he lived, and wrote, and taught at Göttingen till he was called back to Wirtemberg to fill the office of a minister of state.

At Göttingen he seems to have been the idol of his friends, who still speak of him with the greatest enthusiasm. His writings have the defect of being sometimes obscure from a laboured and artificial construction of his periods, and from his hinting at events rather than narrating them. But the manner in which he traces causes and effects, and philosophises in his history, is deserving admiration. [II-375] He spares no species of injustice, and he marked more accurately than any preceding German historian the effects of lawless power. He has one fault that is seldom found in German authors—a want of minuteness, or he writes so well that you feel disappointed he has left any thing unsaid it was possible for him to say. As an historian he is much superior to Schiller. The histories of the thirty years’ war, and of the separation of the Netherlands from Spain, will always rank the latter among the historians of his country, and as one of the greatest improvers of its language and literature. But these two compositions must rather be considered as splendid descriptions of some leading characters and events, than as regular histories of these two remarkable periods.

I might here give a short passage from a universal history by Mr Rotteck, the latest writer I am acquainted with, to shew the spirit of the present historical literature of the Germans; but, as it is opposed to some favourite religious opinions, and as I do not know exactly the limits of our libel laws, I must abstain from doing it. It is highly remarkable, as a specimen of the doctrines which are both generally believed and taught in Germany; and as a proof that freedom of discussion on matters of religion is carried further there than in our country. The work in which it is to be found was employed by the author in his lectures, and it [II-376] is intended by him for the instruction of young men, and the amusement of those more advanced in life. When such passages are found in historical books, they are strong evidence of the general taste. If they were put into the hands of young men in England, they would excite some disturbance. The author would probably be called an enemy of religion, and would be clamorously assailed. He has, however, been promoted by his sovereign to a higher professorship since he published this work. He is not to be considered as a regular combatant on the subject of religion, but as merely expounding opinions which are generally received. If such sentiments as are to be found in this book appeared in our country, in a work expressly written to oppose the claims of the Jews to the honour of a particular inspiration, it would be thought we were making a progress in rational knowledge. But if they were found in our school-books, and if they were taught in our universities, without occasioning persecution, we should be set down as totally emancipated from the intolerant dominion and principles of Jewish priests.

Of the philosophical literature of the Germans something has been already said. Apparently because it is less interesting to mankind, this species of literature has been far less improved by the Germans than their historical literature, and it yet retains many scholastic distinctions and incongruities. [II-377] Its chief characteristics, so far as I am acquainted with it, are, a multitude of words, a great many artificial distinctions, and a great want of accurate thought. It is the worst part of the German literature of facts. The chief principles which the German philosophers have followed, namely, that philosophy has nothing to do with facts, and is above them; that it consists in what they are pleased to call pure reason, is the great cause why their philosophy is in general little more than words grammatically arranged. Their whole philosophy signifies and explains nothing. It is obvious that the political literature of any people, if both the form and the matter of it be not borrowed from some other people, will take its colour from their political education. It is equally obvious, from the situation of their country, that the political education of the Germans has hitherto been very bad; and, consequently, their political writings, except treatises on political economy, the matter of which they have borrowed from others, are in general shallow, metaphysical, and theoretical. The interest, however, which the subject excites, stimulates so many powerful minds to inquire into it, that the political literature of Germany is more rapidly improving than any other. In fact, the attention of most of the powerful minds in the whole country is now ardently and devotedly given to political literature, and we may expect greater [II-378] advances to be made in it than in any other branch of literature.

The great faults of the German literature of imagination seem to be a great want of sublimity, and a burlesque, overstrained, and rather horrible imitation of this quality. There is a perpetual effort, on the part of their authors, to sustain the characters of their pieces at a pitch beyond nature. Suffering is made horrible. Their heroes are merely men who despise the common rules of life. They are more outrageous and extraordinary than sublime,—more extravagant than virtuous or vicious. Such is Charles Moore, Don Carlos, and Marquis Posa. It seems as if the authors had thought all the usual sources of pleasure were exhausted, and that they must seek novelty, though at the expence of consistency and truth. They began to write when other nations had long written, and, as other authors had carefully avoided absurdity, it remained to be adopted as a novelty. Their works, which contain any sublimity, such as The Robbers, Cabal and Love, and the Don Carlos of Schiller, seem also to abound in an overstrained semblance. Faust, and Gotz of Berlichingen, Wallenstein, and Maria Stuart, ought to be exempted from this censure. The first is coolly and calmly devilish throughout. Gotz is an accurate picture of the manners of former times, and is true to nature. Faust derives its great merit from [II-379] a similar cause. It is an old woman’s tale, all the circumstances of which are carefully preserved and put into elegant language. The great merit of the heaven-born genius is, that he perpetuates the errors of the nursery. It is less an imitation of nature than an imitation of some superstitions of which we have all heard, and in which most of us have been taught to believe.

The literature of imagination may refract, but ought not to distort nature. It must present to us some familiar features, or we regard its works as monsters. The German muse has given birth to more “mooncalves and sooterkins than any of the sisterhood.” Many of the writings of the Germans want rationality and good sense. How absurd is it in Goethe to give Faust the power of a devil to seduce a naturally weak woman. It is arming a giant with thunder to conquer a defenceless dwarf; it is like bringing artillery against a town which is ready to open its gates to a single soldier. In the same manner he has worked up a combination of events which is almost miraculous, to attach a wandering player ( Withelm Meister ) to a nobleman, Lothario; as if he had not given the poor being, from his creation, a sufficient stock of vanity to make a nod from such a man as a nobleman the very summit of his ambition. The charming absurdities, as they may be called, of his Egmont are still greater; and yet Goethe is [II-380] thought by the Germans to be the very prince of observers of human nature. Many of them describe him as having pryed into all the secrets of the human heart, particularly of the female heart; and to be so well acquainted with it as if the hearts of all mankind had been concocted into one, and given to him for inspection. He is in general, particularly in the south of Germany, much more praised and admired than Schiller.

It has been already remarked, that German philosophers consider philosophy as above facts; the poets have adopted a similar principle with regard to poetry, but they have carried it to a more extravagant length. Their constant object is to describe what they call the ideal— Ideale; —they disdain matter of fact, and they run into absurdity from forsaking that nature which is the only sure guide. The ideal of every individual differs from the ideal of every other, but we call that true and beautiful which conforms to that ideal which is common to the greatest number of persons; and an individual who will follow his own notion of ideal beauty, without regard to the notions of other people, must often necessarily be thought by them to be absurd. This is the case with German authors. Criticism has now somewhat corrected them; but they have hitherto sought in the clouds of their own imagination for a true representation of the earth. They have found there all sorts of strange forms, and [II-381] they have spoken of them as having an actual existence.

German literature is also very prolix. Authors think they have never said enough, while they can say any thing more. Nothing is ever hinted and left to the imagination of the reader. Every idea which they can discover in their dissections of the mind is laid as bare as “the anatomist scrapes a bone when he means to demonstrate its parts to his pupils.” This is a tedious more than a glaring fault. Nearly every page of German writing partakes more or less of it. It abounds in their philosophy, their novels, their poetry, and is also visible in their historical writings. The complexity of their sentences may in a great measure be ascribed to their wish to leave nothing unsaid. Every period is lengthened by numerous qualifications and additional remarks, that are not of sufficient importance to form a period of themselves. Perhaps, however, prolixity is a fault which every person finds in a foreign literature. Strangers want so many of the associations which make up the entire charm of trifles, that they can rarely think those minutiæ are of any value which to natives are neither uninteresting nor tedious. The task of reading any work is so different to a stranger and a native, and it is so great a labour to the former, that he necessarily wishes every useless word might be spared.

[II-382]

There are many beauties consistent with these prominent faults, though it is possible my notion of these may not accord with that entertained by many other people. When the Germans will be content with the lowly ambition of copying or of imitating nature, they seem to do it more correctly and more minutely, and perhaps more spiritedly, than any other people. I conceive the little poem by Schiller called Die Glöcke, and the Herrman and Dorothea by Goethe, to be striking examples of this beauty. The latter is a most faithful picture of manners, of the soft, kind, and quiet dispositions, which distinguish the Germans. And the former, though a more spirited poem, gives an equally faithful transcript of many of their everyday thoughts and pursuits.

Another great beauty of the German literature of the imagination, and the only one I shall further add, is, that it contains as great a quantity of light, elegant, gentle, and pleasurable feeling, as any literature I know. Garlands and flowers, and children on the breast, and clear soft days, and gentle requited love, without any of the bitter ingredients of the passion, and the whirling dance, and the friendly greeting, and waggons loaded with corn, the earth smiling with fruits, and acts of kindness, and soft music, the light-blue heaven, and pearling tears, are the images or the passions which constitute the great beauty of German imaginative [II-383] literature. Werther and the Robbers, the pieces which have excited most attention out of Germany, seem to me to be rather the exceptions to the general character of this literature than to form it. They were probably as much admired for their singularity as from their according either with the character of the Germans or with the general spirit of their literature.

Most of the works of Wieland, all the smaller poems of Schiller, many of those of Goethe, most of the works of Bürger, the idylls of Gessner, the two tragedies of Müllner, and many other works, contain, or rather abound with evidence of a gentle train of pleasurable, contented, good-hearted feeling, which is more a chief characteristic of German poetry, than of any other with which I am acquainted. There seems to be nothing bounding in the joy, and nothing turbulent or boisterous in any of the native and true German literature. Every thing in the land, and in its writings, seems calm, and still, and kind. I may quote, as a more special recent example of this beauty, a little poem published at Leipsic in 1818, called Die Bezauberte Rose,—The Enchanted Rose.—It possesses no merit as a tale; the sentiments are often absurd, but it is full of gentle and quiet pictures of happiness. The author, Ernst Schulze, was a native of Celle, and, after having studied at Göttingen, died there, in 1817, at the age of [II-384] 29. He was too early called away for the honour of his country, for his own reputation, and for the good of his countrymen.

I have limited this characteristic to native and true German literature, because it is not so conspicuous in its drama; and, though this is written in the German language, it is so obviously an overstrained imitation of the drama of other nations, rather than a transcript of their own feelings, that it hardly deserves the name of a true native literature.

CHAPTER XII.
influence of the situation of the germans on their literature.↩

Influence of their historical situation; of their political situation; of not participating in the naval enterprises of Europe; of their education.—Their opinion as to authorship.—Of the recent date of their literature.—Share the inhabitants of Hannover take in the general literature.—Periodical publications.—Göttingsche gelehrte Anzeigen.—Freedom of the press in Hannover.

It has been already remarked, that the Germans have few ennobling historical recollections. They have been so divided into petty states, that they have never had a national existence. If they remember the prowess of their ancient knights, they feel it was the prowess of robbers, of which they are now ashamed. They have long fought more as mercenaries than for their country, and they therefore want all those glowing and ardent recollections which belong to men who have had a continued national and free existence. Proud historical recollections are some of the principal ingredients in [II-386] a national sublimity of character, and the want of them has had a pernicious influence on the national character, and, through that, on the literature of the Germans. Facts support this opinion. The present Saxons were more distinguished by the share they took in the Reformation than any other people of Germany. It was a victory and a triumph for them, and gave an impulse to their minds which has almost ever since made their country the classic ground of Germany. The victories of Frederic the Great did something of the same kind for Prussia. They gave the Prussians a feeling of superiority which has ever since remained. “The Prussian party,” says Goethe, speaking of these victories, “gained a treasure for their literature which the other party wanted, and which no trouble could afterwards gain for them.” Frederic first gave the Prussians a national existence and a national character. A feeling of superiority amongst individuals, and amongst nations, when not proceeding from sheer vanity, is a powerful ingredient in sublimity of character. This feeling was acquired by the Saxons at the period of the Reformation, and by the Prussians in the days of their great king. It has ever belonged in some measure to the inhabitants of the free towns, and has ever given them a greater name in the world, and greater talents, than are possessed by the rest of their countrymen. When Spain, France, [II-387] and England, had long been great united nations, the Germans remained in their ancient divided state. They lived under many petty tyrannical governments. This is, in fact, the great historical distinction between the Germans and the rest of the nations of Europe, and it has prevented them from attaining that eminence and that force of character to which, from their numbers, from their central situation, from the happy fertility of their country, and from their progress in civilization, they ought to rise.

To the want of ennobling historical recollections, and of a feeling of national importance, must be added the sad influence of a state of political servitude. Social regulations have always, in Germany, fixed the station of man in society, have left no opening for active talents, and have deprived individuals of those energies for wanting which the nation is conspicuous. Till the revival of their literature, which they themselves date from 1740, there was no means of rising to distinction or obtaining public honours. Their social regulations, their casts, guilds, and restrictions, have been fetters on their talents and genius so well as on their industry. The understanding and character of men are refined, strengthened, and corrected, by free, manly, and public discussion and competition. The Germans have never possessed these; [II-388] and their character has proportionately suffered in strength, vigour, and acuteness.

They have been excluded, by their situation, from all participation in those naval enterprises which, from the time of Columbus to our last polar expedition, have inspired young minds with much ardour, and have given a bolder character, a greatness, and a glory, to the nations who have achieved them. Their influence on national character may be known from their effects on the Portuguese, and Spaniards, and Dutchmen. For a long period the former were two of the most conspicuous nations of Europe; their naval discoveries and conquests brought them wealth and dignity, gave them pride and power, and saved them for many years from that utter degradation to which their miserable governments and superstitions have at length brought them. Naval expeditions have always been attended with dangers, distress, and sufferings, and the noble exertions of the individuals who have achieved them have spread a lustre, not only over themselves, but on all the people who bear the common name. The Germans have had no participation in those adventurous exploits which have thus ennobled some of the other nations of Europe, and have given to their poetry, particularly to the poetry of Britain, many new and beautiful incidents and images. No German could ever have conceived or executed any thing analogous [II-389] to the Shipwreck of Falconer or the Corsair of Byron. They have never “danced in triumph o’er the waters wide,” never felt

“The exulting sense, the pulse’s maddening play, That glads the wanderer on that trackless way;”

and the whole nation wants all those feelings which are connected with great and daring enterprise, and wants a great and daring character.

Scholastic education, with a taste for music, and other elegant accomplishments, have long been general in Germany; and, although they amuse and charm us, it will be readily conceded that they rather take from than give strength of mind to the persons who make them their chief pursuit. They weaken and dilute the passions by constantly occupying them all. Those persons whose whole existence is employed in learning sciences and languages, and who live in a society where there is a constant demand for all the pleasures which these accomplishments supply, can rarely possess those lordly passions which constitute what is called force of character. When the sciences and languages are regarded as mere objects of curiosity, no deep feelings can ever be connected with them. A love for freedom may serve as a sort of master-passion to bind a variety of knowledge into a beautiful whole; but the Germans have lived for ages without any such master-passion, [II-390] and their learning seems therefore to have been only a beautiful statue, which no ethereal fire has ever animated. I am far from supposing that the most extensive knowledge and education, which is not a monastic or a Spartan education, can ever impede the flow of the imagination, or render the literature of a people less beautiful. Such an education, if men have room to act, and are allowed to feel, will only add to the beauty of an imaginative literature. But if both feelings and actions are prescribed, an extensive education will invariably only teach them to value too highly the mechanical parts of science, such as classifying butterflies and weighing atoms. Such knowledge and pursuits as these may please adepts, but they have nothing to interest the mass of men, and those who are conversant with them are little likely to write what will please the world. The mightiest talents of Germany are employed in the trifles of science, or in the subtleties of laws, and such employments are well calculated to make acute and attentive observers of trifles, but not to make great and dignified men.

We learn from the life of Goethe, (Aus Meinem Leben,) that he learnt ancient and modern languages, dancing, fighting, music, riding, painting, engraving; in short, he studied almost every thing that had any relation either to science or art, or that could tend to make an accomplished man. [II-391] The same practice is common to most young men. The industry which I have described as distinguishing the students at the university, they carry into every part of their pursuits. They are in general anxious to acquire all sorts of knowledge, and seek, by every possible method, to become learned, or, in their favourite phrase, Ausgebildet. They have ausgebildete classes, ausgebildete men, and every young man who studies talks of his Ausbildung. This comprises a vast fund of accomplishments, which nothing but a youth void of every vivid and evil passion could enable them to acquire. They do acquire them, while they at the same time mix with the world, and, as far as my observations have extended, the individuals of the ausgebildete, or learned classes, appear to unite more accomplishments than most other Europeans.

These are to be considered as causes of some of the distinguishing characteristics both of the Germans and of their poetry. They are a calm, gentle, learned, and laborious people; but they are not a deep feeling and a noble people. Their morality is rather to enjoy than to suffer. Their religion teaches the same principle, and has nothing in it either austere or solemn. Imaginative literature derives the greater part of its value from describing natural, general, and strong feelings. An individual, and consequently a nation, who does not possess strong feelings, who is ignorant of them [II-392] and their effects, can never describe them accurately. He may versify very well, but he wants one of the excellencies of a poet. The French versify very well, but their poetry wants all those tempestuous flashes of the soul, that poignant grief, that penitence and bitterness of heart, which we conceive to be so essential to poetry. The knowledge and education of the Germans enables a vast number of them to make very pretty verses; but wanting natural sublimity of character, they rarely or never infuse it into their writings. Their efforts to be sublime appear to be one great cause of all those perversions of sentiment which have, within a few years, rather disgraced their literature. It is not, as I have heard, suggested that their imaginations are slow and not easily affected, that their authors have multiplied horrors, but because, having themselves no real sublimity of character, they have employed them as a means of producing a sublime effect.

One of the opinions of the Germans, which, indeed, they only share with many other people, is—that reality is not fit for poetry. Mr Müllner tells his readers this in an address prefixed to Yngurd: “Die Wirklichkeit taugt selten zum Gedicht.” It is only the dreams which the muses bring before the mind’s eye which are fit, in the opinion of the poet, for the purpose of amusing and instructing mankind. This has undoubtedly had a great influence [II-393] on the quantity of nonsense which has been written. Another opinion, which is nearly peculiar to them, is—that literature is a matter of trade; and they learn the art of book-making as other people learn to make shoes or hats. They are manufacturers of good articles rather than writers from feeling or sentiment, or a conviction that they have something important to communicate. I have known more than one young man who resolved to be a tragic author. Kant, as a boy, resolved to be Kant the professor and philosopher; and Schlegel studies criticism and fine writing, that he may be a critic. This is an admirable principle for improving in knowledge. “You may always write,” says Dr Johnson, “if you will but go doggedly to it.” Study may make critics philosophers and men of science. It may correct and reform genius; but too much of it tends to model men after pre-existing authors—to deprive genius of originality, and literature of warmth. Bookmakers by profession make very saleable good articles; but if they did not begin the trade from the impulse of genius, they seldom write any thing pleasing or new.

This principle seems to have had an influence on German literature. It stimulates to acquire learning and to multiply books, without imparting any thing new. The gentle dispositions of the Germans allow every thing which is said in conversation [II-394] to be heard with attention and politeness. They appear to think they may write just as they speak: and hence they send into the world a vast number of volumes, on subjects which are trifling and not amusing.

A new literature is not necessarily a faulty literature; but some of the errors of the German literature may undoubtedly be traced to the recent date of its origin. From wanting a literature there was also a want of a literary public. Those German works which are intended only for learned men, such as historical, philosophical, and philological works, are equally as well written as similar works in other languages; but the works destined for the great mass of the people, the common mental food of the society, participated in the dispositions and the failures of the society, and were often faulty because it wanted a correct taste. A new literature, when the people are also new, may be rude, but it will be energetic; and it could only be the new literature of an old people that could be both rude and weak. If the Germans would leave out theories, leave off imitating other people, and write after their own hearts, and according to the manner in which they observe life and nature, they would write the most gentle and pleasing poetry of any people in Europe. They are not a sublime people; and till some alterations in their political condition [II-395] shall give them sublimity of character, they will essay in vain to write lofty and noble poetry.

Whatever may be the opinion entertained of German literature, it can hardly be denied that Hannover and the very northern part of Germany contribute a very fair proportion of the whole. The coteries and sonneteers of Dresden and Weimar would fain persuade the world that there is no poetical talents in “the cold and sandy north.” They give the natives of the north the praise of being solid, deep thinkers, but deny them the vivacity of genius, and the fire of poetry. The Hannoverians are certainly not so lightly enthusiastic and easily moved; nor do they write so many trifles as their southern brethren. They do not constantly trill, like the Saxons, the same unmeaning tones on their harps, and imagine flowing hair, a flushed cheek, and disordered robes, to be mental enthusiasm. You do not meet in Hannover, as in other parts of Germany, with a set of young men who are unwashed and unshaved; and who, though they never wrote any thing beyond an occasional ode to procure them admittance to a literary society, imagine it is necessary to be negligent and dirty as an evidence of genius. Leibnitz, with all the great names that have been inscribed at Göttingen, are proofs of the powerful capacity for thought which belongs to the people of the north, and [II-396] which is a merit that their southern countrymen most readily allow them.

When a large proportion of the resources of a country are monopolized by the sovereign, his patronage is necessary to the existence of learned men and of literature. But, from the sovereign residing out of the country, there has been no patronage of this kind in Hannover other than what has been bestowed on Göttingen. Courts are, in modern times, the nurseries of polite literature. Hannover has wanted a court, and has not therefore shone in this branch so much as in some others. Yet Iffland, the father of German comedy, was a Hannoverian. No names stand at present higher in the polite literature of Europe than those of the Schlegels, and they are natives of Hannover. Bürger was, I believe, born in Saxony, but a great part of his life was passed in Göttingen and its neighbourhood. A valley there, in which he loved to pass his time, still bears the name of Bürger Thal; and he must be considered as a poet of the north. I am unacquainted with any living poet of Hannover who is celebrated. A Mr Blumenhagen is sometimes spoken of as a writer of occasional verses. Ernest Schluze, who has been mentioned as the author of two poems of some merit, was also born and educated in the dominions of Hannover.

It is probably owing to the want of patronage in [II-397] Hannover that many clever natives of this country seek reputation and wealth in other parts of Germany. The Schlegels and Mr Thaer have been mentioned; and when, to their names, are added those of Mr Luden, a celebrated professor of history in the university of Jena—of Prince Hardenberg—of General Benningsen—and of General Scharnhorst, who was killed while serving in the armies of Prussia at the battle of Leipsic—it will assuredly not be supposed that the Hannoverians are deficient in talents of any description.

There is not a single sculptor of the least eminence, and not one good gallery either of pictures or statues, in the whole of Hannover. Count Walmoden had a collection of pictures, but that is now dispersed. The only painter of the least reputation is a Mr Ramberg, who was educated in England and in Rome at the expence of the sovereign. He is chiefly celebrated for the numerous and well-executed devices with which he has enriched many of the almanacks, the Titanias, Uranias, and pocket-books of literature, which yearly issue from the presses of Germany. It is a curious circumstance of this painter, which has been remarked by several people, that he has never been able to paint a female who possessed the characteristics of modesty. There is not a single good engraver in the kingdom. In these points Hannover differs much from the other parts of Germany. Berlin, Vienna, [II-398] Dresden, Cassel, abound with sculptors, painters, and artists of all descriptions. There has been no demand for such persons in Hannover, and there are none, and never have been any. Should the Duke of Cambridge continue to reside there, he will occasion a small demand; and then Hannover will, in these points as in others, equal the other countries of Germany. The taste of his Royal Highness is chiefly directed to music; and the orchestra of Hannover is not the worst of Germany, which boasts so many of the first musicians of Europe.

A large portion of the literature of Europe now consists of periodical publications. This is particularly the case in Germany, where novels, comedies, tragedies, histories, are all published as pocket-books, and as almanacks. The political periodical literature of the present time is perhaps, in point of effect, the most important of all literature. It would, therefore, be unpardonable to pass over that of Hannover in silence, though little or nothing can be said of it. It is necessary to record its non-existence. “Die gelehrte Anzeigen” of Göttingen, or Literary Notices, is the only periodical paper published in Hannover that deserves an encomium. It is a duodecimo, of which four numbers are published weekly. Each number contains either a half or a whole sheet of print. It is published by the members of the university. Heyne [II-399] was the editor for more than 40 years, and Eichhorn succeeded him. It gives an account of such books only as are purchased for the university library. And, generally, the observations it contains are confined to the work noticed rather than to giving new and enlarged views. I have given one or two extracts from it in the course of this work. The side of politics it generally takes is that of liberality and reason. The contributors are the professors; and the greatest part of the political articles of importance are written, I believe, by Professor Sartorious. From such a man nothing can be expected but what is scientific and rational, well weighed and calmly delivered. It contains none of the floating half-formed opinions of the moment, which find their way into daily newspapers. It contains nothing which appeals to popular prejudices, or which can be considered as an index of popular opinion. All its political articles are more scientific than popular. It is the vehicle, also, for much of the discussion which takes place in Germany on the subject of legislation. In this point, and in philological remarks, it is surpassed by none of the numerous journals of Germany. The town of Hannover does not boast a single journal that can be called exclusively political. The Advertiser is a sort of gazette belonging to the crown. There is a meagre chronicle of the theatre, and a sort of weekly paper which announces the comings and goings of illustrious [II-400] persons. With Hamburg on one side, and Jena, Brunswick, Weimar, and Leipsic on the other, in which places some of the best political works of Germany are published, there is less occasion to print any in Hannover. It is, in this point, much behind. Its people appear hitherto never to have busied themselves with their dearest interests, though, at last, they begin to be political.

It is sometimes stated that the press is free in Hannover. This is entirely a mistake. It is totally free in no part of Germany, though it is subject to less restrictions in Weimar, Hamburg, and Bavaria, than in other parts. But even in these places books are suppressed at the whim of the governors, or by the representations of ambassadors. What a weak cause must that be which requires to be supported by forbidding human thought and speech to attack it! A regulation, made in 1705, forbids any native of Hannover from printing any work, either in the land or out of the land, for the purpose of circulating it in the land, till it had been approved of by the censor. All works published at Göttingen must be submitted to the censorship of the members of the university. No printer is allowed to print a work unless it has been approved of by the censor, under penalty of losing the privilege of printing, and of being otherwise punished. For works published out of Göttingen there are other censors. One who is [II-401] charged with the inspection of all works of poetry and literature is dependent on the justice-chancery; another, to whom all political works must be submitted, is dependent on one of the departments of the ministry. The consistoriums take care that the doctrines of the church remain unassailed. There is a control established over the press, which, when it is complete, is but another name for absolute dominion. This is, however, a nugatory power. For what is offensive to the government of one country is printed in another, and thus the separate governments of Germany have in some measure served to secure a free press to the whole of the country. Their jealousy of each other has allowed attacks on each which have ultimately weakened the power of all. [75]

CHAPTER XIII.
private life and morals.↩

Private life of a foreign people difficult to learn.—The religion of the Germans.—Toleration.—Examples of Catholic sovereigns with Protestant subjects.—Causes of tolerance.—Character and principles of Luther.—Church has no power.—Ceremony of confirmation.—Gentleness.—Instances of politeness.—Christmas presents.—Sociality.—Ceremoniousness.—Endearing epithets.—Free intercourse.—Commerce of the sexes.—Number of divorces.—Selection of wives.—Freedom of manners.—Extensive education of women.—Public display of affections.—Manner of announcing deaths and marriages.

Much has been already said, at various places in this work, on the manners and morals of the different classes of society in Germany; but, as something may yet be added, I shall here employ a whole chapter for the purpose. It is extremely difficult for a traveller to appreciate, from actual observation, the domestic manners of a foreign nation. He is seldom admitted to the privacy of family scenes; the natives are on their guard before him, and are generally clothed in some of those disguises, [II-403] which they wear, like their apparel, more for fashion and shew than for comfort and convenience. He learns little or nothing of the amiability or rudeness of their domestic intercourse. He sees them at table, in the ball-room, in the saloon, when all the politeness, knowledge, and wit, which can be mustered, are brought on, rank and file, for the entertainment and accommodation of the company. Gallantry may lead to the chambers of the ladies, but that is an intercourse which spreads its own colours on every neighbouring object, and seldom allows a correct judgment to be formed of what is seen. A long residence in a foreign land makes the manners of the people familiar; and those slight differences of character, which distinguish one European nation from another, are then never remarked.

We are well acquainted with the manners of the people of Paris, and we have learnt them from the memoirs, letters, and novels, of the Parisians. I believe also, that any foreigner who has acquired a correct notion of our manners, has acquired it rather from our own writings than from his own actual observation. So far as I am acquainted with German literature, it contains but few works from which much information relative to their own morals and manners can be procured. The follies or vices of courts, which are much the same all the world over, have been sketched in the comedies of [II-404] Iffland. Kotzebue deals more with the people at large, but he has so caricatured them, that the likeness can seldom be discovered. The novels of La Fontaine, though they lay claim to be representations of manners, are written with less regard to truth than to false and ridiculous effect. Goethe’s Memoirs, his Herman and Dorothea, his Wilhelm Meister, some of the smaller pieces of Schiller, and some of the poems of Bürger, may all teach something concerning German manners; but, in general, the Germans have few books written expressly for this purpose, and the traveller must be content with very moderate gleanings.

Much of the character of our countrymen is known from their public actions. But the Germans seem to do nothing more in public than teach and pray. Schools and churches are open to the stranger, but parliaments and courts of justice are closed. Unfortunately, also, the part of Germany which I had the most opportunity to become acquainted with, does not possess any of those celebrated men whose names are known all over Europe, and of whom the merest trifle is a matter of interest. The looks of such people seem regarded like amusing anecdotes. Hannover is in all things a humble town, to which even the presence of the Duke of Cambridge gave neither celebrity nor magnificence. On Saint George’s day, when there was a review and a levee held, the splendour was [II-405] about equal to what we might expect at the house of a nobleman who commanded a corps of volunteers, and who did the honours of his sovereign’s birth-day to the military of some garrison town. Hannover has none of the scandal of a court. I am anxious, by these preliminary remarks, to caution the reader against expecting any of those amusing anecdotes which the title of the chapter might seem to promise, and to provide an excuse for not having it in my power to give any.

There seems to be no part of morals which is more deserving consideration than what is dictated by religion, and, though something has been said of the church government, it yet remains to describe the practices of religion. In Hannover the reigning religion is the Lutheran. In some other parts of Germany, the Catholic, or the Calvinistic modes of worship, are most prevalent. In no part are sectaries numerous, and the only conspicuous sects more than those mentioned, are the Herrenhuters and the Jews. It is said that there are in the whole kingdom 1,060,000 Lutherans, 160,000 Catholics, 90,000 Calvinists, 10,000 Jews, and 1000 Herrenhuters and Mennonites.

A particular instance of toleration,—the admission of Catholics to be members of the highest court of appeal in Hannover,—has been already mentioned, and Catholics may be generals or ministers of state. There is no law of exclusion. [II-406] There is a pleasure in recording virtues, though they may not be our own, and the toleration which exists in Germany seems worthy of our imitation. No question is there made as to a man’s faith. He may believe either of the numerous fables which are commonly believed that he pleases, and if he deliver his reasons in support of it, he is sure to be listened to with attention and candour. Both Catholic and Protestant professors teach at the same university, and in the schools children of every description of parents listen to the same moral lessons. Men are not likely to persecute their school-fellows and their playmates, nor look with bitterness and anger on those with whom they have grown up to manhood, merely because they differ from them on some speculative point. In several parts of Germany the Lutherans and the Calvinists have recently joined in one common mode of worship, and, in 1817, the Catholics lent the Protestants the ornaments of their churches, that they might more pompously celebrate the centenary of the Reformation. The only restrictions on opinion, of which I heard, were on political opinions, and almost the only persecutions were of the Jews and of the philosophers. Kant was threatened with the loss of his professorship on account of some of his opinions, and Fichte was subjected to some sort of trial at Weimar, in 1807, for a similar cause, and he is said to have died of chagrin in consequence.

[II-407]

The Jews are still subjected to odious distinctions in many parts of Germany. In Prussia they enjoy protection the same as the other citizens. In Hannover they are not allowed to hold land, and each Jewish family must pay the sovereign a certain sum of money for protection. There are some certain trades which none of them are allowed to practise, and no one must live in the old town of Hannover. The poorer classes of Germans hate and despise Jews, because they envy them their wealth. Excluded from all places of honour and trust, the Jews naturally sought wealth as a means of buying protection and respect. They have not been strictly scrupulous in the means of obtaining it, and their conduct now serves as an excuse for persecuting them. The poorer classes of the Germans believe the most absurd stories of the Jews; such as, that they possess the power to make people wither and die under the curse which they have uttered in secret, and that children are driven mad by the wrath of their parents. [76]

Toleration, in its most lovely form, seems to exist both in public and private life, to regulate the manners of the people, and to sway the councils of monarchs. We learn from history also, that this has long been the case, and we shall probably seek [II-408] in vain for examples of tolerance in other European countries similar to what are found in Germany. When Louis XIV. of France was persecuting and banishing the Hugonots, John Frederick, the Duke of Kalenberg, and a friend of Louis, allowed his Protestant subjects to live in peace. This prince governed between the years 1665 and 1679; he was a zealous Catholic, surrounded by priests; he had the highest opinion of his own powers, frequently styling himself emperor in his own dominions; he was an active and intelligent prince. The greater part of his subjects were Protestants, yet he never ill-treated nor oppressed them, nor made any efforts to convert them to the Catholic faith. [77] When we compare his conduct to that of our James II. we immediately perceive either a superior penetration, or a want of that fiery zeal which drove our sovereign from his throne.

The members of the present royal family of Saxony, whose subjects are almost exclusively Protestants, have been Catholics for more than 100 years, that is, since 1697: [78] yet they have never [II-409] oppressed their Protestant subjects, have never attempted to gain converts, or to make Catholicism the religion of the land. Although they differ in [II-410] their religion from their subjects, they are probably as well beloved as any royal family of Europe. As common religious ceremonies are sometimes called spiritual drams, the gay chapel of the sovereign at Dresden, with its fine Italian singers, and exquisite music, may be called the very Champagne of religion. While the monarch, with his hands in a large white muff, was devoutly saying his prayers in the gallery, the lower part of this chapel was always filled with his Protestant subjects, who go there to take intoxicating draughts of the music and singing. For those persons to whom amusement is necessary, or who seek enjoyment in religion, there can be no question that Catholicism has many more charms than any other, and those who saw only that part of it which is seen in the chapel of Dresden, might easily justify preferring it to every other.

As it may teach us that no danger can ensue to the church of England, while its votaries are the majorities of the nation, from the sovereign being a Catholic, and while we may learn, from the tolerance of Catholic sovereigns to their subjects, to be ashamed of our own intolerant laws against Catholics, I shall here mention two other instances of Catholic sovereigns with Protestant subjects. Indeed, in most of the reigning families of Germany, some of the members profess a faith different from the majority of the people. The sovereigns of [II-411] Wirtemberg were Catholics from 1733 to 1793—although, during that period, their subjects remained Protestants, and remained unpersecuted. Frederick, the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, the ally of George II. and George III., changed from a Protestant to a Catholic; yet he was not banished from his throne,—nor did he persecute his Protestant subjects. [79] More such instances might probably be found; and, compared with our own conduct, they seem to prove that Catholicism is not more intolerant than Protestantism. As another instance of the harmony which exists on the subject of religion between subjects and their sovereigns in Germany, I may mention the King of Prussia, who is a Calvinist, while the majority of his subjects are Lutherans; and he might be a Catholic if he pleased. [80]

The manner in which different principles, some of which are called irreligious, have long been discussed in Germany, is a matter of public notoriety: and it may unhesitatingly be affirmed, that tolerance is greater in Germany than in any other part of Europe. It has also been greater for many years, and must have had a proportional influence. The Germans have known none of the angry passions of religious opposition, and know nothing of the bitterness of persecution. One part of their [II-412] society has not been the declared religious enemies of the other; and the whole, therefore, display features of mildness and of love.

Various causes have conspired to produce this effect. Luther and his friends appear to have been more animated with their good cause, and less with worldly ambition, than most reformers. They laid it down as a rule that, as their Master and his apostles had given no direction for the government of the church, and had prescribed no form of worship, so each community must be left, in these particulars, to its own discretion. They recommended the Scriptures as the best guide to the several sovereigns and the inhabitants of those free towns which embraced the Reformation; and they assisted in drawing up forms of prayer, and prescribing religious ceremonies,—but they left the church to be modelled, particularly in its temporalities, by the people themselves. [81] Hence the government of the Lutheran church differs in almost every town and city in a variety of minute particulars, which helped to teach moderation to all. So long as the principle of not prescribing a form of church government, and of not fixing articles of faith and belief, was followed, there were [II-413] no quarrels among the different sects of Protestants which grew out of the Reformation. But so soon as the Confession of Augsburgh had clearly prescribed the bounds of Lutheranism, there was a ground of exclusion for the Calvinists, and the two parties of Protestants became the enemies of each other. The Reformers did not adhere to their principle throughout; and while the Reformation, which they had themselves brought about, was a great change, they vainly attempted to fix their own rules for ever on their children. Every improvement is a change, and nothing can be more absurd than to prevent improvement by those fixed regulations which proscribe every change. Till they had this fixed Confession, the Protestants of Germany went on rapidly improving; and though differences of opinion then existed sufficient at length to teach all parties moderation, it was long prevented by fixing as dogmas what ought to be for ever left to discussion.

There is one point in which the Lutheran church is almost every where the same. The clergy have little or no wealth, and they have no political power. Their salary is proportionate to their labours, and they have ceased to stir up the spirit of persecution, because no worldly wealth or power was to be gained by it. Ever since the Reformation, whatever religion the sovereigns might profess, they have always been superior to the priesthood. [II-414] Wherever the church retained a power nearly equal to that of the magistracy, as in the Hanse Towns, there intolerance was, and is greater, than where it lost all its worldly dominion. Exclusive, therefore, of the poverty which an opulent priesthood entails on the industrious classes of a society, there is a powerful motive, in the persecution such a priesthood has always occasioned, why it ought not to be allowed to grow into existence.

The authors of Lutheranism were not sour, morose, and disappointed men—the enemies of natural pleasure, and the lovers of mystical dogmas. “As for the Lutherans,” says Riesebeck, [82] (and the observation is correct,) “they possess part of the humour of their founder, and, to a high degree of frugality, unite a great love of pleasure and jollity. An unnatural hatred of joy does not damp their wit and good temper. They have none of the savage slovenliness, the dark hypocrisy, and the ill-breeding, which distinguish the majority of other sects.” [83] The strong natural sense of Luther [II-415] seems to have extended itself to most of the actions of his followers; and they did not fill their books with absurd and incomprehensible creeds. They lost their worldly grandeur, and nothing remained to excite envy; and, as they did not impose “articles” and tests on the consciences of men, there was no motive for opposition and hatred. Hence few sects have grown up in Germany, and hence the people are mild and tolerant. [84]

[II-416]

To these causes may be added the fact, that the Germans, more particularly the northern Germans, seem never to have been so degraded by Catholic superstition as some other of the nations of Europe. The reader may see this fact fully explained in Venturini, Vol. III. p. 36. The passage is too long to quote. The senses were less dazzled in Germany, and the understanding less deluded, than in Italy. Poverty had not allowed superstition to be arrayed in all its pomp; and Luther, according to this author, was successful because he had less delusion to combat.

An increase of knowledge has utterly changed the character of the Germans. They were dark, cruel, and unrelenting. They were persecutors and martyrs. They were bigots and ferocious murderers. Now, they are gentle, mild, and forgiving. When such a lovely change has taken place in some of their evil passions, it is only rational to extend the inference which may be drawn [II-417] from this fact to the whole race, and to hope that all our evil propensities may be rendered harmless, or extirpated by an increase of knowledge. By the progress of opinion, ferocity and bigotry have been changed to gentleness and tolerance; and there is no reason to despair that the lust of wealth, which is our present curse and crime, may not be so modified as to produce, at a future period, nothing but honest pains-taking industry and ingenuity.

On Sundays, some few people go once to church. They sing psalms, they hear prayers and a sermon, and are dismissed with a blessing. Sunday is rather a day of recreation than of prayer; and the dancing-houses are more crowded towards evening than the churches at mid-day. Church-going is not a matter of necessity in Germany, and, in truth, few people go to church. The inhabitants of the towns communicate seldom: those of the country flock in crowds to partake of the bread and wine.

Among the followers of Luther, confirmation seems to form an epoch in their lives, which, like their marriage, is never forgotten. In England, it reminds one of the story told by Dr Franklin of saying grace over a whole barrel of beef. Our young people procure a certificate from any priest they please; they collect in numbers in a church, and are blessed in dozens by the bishop; they remember the ceremony from the quantity of people, and probably because they then saw lawn sleeves for [II-418] the first time in their lives. In England it seems to be a matter of indifference whether people are confirmed or not. In Hannover the law orders every body to be confirmed; and no Lutheran there reaches his 18th year without paying the priest for dispensing to him, as the law says, “The great and wonderful advantages which come, even in this unmiraculous age, from laying on hands in public.”

Previous to being confirmed, the children are instructed by the clergymen during several weeks; and even the young girls are publicly examined in the church, that they may testify their fitness to be admitted members of the congregation. This public examination, and the confirmation, are very trying, and seem to be thought very momentous by the children. They are collected in the body of the church, totally separated from the rest of the assembly. Those whom I saw were dressed in black; the girls wore white shawls, and had flowers in their bosoms, and the little things trembled and cried through the whole two hours which the ceremony lasted. They were, for the whole of this time, the exclusive objects of attention. The clergyman prayed for them, he preached to them, he questioned them, and he called on them to testify their faith aloud. When they had done this they were led to the altar, and allowed to communicate for the first time in their lives. The ceremony seemed impressive. The clergyman, the congregation, and [II-419] the children, all wept. The latter, indeed, seemed to suffer much. It was a sort of tragedy, in which all were actors. “This painful solemnity,” I was told, “made a more powerful impression;” and I was not a little surprised to learn, from several young women, that they remembered the day on which they were confirmed as one of the sweetest of their lives. After confirmation they go no more to school. At the end of the ceremony they receive the congratulation of their friends, and they are changed at once, as it were by magic, from boys and girls into men and women. These following consequences make this day of trembling and of tears a day of sweet recollections throughout life.

This ceremony is one of the many instances of the manner in which an ambitious priesthood established that dominion over other men which is now so fast decaying. There is a period of life at which instruction must cease, and at which the ambition of children must be gratified by a participation in the pursuits and employments of their parents. This period has been sanctified by a religious ceremony, that the power of giving or of withholding the pleasure might belong to the priests. Nothing, surely, is more natural than love; but they have persuaded us that even its joys are unholy if they are unsanctioned by them. A day of rest which every man should take when it is convenient [II-420] to him, and which, when it is general, is to both man and animals a most beneficial institution, has been likewise claimed by the priests as a gift of religion, that they might build their power on our most innocent enjoyments. Our entrance into life, our rest from labour, the joys of love, and even our death, have all been turned by these gentlemen to the account of their firm, as if they were derived from them, and gave them a claim to our gratitude and obedience. If it were possible for the man to trace, through the whole of his life, every sensation which has ever entered into the composition of the sentiment of faith, or which now make up the consolations of religion, it would be a curious inquiry to ascertain how much of this sentiment and of these consolations were derived from the sensual enjoyments with which all religious truths have been combined. The mincepies, songs, gambols, and friendly parties at Christmas—the fritters of Shrove Tuesday—the pudding-pies of Lent—the geese of Michaelmas—the fine clothes and amusements of Sunday—the pompous ceremonies of the church—and, above all, the manner in which faith is sung into the heart with sweet and solemn music, and in which it is taught to us in multitudes, when men catch enthusiasm from one another [85] —are probably some [II-421] of the most powerful ingredients in what is called religious emotion. The very attempt to analyse it takes from it all its pleasure, and all its influence, except that which it derives from the truth combined with these sensual enjoyments.

The whole conduct of the Germans seems to me to partake of that gentle and tolerant character which also belongs to their religious practices. There is a quietness, placidness, and cheerfulness in their countenances, a readiness to oblige, and a true and estimable politeness, which can be much better felt and enjoyed than described. I should have thought either that my estimate of their character was wrong, or that I had been peculiarly fortunate in the individuals I had encountered, had I not recently seen my opinion confirmed by the author of the Life of Haydn. In numerous parts of his work, he displays his knowledge of “the native goodness of German hearts.” There is nothing in this which is strongly expressive—nothing which he who runs may read. There is no [II-422] contortion of countenance, and absurdity of conduct—no strength of phrase and vigour of step—but all is calm, quiet, and methodical. The following instances of politeness may be taken as specimens of their general conduct:—

I became acquainted in Hannover with a most respectable gentleman. In the course of our conversations I remarked, that, in consequence of the general secrecy observed on matters of government, it was difficult to acquire any accurate knowledge of them. In a few days afterwards, he invited me to visit him on purpose to introduce me to a gentleman holding a high situation under government. From both I repeatedly received marks of kindness and attention no unknown stranger can ever rationally expect. If I have any regret at the nature of my remarks on the Hannoverian government, it is only because I think they impose on me the necessity of not mentioning the names of these gentlemen. I should have been otherwise proud to record them as the names of men who knew and practised the most estimable politeness. By another gentleman, who was also a stranger to me, I was introduced to one of those public reading rooms, which are such agreeable places, both of amusement and instruction. I experienced repeatedly such instances of kindness, my wants and my wishes were often prevented by a politeness that seemed to delight in finding out what would [II-423] be agreeable to me. This is a part of the German character which necessarily escapes the notice of those travellers whose acquaintance with the people does not extend beyond the inhabitants of their hotels, and beyond a knowledge of some distinguished men. It is found in all classes, and has left in my mind an indelible esteem for their private character. That part of hospitality, which consists in feasting strangers, seems rare. In truth, they do not abound in wealth, and are obliged, in general, to live so economically, that they have no power to waste much on strangers. But, among themselves, there is a better hospitality, which the foreigner learns when he becomes intimate with them, which makes them offer him a share of their family meals without ceremony, and which frequently invites him to partake of their evening amusements, of the morning dram, or of the refreshing coffee.

I have already frequently mentioned the delight they seem to have in cultivating and adorning their gardens; and it seems to be done less from ostentation than from real love to the amusement. The taste for flowers is carried into their houses, and roses or hyacinths adorn all their windows. As spring approached, husbands and wives, parents and children, rich and poor, were seen every evening cultivating a thousand little spots lying in the neighbourhood of Hannover. This taste is nearly [II-424] universal, and serves at once to adorn the land and tranquillise the passions.

The reciprocal presents they make at Christmas, and on birth-days, seem also proofs of a gentleness and amiability of character. Such presents are made in other countries. Les etrennes of the French are, however, the gifts of vanity and gallantry, and are little more than baits for sensuality. The Christmas boxes of England have degenerated to mere fees of office, not always willingly given; but Das Weihnachts Geschenk of the Germans is the offspring of friendship or love, and is made by all classes. Towards Christmas, fairs are held in the towns, in order that all persons may provide themselves with what they mean to give. There is not a wife in the whole country who does not lay by some of her pennies to purchase a present for her husband. There is not a husband who does not pilfer his till, or curtail his pleasures, that he may give something to his wife. There is not a maiden nor a youth who is so unlucky as not to have some friends with whom gifts are exchanged at this season. The rich buy luxuries and ornaments—the poor necessaries. The prince and the noble decorate their rooms with evergreens, that they may make the presents they give to their children and servants more acceptable. Boys receive skaits, or guns, or new clothes—girls, albums, work-baskets, and necessaries. The wife buys her [II-425] husband a coat, and she receives a new gown, or some article of furniture. Whoever is not so dreadfully poor at Christmas as to have no friends, and nothing to give, is then happy; for he has something over which he exults, which is a secret for some persons, and a subject of conversation with others. The nature of the present is carefully concealed from those who are to receive it till the moment it is given, though it is always something for which the person receiving it has expressed a desire.

Between Berlin and Leipsic I had for a short time a female companion, who had sufficient reason to complain of her situation. She had three children, and though both her husband and she were always ready to do any kind of work, they could barely obtain a subsistence. Their united labours procured them about 1s. 6d. per day. She complained of nothing so much, however, as that she had received no Christmas gift. She had never before known the season to pass without receiving something, and never, she said, “were times so hard.” These are quiet offices of kindness, and sources of attachment and affection, which a mere traveller can rarely observe, and which, if he saw them occasionally, he might imagine were displayed for some purposes of deceit and ostentation, if he had not inquired and found them universal.

The presents which are given on birth and name [II-426] days are like Christmas presents, and are given by parents, children, and friends. They are an interchange of visible signs of love, and serve to bind all the parties together by acts of kindness. In Die silberne Hochzeit, one of the best of the comedies of Kotzebue, is a very good description of the eagerness with which a whole family of children tried to make themselves acceptable to their parents by the presents they made them on their wedding-day. There is perhaps a little more outward shew in such acts than suits our character, but there seems also to be a light tenderness and cheerful affection that are almost unknown to us.

With all this gentleness, however, of the polished classes, there is yet a sort of rudeness and cruelty amongst the lower classes of the people. The murders which have been mentioned in the Chapter on Criminal Laws is one proof of this, and another, and more important one, because more general, is, that both masters and mistresses yet occasionally permit themselves personally to chastise both male and female servants. Some instances came under my observation, and I have heard of several more. The relation betwixt masters and servants is so perfectly derived from the barbarous feudal laws, that the charity of feeling which is so common in other parts of their conduct, seems not yet to have extended to this. An equality of political condition has many advantages; and it prevents [II-427] the opposite vices of servility and pride, of meanness and arrogance, of hatred and cruelty. There can be no doubt that this unfavourable trait of character in the Germans has been occasioned by their want of political equality.

It is well known that music is most extensively cultivated in Germany; that there is scarcely a young man or woman, of decent family and education, who does not both play and sing scientifically; but perhaps it is not so well known that the words are as musical as the people, and these have borrowed some part of their taste for harmony from the songsters of the forests. Never did I hear so many nightingales as sang every evening in the vicinity of Hannover. Other places are equally blessed with them, and all the woods resound with notes of harmony which respond to the voice of the people.

To an extensive cultivation of music, and an extensive education, the Germans add a great love for society, and such a gentle stream of pleasure flows through their life, that they have no time left to brood over anger, or to nourish disdain. In every town there are some public rooms constantly open, where society, amusements, and books, are always to be had, and no sooner is ennui felt than relief is sought in some place of this kind. They pass much time in society, and smoke, and game, and converse a great deal, and they seem to [II-428] be easily made happy by trifles. They have no Birmingham festival once a-year, but music is their hourly relaxation. They have neither routes nor squeezes, and yet they are constantly in society; they look on it as a source of enjoyment, and not of ostentation. Every thing seems to interest them. A new game of chess, a newly-discovered insect or plant, or an event on which the fate of mankind depends, seemed to be equally regarded, and to excite an equal degree of warmth. Passion seldom mixes in their conversation, disputes never. Even when the uproar at Göttingen excited universal remark, the party-spirit was only visible in a somewhat greater warmth of phrase. Their conversation is light and agreeable, but not important. A people who are constantly occupied with trifles cannot speak of matters of importance. When men regard sucking tobacco smoke through a wooden tube as one of the greatest earthly enjoyments, they may also possess a love for light and agreeable amusements, but they will hardly combine with these any special admiration for what is noble and grand. And, accordingly, though I always found something to amuse me in the conversation of the Germans, I rarely observed any thing in it to admire, or received from it any valuable information.

German pride, says the author of the Life of Hadyn, is ridiculous only in the printed accounts of their ceremonies; the air of kindness which accompanies [II-429] the reality, gives a pleasing colour to every thing. [86] We are apt to imagine them a stiff and ceremonious people, when we learn that there is no man, from his excellency a cabinet-minister to a door-waiter, who is not addressed in conversation by his title of office. Women also receive the titles of their husbands, and must never be addressed without this mark of dignity. Die gnädige Frau Ministerinn —My Lady Minister,—Mrs Secretary—as the wife of a copying-clerk is called, and Madame Shoemaker, all have their titles bandied to them whenever they are spoken to by equals or inferiors. In point of phrase, they certainly surpass the ceremony of the Parisian water-carriers, but, like them, they accompany their ceremony with much good will. By the bye, the politeness of those men of pails does far more honour to the peasantry of France, who go in crowds yearly to Paris to fill this honourable office, than to the Parisians themselves, who are too much lost in selfishness to know any thing of true politeness. With a ceremonious mode of address, however, there is a freedom and a familiarity of communication. The stiff disdainful pronoun, the third of the singular, with which great people were accustomed to speak to tradesmen and servants, is going out of fashion. Strangers are readily associated [II-430] with, and indeed sought after, and no introduction is wanted to make the most agreeable acquaintance. Taverns are frequented by the learned and the great, and you may become acquainted with some of the first men of the country at a table d’hote. Parents and children address each other freely and without reserve. Pleasing epithets are in common use. A husband, a wife, a relation, or friend, is seldom spoken to without the epithet My dear, or Beloved. A stranger or acquaintance is soon called My dear, or My best friend. The Deity is rarely spoken of without some term of love. Such epithets, according to the laws of association, serve to produce in the minds of those who use them those gentle affections for which they stand. The people are made by them kinder to each other, and the Deity is stripped of half those terrors with which he has been clothed by an ambitious priesthood. Terms of endearment are, however, too often used without discrimination, and the affections are somewhat weakened by being spread alike over worthless and valuable objects.

I once called on a magistrate, and unthinkingly asked if Mr—was at home. Mr—,the consistorial councillor, is not at home, was the stately reply of the servant. I resolved afterwards not to forget any person’s title. This gentleman received me, however, without any ceremony whatever, and executed the little business I had with [II-431] him with great dispatch. I have entered apartments, both as a stranger and as an acquaintance, when they were yet littered with the night-dress and breakfast apparatus, and when the persons were in their morning-gowns and slippers. I had, on another occasion, to ask a magistrate for permission to see the workhouse of Hannover, and, while he regretted that other occupations prevented him accompanying me, he continued to regale himself with his pipe, and, very deliberately resting the bowl on the far side of his desk, he smoked on as he wrote me the permission.

The rulers of Germany, or their ministers, may have busied themselves, and have wrangled whether they should sit at feasts in arm-chairs or chairs without arms, but such follies have either not descended to the people, or are now entirely banished. There was a time when nobles and persons not noble never breathed the air of the same room, but as masters and servants;—when public places, such, for example, as the Aue Garten at Vienna, could be entered only by those persons who were enrolled in the College of Heralds. To this day an inscription remains at Herrenhausen, a seat of the King’s close to Hannover, telling the citizens they are at liberty to sit on the benches round the large fountain, when the said benches are not required by strangers and people of distinction. The pride of the aristocracy may have excluded [II-432] citizens from its parties, though this is not always the case, and never extends beyond their private circles. In all public places, the mixture of all ranks, whatever may be their political names and privileges, is perfect. Persons of any one class are not to be distinguished, either in their manners or their dress, from those of any other, and this mixture compensates to the citizen for much of the nominal superiority of the noble. At the subscription reading-room in Hannover, before mentioned, the museum, which was frequented by several nobles, there appeared to be no other qualification required in the members, than that they were gentlemen, and of irreproachable character. In this society the Lord-Chamberlain, the President of the Justice-Chancery, the Director of the High-School, the Inspector of the Seminary, pastors, advocates, army officers, amtmen, surgeons, all familiarly associated with each other. The nobles have a particular club, into which none but nobles are admitted; but in most of the towns of any importance there is a society like this, of which all gentlemen may be members. At public concerts, the best seats are sometimes kept for ladies, but the nobles at the same time stand, and speak, and mix with grocers, confectioners, and tinmen. The nobles still keep political offices in their own hands; but that broad distinction of men into casts, of which we have heard so much, no longer [II-433] exists. It may be doubted if the aristocracy of wealth, whose signs are so easily distinguished, be not now more punctual in its separation into castes than the aristocracy of birth. Certainly if an individual of one caste glides into another caste, he only effects it by assuming the external marks of the caste into which he intrudes. The distinctions of wealth are broader and more precise than those of birth, and, with all our democratic institutions and boasting, ours is the country of Europe in which there is the greatest inequality, and the most marked distinctions between men. [87]

A ceremonious manner of writing, somewhat similar to that of speaking, is also common to the Germans. They pay a vast deal of attention to give each other all sorts of pleasing and meritorious titles; such as well-born, or high-born, or high and wellborn, with all the possible distinctions of birth. A [II-434] polite and friendly invitation to visit a club or society addresses the stranger as a highly-prized, most estimable, and honourable gentleman. Our language has scarcely any corresponding terms to those of Hochfürstliche, Allerdurchlauchtigste, Grossmächtigste, Allergnädigste, &c. &c. which are used in addressing the mighty sovereigns of 20,000 men, and of L. 5000 revenue per annum.

The numbers are couples. The first columns contain those who are wholly divorced; the second those who have a separate maintenance. The list is taken from Jacobi and Kant’s Annals of Brunswick Lüneburg. From the same work I learn that the number of applications for divorce, in the quarter of the year beginning Easter 1793, was 54. In the last quarter of the same year the [II-435] number was 48. In the quarter beginning Easter in the year 1795, the number of applications was 53. I have met no later records of this kind, in consequence of this work not being further carried on. There is some reason, however, to believe, that the numbers have not since then decreased.

I have given this list of divorces, though rather old, as a sort of document relative to the domestic morality of the people. I should suppose, considering the number of people, that the number of divorces is great. Compared with our own country, they can only be considered as an evidence of the less expence of a divorce in Germany than in Britain; and, probably, that the marriage tie is somewhat less strictly regarded, where the sanction both of government and of religion must be added to that of nature, than it is with us, who need only the sanction of religion. There it has been doubly fortified; both the priest and the king must confirm the impulse of nature and the affections of the heart, or their gratification remains unholy.

The quantity of divorces is perhaps not an accurate criterion for judging of the character of the intercourse of the sexes, for who can tell how many intrigues never end in divorce? Individual experience is also of no use. It may be so much the measure of the individual’s power to please as of frailty. It can also be rarely had recourse to, for there is no [II-436] worse traitor than he who exposes to public scorn the face that was hid in his own bosom. The opinion of the Germans, so far as it has been gathered from the writings of their authors, from their conversation, and from the manner in which people guilty of faux pas are treated in society, appears to be by no means favourable to the encouragement of chastity. Marriage is generally a contract for an establishment in which affection has no share, and in which fidelity is not one of the stipulations. At the age of thirty, when the round of libertinism has been beaten, if a man have any property, he thinks it right to secure an heir to it, and looks about for the most convenient wife, according to his circumstances. He asks her of her parents; her heart has no share in the choice. She is bestowed as a present. She is thus taught to undervalue all she has to give, and she is ever afterwards ready to bestow it on whoever may have a better claim, by pleasing herself. It is the men of Germany who have degraded the women by making a property of them, and they have no right to complain.

There is hardly any part of Germany in which public women, except those of the very lowest description, can be distinguished from other women, till darkness permits a more open display of the signs of their avocations. Their trade does not seem necessarily connected, as in our country, with numerous [II-437] other vices. Public opinion does not banish them into corners, nor doom them to bear any conspicuous marks of guilt, and they have no occasion to assume a hardened impudence, or have recourse to drunkenness to stifle shame. The distinction between public women and other females seemed stronger in Hannover than in most other parts of Germany.

They are there few, and in general distinguished by a flaming vulgarity of dress and rouged faces. For concealed dissoluteness it is like other places. At one end of the Kalenberg Street there always sat rather a nice-looking girl selling fruit and cakes. This was the visible means she had of getting a livelihood,—what she presented to the police as her occupations, and to her neighbours as her character. Her invisible occupations, her hidden sale, were something different. She was seen, towards evening, accompanied by a child, walking in the different streets, giving signs to whoever she thought likely to attend to them.

It is a notorious fact, that, among the higher classes, a want of reputation does not exclude women from society. This is also true of the middling classes. At balls I have seen young women who were described as of very doubtful reputation, and, in a private circle of the middling classes, in which were mothers and daughters of unblemished fame, a lady and her daughter were [II-438] pointed out to me, the former of which was notoriously kept by a man not her husband, who was at the same time said to be the lover of her daughter. His appearance was almost a security for any lady’s reputation. It was natural to ask how he could succeed. He was rich, and the women here, as in other places, can give themselves up to dotage and ugliness for fine clothes, gay ornaments, and the miserable gratification of their vanity.

“Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.”

From such a fact, and from the facts that parents talk of such things before their daughters, as mere matter of amusement, without reprobating them, much more may be inferred of the state of morals than from any accurate enumeration of divorces, or from any single anecdotes of intrigue. No person would have dared to venture into such a society with a torn coat or a dirty gown. These ladies and their paramour would not have intruded in a morning-dress, but they come clothed in all the deformities of vice; and when these are not reprobated, there is a great chance they will be practised. When the chaste and the unchaste are equally admitted into every society, and are equally honoured and respected, there are no other motives for chastity than what may be derived from bodily temperament.

[II-439]

There are some virtues possessed by the women of the north of Germany which must be here remembered, that it may not be thought they are worse than they are. From the good education which is common to all classes, you find females in the middling ranks of life, who have read, in the original language, and justly appreciated, most of our celebrated works. Walter Scott, Miss Edgeworth, and Lord Byron, are known to them without the help of translations. There are few English ladies who can say as much of those works of Goethe and Schiller, of which they, however, speak very fluently. It is not uncommon to meet, among the females of the middling classes, many who not only know and practise music, but who are also acquainted with both the language and literature of France and England. Many of them are also good housewives, the managers of the kitchen and the sempstresses of the family. The education of the higher classes is equally attended to, though they necessarily follow the fashion, by seeking, in amusement and dissipation, that forgetfulness of care which other people find in their necessary employments.

It is probably owing to their excellent education that the ladies, finding amusement in literature, have not yet reached that extreme point of civilization at which nothing is regarded as of any value but sumptuous dresses and superb furniture. A [II-440] love for ostentation is rapidly increasing in Germany, but it does not seem to have reached so far as to suppress in the heart every other affection. They have not yet arrived at the most glorious practical conclusion, that man is nothing to his house, and that he may be sacrificed, provided it glitters with polished ornaments and shining furniture. Finding amusement in their books and music, it does not seem to be necessary to their bliss to condemn a large number of immortal beings to degradation, that their rooms may be resplendent and be admired.

The Germans have a method of hawking their affections in public, which robs them of much of their sanctity and holiness. There is a mawkish display of love between persons of different sexes that is rather indelicate and disgusting. In both public and private rooms, when other persons have been present, I have seen husbands kiss and fondle their wives, and young men bestow those caresses which are better reserved for secrecy. This probably gives them a reputation for unchastity which they do not deserve.

The manner in which baptisms, marriages, and deaths are announced, seems to partake of this character of publicity. Such events are officially notified by the parties themselves. A man informs the public and his friends, through the medium of a newspaper, “that his wife yesterday [II-441] added to his happiness by presenting him with a boy, who remains, with his mother, in perfect health.”—“We hereby,” says a newly-married couple, “inform our friends that our marriage was consummated on the 29th day of last month.” A widow advertises, “that the death of my beloved husband, Daniel Leibgot Rau, from apoplexy, on the 28th of October, has inflicted great sorrow on me and on my young daughter. I make this heart-rending death hereby known to my friends, and I beg their silent pity. I continue the occupations of my husband, and solicit all those who honoured him with their custom to continue the same favour to me. His last poem, on the Centenary of the Reformation, that was printing at his death, is now to be had of me.—12th of November 1817.” The regulations of the police, also, have some influence on this part of the character of the people. They oblige every man to notice every alteration in his family to it. When a child is born to him, or one dies, or he brings home a wife, or discards a mistress, he must give official notice of the alteration in the number of his family to the police. This seems to be treating men something like beasts, in whom their rulers have a property. Our best affections are degraded to a level with a partnership in trade, or a common mercantile speculation. To gratify the impertinent curiosity of the magistrate or his nonsensical regulations, neither [II-442] the griefs nor the joys of the heart are allowed to be secret and sacred. They must all be open to his inspection and registered in his book. The art, or science, or craft, or knavery, whichever it may be, of government, considers man as a sort of machine, that can be wound up, and made to point with its index to some events the magistrate wishes to be acquainted with.

CHAPTER XIV.
alteration of morals.↩

Are the morals of the Germans deteriorated?—Influence of the immorality of sovereigns.—Murder of Count Königsmark.—Former state of sexual intercourse.—State of morals according to Riesebeck.—German morals improved.—Source of the opinion that they have deteriorated.

It is very generally asserted, that the French Revolution, and the irruption of the French armies into Germany, have done a serious injury to the morals of the Germans. The same effect has been said to have been produced in other countries; and nearly all the existing immorality of Europe is now charged, by certain classes of society, on that single event. From the instances which have been already mentioned of improvements in Germany, as to punishments, as to toleration, as to education, as to the situation of the peasants, and as to the intercourse between the different classes of society, it appears doubtful if the fact of a deterioration of morals amongst the Germans be, on the whole, true. The assertion is, however, one of so [II-444] much importance, that it deserves further consideration.

In respect of public opinion, the Germans have most rapidly improved since that period. It is only since then that there has been either a public or public opinion in Germany. This latter is the great means of modifying our passions, and directing our pursuits; and, in proportion as it is correct, so the virtues of any people will be great. To suppose that, when a whole nation take part in examining and making laws, it will not be better regulated than when laws are made by one person only, is to suppose that the wisdom of the whole race is not equal to the wisdom of the smallest of its parts. The many causes which, under the name of Government, have an influence on the morality of a nation, make it a matter of certainty that every nation will be virtuous in proportion as it is rationally governed. Since public opinion has grown powerful in Germany, its various governments have improved, and they who make the sweeping assertion, that the morals of the people are corrupted, must keep all the influence of this powerful cause entirely out of view.

Forty years ago, the sovereigns of Germany sold their people for soldiers to any person who would buy them. It is yet barely possible that the inhabitants of Hannover may be compelled to fight in [II-445] the cause of Britain; but so strongly is the opinion of the Germans now set against the sovereigns selling them like slaves, that they will never again be subjected to any thing so infamous. Neither the inhabitants of Brunswick nor of Cassel will, in future, be sent to subdue the freemen of America, that the debts of one sovereign may be paid with the price of their blood, and a palace built for the other. That the Germans have thought with shame on this part of their situation, and have thought of it, resolved to bear it no longer, is evident from a thousand passages in modern authors. I shall quote one whose authority is greater than the newspapers of the day, in which the subject has been often alluded to.

“Amidst the tears and complaints of parents, relations, and sweethearts, the hired soldiers left their paternal homes to reduce a people who were called rebels to obedience. The lamentations of their wives and children only increased as their absence was longer, till many of the former found consolation in the arms of another man. Many a soldier on his return found his wife an adulteress, his children neglected and sunk in vice, his little property in the hands of usurers, and his name a prey to calumny. Many quitted their homes with hope, but all returned sorrowful. It was said they were sacrificed for the good of their country, but it received no benefit from an expedition that, even [II-446] in the annals of war, was covered with shame. These sufferings, also, are past, and will never return. Never again will German blood be shed in foreign countries, as it has been, for the interest of English merchants.” [88]

We learn, from the same author, that the government of Brunswick, towards the year 1767, placed some kind of receptacles, like the lions’ mouths at Venice, on all public places, for the purpose of receiving secret denunciations. This is a sort of bribery to vice which the governments of Germany will not now dare publicly to adopt. They may keep their police-spies, they may receive information in secret, and reward the bringer, but they will not again publicly invite men to be traitors to one another.

Prior to the French Revolution, the Germans were notorious for rudeness and incivility. Baron Riesebeck, for example, speaks of the brutal conduct of Austrian soldiers to passengers on the Danube. I travelled the same route; and, though we were often obliged to stop, I never saw any thing like incivility. Yet I had some companions who sometimes rather invited it by their own presumption. Two or three instances of amicable politeness have been mentioned; and, during my whole stay in Germany, I never experienced rudeness [II-447] or incivility but once, and it was partly occasioned by my own conduct.

Some few years ago, excessive drinking, and, indeed, drunkenness, were very common in the north of Germany. I hardly ever saw a drunken man, and never one drunken woman. The people have changed the beer they used to drink for spirits, but drunkenness is much less frequent than formerly. We learn from Dr Burney’s Travels (p. 331, 332, Vol. I.) what the amusements of the people of Vienna were prior to the French Revolution. The barbarous diversions which are there described are now changed for round-abouts, swings, feats of horsemanship, and conjuring: and brutality does not now extend beyond a bull-bait.

The principal point of complaint, however, is the attachment of women to luxury and finery, and the looseness of their morals. I know not what sort of consciences our countrywomen must have if the first of these actions of which the Germans are accused be a crime; for they are far surpassed by our more luxurious ladies. I am also at a loss to tell what criminality there is in wearing silk more than woollen, or in using mahogany chairs instead of fir-planks for seats. There seems to be no scale yet invented by which the respective atrocities of coloured woods and satins are accurately marked; and therefore I cannot decide on the criminality of the Germans in this point.

[II-448]

There is, however, a great alteration in their manners and morals. “Here in our country,” says the historian, “throughout the whole of the sixteenth century, the household of our prince was regulated like an ordinary house. His wife and daughters took the whole under their care,—knew how to make excellent soup,—were not afraid of the kitchen-smoke,—and sometimes, as the wife of Julius the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, they even made the medicines for the court dispensary. The daughters were obliged to spin and sew; and, on pain of punishment, they dared not read love romances. They were called misses, (’Jung fern,’) or, at most, ladies, (’Fraulein,’) and their noble companions were called maids of honour. Nobody in those days would like to be called lady of the bed-chamber. (Kammer-Jungfer, or Kammer-Fraulein.) That was a disgraceful name. It was too well known what took place with ladies in bedchambers.”

“The mothers of our sovereigns,” (he speaks of our own royal family,) “carefully attended themselves to the piety, cleanliness, and conduct of their children. The girls were obliged to say grace at meals; and even Erich II. after he was sovereign, was obliged to do this. The princess was called housewife (Hausfrau) and landlady, (Wirthin.) She slept with her husband in one bed, and every thing had its proper name.” Since then a great [II-449] alteration has taken place in the manners, both of the sovereigns and of the people. We find the first traces and causes of this in sending the young men to see the world, who carried back to Germany the outward polish of the despotic French court, and its inward corruptions. The princess was obliged to leave the bed of her husband, unless she would share it with his mistress. He had adopted the French practice of keeping one. It was this importation of foreign manners, by the sovereigns of the country, and their pernicious example, which gradually led to the corruption of the people. Love or gallantry allowed some women to rule over many of the countries of Germany; and the more sober part of the community imitated the vices of their rulers, and contemned the housewife conduct, which they saw despised by them.

It is not a very pleasing thing to rake up the tales of scandal which have been told of the sovereigns of Germany for the last two centuries; but it is right to remind the reader of them, and of the possible influence which they may have had on the manners of the people. It is impossible to overlook the fact, that many of the vices of Europe are caused by the reverence of its inhabitants for its sovereigns. When they, and their flatterers, and partizans, are constantly calumniating nature and the race of mankind, in order to justify, by our immoralities and vices, their claim to our more [II-450] implicit submission, it is right, when it can be done with justice, to retort these calumnies on their heads; and to shew, if it be possible, that many of our vices are the result of our reverence for them, and that, whatever they have of virtue, they derive from the influence of the public over them.

At the latter end of the seventeenth century, Ernest Augustus, the father of George I., and George I. himself before the death of his father, both kept mistresses, who were sisters. Both had wives at the same time living, and both publicly neglected them. The wife of George I., irritated by this neglect, entered into some sort of intrigue with the Count of Königsmark: it was discovered—she was confined for life—and the Count was executed in a manner that the historian calls murderous; and George, shortly afterwards, consoled himself in the arms of another mistress. [89] Such was the altered conduct of the sovereigns; and this was undoubtedly one cause for the alteration in the conduct and morality of the people.

Other sovereigns of Germany were not better. The celebrated Augustus of Saxony, at the same period, kept a large seraglio, and lived in open incest with his daughter, who boasted of sharing her [II-451] happiest moments with her own brother. The electors of Bavaria hung the portraits of their mistresses in the halls of their palace for the admiration of strangers. [90] The morals of the sixteenth century were probably better than the morals at the beginning of the French Revolution; but that event has rather improved than deteriorated them. It frightened sovereigns, and made them pay attention to their conduct. It taught them that they do not reign by any divine right, but by the sufferance of the people; and they must take care not to outrage their feelings if they wish to retain their situations. No sovereign of Germany will now dare to behave as Augustus of Saxony did; and if any one should execute a man in the dark, as Ernest Augustus had Count Königsmark executed, he would be most certainly execrated as a monster. The personal crimes of Buonaparte were not half so flagrant as those of these sovereigns; and, owing to the improved morality of the world, they hurled him from his throne, and banished him from society.

There are many circumstances which prove that the commerce of the sexes was not very moral in Germany prior to the French Revolution, and that the chastity of the females was not very great. It has long been customary there for fathers or brothers [II-452] to select husbands for their daughters or sisters. This custom remains to this day. The husbands are selected by other people, and naturally the ladies select their lovers themselves. Acting on such a principle vitiates the engagement of marriage from its outset. For an attachment to be permanent and moral, it must begin in inclination, and be confirmed by habit and constant intercourse. To substitute for these the mere ceremony of marriage, and to expect to ensure fidelity by unmeaning forms, is something like expecting to supply the place of appetite and digestion by the grace before dinner. Wherever any foreign and artificial sanction is substituted for the affections of the heart, there the morality of the sexual intercourse is assuredly not great.

The manner in which Frederick the Great of Prussia prostituted his subjects to one another, when he thought it would procure him tall grenadiers, is notoriously known. At present, also, the sanction of the magistrate is substituted for the natural reasons for marrying: and all that ought to be holy in affection is made to give way to his views of political economy or state-craft.

Another class of men, whose actions have had a great influence on society, is the clergy. Since the Reformation in Germany, since they lost their power and wealth, their conduct has been exemplary. In the fourteenth century, they are described [II-453] as keeping mistresses with their natural children in their houses; and then the whole of the convents were considered as so many brothels. To send a woman to a convent was synonymous to making her a prostitute. [91]

To shew what morals formerly were, I may quote some other passages from the same historian and from Spittler. In the same century the art of wooing and winning was unknown, and the laws were not directed against the passion which was mutually gratified; but against violence and rape, which were then frequent. [92] Women were then stolen like cattle, and the embraces, even of noble ladies, were bestowed as a reward for dexterity. At the famous groel-feast at Brunswick, the best marksman was rewarded with a handsome woman. [93] Prostitutes were publicly licensed. What should we think of licensing [94] assassins? And one may, with as much propriety, be licensed as another. [II-454] Some public ladies of that day dwelt in the Red Convent, in the Wall Street, at Brunswick; and the common executioner levied the tax which they paid for the exercise of their trade. [95] At every former period, the same complaints were made of luxury which are made at present; and it and the growing prosperity of the people seem to have attained their height just before the thirty years’ war. That checked both prosperity and luxury; for at that period the power of the monarchs became fully established, and liberty was gradually destroyed. The morals of the Germans in those days, which are called chivalrous, appear to have been no better than the morals of the rest of Europe. That age has only been praised, because the violence of passion was taken for the energy of virtue,—or the glare of putrefaction for the animation of life.

That the state of morals was not very pure in Germany immediately prior to the French Revolution, may be argued from the sort of morality which is displayed in German literature. Marriage is seldom regarded in it as sacred; nor are the utmost excesses of the passion of love ever treated as criminal. Some young men may be occasionally found in every society who coquet with their own affections, and with the affections of females; but when they confess to the public, in manhood, [II-455] having done so in youth—when they confess this without offering any apology—when it can no longer gratify their vanity—and when they speak of it as a sort of joke—it is clear they must feel and know that it accords with the manners of the public to which they address themselves. Goethe has done this in his memoirs; [96] and he there confesses, without any shame as a man, that, as a boy, he should have been proud if he could have proved that he was the bastard descendant of a nobleman, though it was only to be attained by the adultery of one of his female ancestors.

An equally discreditable story is told of Bürger. His own wife was unfaithful to him, and he is said to have lived in adultery with her sister, and to have afterwards married her. It might have been expected that he would have been desirous to let the world forget the whole adventure; but he has taken care to excite its attention to it by his Hohe Lied von der Einzigen. And he has, in that, endeavoured to console her by calling the reproaches thrown on her conduct “vulgar blasphemy.” It is a tolerable measure of the virtue of the people, that this conduct subjected Bürger to their reproaches, though they were not severe enough to prevent him endeavouring to change them to a matter of triumph. They rather laughed at than [II-456] scorned him. They reproached, but did not reject, him; and he continued to live in the same society as before.

Individual sentiments, extracted from comedies of other works, may frequently be considered as caricatures; but they are very generally founded in some facts. Schiller, in his Kabal und Liebe, makes one of the chief officers of a German court say to his secretary, “What consequence is it to you whether you receive your ducat fresh from the mint, or from a banker’s? Console yourself by the example of the nobility; with or without knowledge, there is seldom a marriage concluded amongst us without at least half-a-dozen of the guests or attendants being able to judge exactly of the paradise of the bridegroom.” Though such sentiments may not be strictly true, they make the following anedotes and assertions probable.

When Joseph II. was recommended to set apart a place for courtezans, to which they should be confined, he replied he had nothing to do but draw a cordon round the whole city of Vienna; for he believed it did not contain one honest woman. In Baron Riesebeck’s Travels, Letter 8th, the reader may see a confirmation of this opinion of Joseph’s. The passage is too long to quote; but I am persuaded, bad as the morals of that city may be at present, they are not worse now than they were then. The same author says the canons of Augsburgh [II-457] purchased the daughters of the citizens by dozens every year. [97] Noblemen procured their own female relations as mistresses for monarchs, that they might rule in their counsels. [98] Of this there are numerous examples. In Bavaria, he says, “Every noble kept his mistress; the rest of the people indulged in promiscuous love; and the whole country was the greatest brothel of Europe.” [99] This sort of vice still thrusts itself on the notice of the traveller, but it is certainly now less than it was as described by the Baron. “If the females of Salzburgh,” he says, “are disposed to make a lover happy, neither the shame of an illegitimate birth, nor the fear of being obliged to maintain a child, is of any consequence to them. Custom sets them above the first, and they disregard the other. A peasant seldom forsakes his girl, particularly after having two or three children by her, if he can marry her.” [100] In truth, it has long been customary in Germany not to look on children born out of marriage (Kinder der Liebe) in an opprobrious manner. The very name (children of love) is something very different from bastards. A Bey Schläferinn, or woman who sleeps with a man without the ceremony of marriage, and though the connection is only to last for a convenient season, [II-458] is never regarded in any other light than as an amiable pleasure.

Again, Riesebeck says, “He found, at every place, in his voyage down the Danube, women waiting at the inns, who seemed ready for more services than one.” On this point, there seems no alteration. He describes the manners of Cologne as most licentious, and concludes thus:—“The evening services of the monks are like the evening walks in the suburbs of Vienna; and every alehouse round the place teems with adultery and fornication. If you happen to go into them of a holiday, you will commonly find the visitors in such a state of drunkenness as exactly reminds you of the old Germans and Scythians.” [101]

These remarks apply principally to the south of Germany; and, as this author no where mentions the character of the females of the north, but, in his 44th Letter, where he praises the Saxon women, and, in his 55th Letter, where he insinuates something not very chaste of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Hamburg, it would not be right to extend his remarks to the people of the north of Germany. But, from the conduct of the sovereigns,—from the facts quoted of a former period,—from the general character of the writings of Germany,—from the list of divorces which has [II-459] been given,—and from the number of natural children born at a former period,—there is reason to conclude the morals of the people of the north were not much better than those of the south.

The second point of accusation, namely, a fondness for prodigality and luxury, may also be traced to sovereigns having adopted splendour and extravagance to distinguish them from the rest of the society. It is the imitation of their corrupting example which has created all which is wrong in these desires. They exist in a still more reprehensible degree among people who have always treated French principles with the greatest disdain, and whom French armies have never visited but as prisoners; but who have always been governed, like the Germans, by monarchs who thought splendour necessary to their trade. The wasteful extravagance of princes exciting imitation is a constant, existing, and proximate cause for their subjects to be wasteful and extravagant; and it is most absurd to charge such conduct on the presence of the French armies. So far as I know, the taste for finery and luxury is never condemned but in the poorer people. In the rich, particularly when it is directed to statues, paintings, and music, it is much honoured. The taste itself prompts the poorer classes to industry and ingenuity. Corrected by general opinion, it leads only to an increase of comfort and enjoyment; and it only corrupts men when [II-460] the extravagance of princes is made the rule of society.

Germany has always been overrun with soldiers, and there is no reason to believe that a revolutionary Frenchman could commit more violence, or set a worse example, than the Uhlans, Croats, Hungarians, and Germans, who have, from time immemorial, devastated and plundered Germany. There can be no doubt that war and large armies, supported by the industry of other men, and corrupting the morals of women for want of better occupation, are very great causes for vice. But these are causes which have always existed in Germany. The princes have always kept large armies, and Germans have always made war on Germans. The French Revolution, and the overwhelming power of France, have, for the first time, made the Germans unite as a power; and wars amongst themselves will excite so much horror in future, that they will ultimately cease altogether. If it were for a moment allowed that the presence of the French armies had corrupted the females, what sort of virtue can be ascribed to them when they thus gave themselves up to the invaders and oppressors of their country? Had they not previously been corrupt in principle, the French, gay and gallant as they are, would have found a different reception.

[II-461]

On the whole, therefore, it appears that the Germans are improving in morality, and improving very rapidly. There is, at the same time, an abundance of proofs that they were improving before the French Revolution. That event gave a fresh impulse to their minds, but was, at the same time, connected with many impediments to improvement. It was followed by long and destructive wars. But the lovers of legitimacy have the sin of these wars to answer for as much as the lovers of revolution. The monarchs were rather more guilty than the people.

The very great improvements which the Germans have made, are, in some measure, the causes why some of them are of opinion that their morals are corrupted. The improvements are changes, and, as men generally assume their own habits and manners as the criterion of perfection, there are very few who do not regard every change as a deviation from right. The wealth and increased importance which the poorer classes have acquired in Germany, have enabled them to vie in comfort and prodigality with those who formerly considered themselves as their superiors. Philosophy regards the increase of the poorer classes in knowledge, and the greatest possible approximation to equality in society, as the surest means of promoting the happiness of all. But those persons who have been accustomed to despise all the pleasures [II-462] of a free interchange of sentiment, and knowledge, and services, between equals, and to place all their happiness in having their wants provided for by unremunerated and trembling slaves,—who look on a great portion of mankind as destined to toil for their benefit, regard every alteration in society which tends to elevate the poorer classes to an equality with them, as fraught with evil, and they name every such alteration a departure from morality. Such persons describe the present artificial distinctions of society as necessary to the happiness of all, and they not only spurn at every enjoyment which is inconsistent with their habitual worship of the idol their forefathers set up, but they sacrifice mankind to their idolatry. Artificial distinctions between men are diminishing in Germany, and all those persons whose importance was chiefly derived from these distinctions, cry aloud in the world that the society is corrupted. Their power and superiority rest on no merits of their own, but on the unreasonable submission of other men, and, prompted by a base selfishness, they name every diminution of this submission immorality and vice. According to their view, morality consists in quietly submitting to misery if it be inflicted according to law, and every attempt which men make to escape from this legitimately inflicted misery is stigmatized as immoral.

The French Revolution is one of the most conspicuous [II-463] series of events of modern times, and it is contaminated with many great atrocities; but some of the principles which were loudly published in a moment of freedom, gave an impulse to a spirit of inquiry and a desire for liberty which before existed, that bid fair ultimately to put an end to every species of bad government. Those atrocities may be chiefly ascribed to the corrupting influence of that wretched government, and that miserable superstition which had long substituted in France their own despicable mummeries for the natural reasons why men should be moral. As these mummeries were founded in error, they necessarily came to be despised, and those who had built their power on them were the first and the chief victims of the delusions they had so long upheld. The partizans of legitimate misrule, and the lovers of the artificial distinctions of society, fixed their attention only on the atrocities, and they sought the support of the virtuous part of mankind, by stoutly affirming that all these atrocities were occasioned by a mere attempt to get rid of their systems. They have every where affirmed that the world was growing immoral, and that this immorality was all occasioned by the French Revolution,—as if drunkenness, fornication, and thieving, were first known within a quarter of a century. The horrors of that Revolution have been made the defence of present errors, and are to be the bugbear of future generations. Wherever [II-464] men seek to improve the laws of their country, they are held up, like a gorgon’s head, to terrify them from alteration.

The Germans, like other people, have acquiesced in the assertions of those who have affirmed that the destruction of their own power is ruin to the happiness of society, because all men are willing to believe that every evil they suffer is caused by some extraordinary event rather than by their own conduct. To suppose that evil is caused by those social regulations which men prize as the highest effort of human wisdom, would imply that they were both deluded and guilty in submitting to them. And they therefore seek a cause for their misery in some single event, in some change of government in a distant country, or in the influence of the stars, rather than confess, even to themselves, that it is occasioned by their own unworthy submission to systems which have substituted the will of one man, the decrees of a few men, or the ceremonies of priests, for the natural and unchangeable reasons why one line of conduct should be preferred to another. So far as these systems could effect it, they have made some of the worst of our species the patterns of imitation, and the criterions of virtue. And their long continuance, not a momentary attempt to abolish them, must be considered as the true cause for much of the vice and misery which have long existed in the world.

[II-465]

The morals of a nation cannot be suddenly changed or destroyed by any single event. It requires time to make any considerable alteration in them. Nothing is more certain than opinions and habits of action descend from parents to children, subject only to little improvements. No miraculous change ever has, or ever can take place, in the conduct of a whole nation, and he who attributes the immorality of any people to a single event, not only rejects the evidence of a regular government in the moral world, which every day brings before him, but also all the evidence of history. The moral laws of nature are as regular and unalterable as her physical laws. He who has so beautifully constructed our bodies, has not left our conduct, on which our happiness depends, to be regulated by chance. The power which governs the world is not a sanguinary tyrant, who delights, by momentary and unexpected storms, to blight the best hopes of mankind. Regular laws are established in the moral world, and we have a capacity to discover them, and so to regulate our conduct by them, that we may diminish or destroy every species of evil. Patience disarms pain of its sting, foresight prevents calamity, and knowledge, as it advances, seems so to direct our passions, that they all work together for good. It was no momentary change in the government of France which made the mob of Paris into monsters. They [II-466] were as much delighted when they shouted with joy at Lally’s execution as when they exalted on their pikes the head of the Princess Lamballe. It was not the sudden irruption of the French armies into Germany, nor was it the wars which followed the French Revolution, which occasioned any corruptions which may exist in the morals of the Germans. Such as they are so they have been, with some gradual improvements, for ages past. And whatever there is in them of evil must be attributed to some long-existing cause, such as their governments, and not to any momentary and single event.

The few general remarks which my residence in Germany taught me to make are now concluded, and I shall terminate the work with an account of my journey to Frankfort.

CHAPTER XV.
cassel and frankfort.↩

Cassel; situation.—Wilhelms Höhe; date of its improvements; paid for by the blood of the Hessians.—The Museum.—Examples of the absurdities of learning.—Difference between Cassel and Hannover.—Fritzlar.—A tax on travellers.—Marburg.—Giessen.—Wetzlar.—Frankfort.—Fair.—Musicians.

Cassel is only a few hours’ walk from Münden, [102] and I arrived there at noon on September 3, 1818. It had rained extremely hard during the night, and the morning had the fresh cold feel of Autumn. Towards mid-day the weather became warm, and the palaces of Cassel, as I approached it, gleamed glorious in the sun. The outspread plain at the extremity of which it is situated was yet bright with newly-reaped corn fields. The Fulda, clear and bright with several tributary rivulets, was flowing at its foot, and the dark wood-covered hills in the back-ground, made its buildings whiter and more glancing. The plain was thickly [II-468] studded with villages and single houses, and the peasant, proud of a rich crop, was carrying home the last produce of his field. Few towns, indeed, are more beautifully situated than Cassel. It lies at the eastern foot of some commanding, well-wooded, and beautiful hills, and overlooks a fertile well-cultivated plain. Nothing, however, commanded my attention so much as the palace, situated on a hill above the town, and, not knowing what it was, I inquired of a peasant. “That,” he said, “was the Wilhelms Höhe.”—“But the building at the very top of the hill?—What is that which is seen from so far?”—“Oh, that is the Great Christ.” I then knew it was the celebrated copy of the Farnesian Hercules, which the Landgraf Charles caused to be erected in the beginning of the last century. The peasantry, however, have given their prince credit for a reverence for their own religion rather than for the mythology of the ancient world. They have transformed the son of Jupiter into their own Saviour, and they venerate the piety, as they record, with marks of wonder, the power of their sovereign.

After seeking, in Cassel, during the early part of the day, for any political or statistical works relative to Hesse Cassel, none of which I could find, except a Court Calendar, I strolled alone to the Wilhelms Höhe. This is the place which every stranger is most desirous to see. On Mondays, [II-469] Wednesdays, and Fridays, all the fountains, cascades, and other rattles of this monarch’s bauble, are made to spout and tumble for the amusement of the infant, or, as the Germans more pompously call it, the great public— des grosseren Publicum. It is only on one of these days that this royal plaything can be seen to advantage, and then it is visited by many parties, who come to Cassel for no other purpose than to see and admire it. There is nothing in the north of Germany more praised than it. It is thought to do honour to the taste and genius of the whole country. Every German appears to be enraptured with it, and when I sometimes attempted to laugh at the trifles they frequently described, I was assured I should change my opinion when I saw them. Perhaps I should, had I visited it in company with many other persons, and had I had a Cicerone to marshal my thoughts into the common order. But I was alone, and rather prejudiced against the place, because I knew the price of many of its beauties had been paid with the blood of the Hessians.

It certainly is one of the handsomest palaces of Germany. Its situation, about three miles from Cassel, at a considerable elevation on the same hill at the foot of which the town itself stands, and commanding a view of it and of all the surrounding country, is noble and grand. By it the hill, which is covered with fine woods, begins to rise [II-470] more abruptly. It was made a charming spot by nature, and needed nothing from the labour of man but a few scattered flowers and tasteful bushes, and winding walks, easy of ascent, to have rendered it a fit place either for the residence of a prince, for the retirement of a philosopher, for the haunts of a poet, or for the exercise and health of the population of the neighbouring city. I enjoyed the situation and the delightful evening when I visited it, but I looked on its numerous ornaments as the follies of a vitiated taste, and I was more displeased than amused by them! The sovereign and his architects, measuring the taste of mankind by their own taste, have converted this noble hill into a larger museum of monstrosities, and the attention of the people who go there is constantly turned from the admiration of nature to worship the petty wonders of mimic and useless art. Some places are levelled into gardens, and others are hollowed into ponds; cascades tumble from artificial rocks, and fountains spout up in a wilderness; old castles, newly built, to imitate ruins, in which all the arms and ornaments of the days of chivalry are collected to make up a goodly shew, tower on the heights; and grottos of yesterday, to imitate the eternal caverns of the world, have been dug under every brow. Homer’s hell, all on fire, with Pluto and Proserpine, and the grim judges, with Cerberus threatened by Hercules, all as large [II-471] as life, and as natural as they were ever seen in a penny shew, ornament one spot. Not far from it are the Fates and the Furies, with Orpheus and Eurydice, and all the gods, goddesses, thieves, and jades of the ancient mythology. Giants are buried under rocks, and spout scorn and defiance against the heavens; water is made to turn organs, blow flutes, and sound trumpets, and to give forth all the sweet sounds which are supposed to be heard in Elysium. The grotto of Neptune, in imitation of that of Tivoli, and Virgil’s tomb; a Chinese village and a Swiss cow-house; the Devil’s Bridge from St Gothard’s, and aqueducts from Rome; superb palaces, and numerous hermitages, are all crowded on this spot. In short, there is nothing, either of fancy or of reality, either of ancient or modern art and poetry, of which some counterpart, or some imitation, does not deform this beautiful hill. Taste looks at these disfigurements of nature with disdain, good sense deplores such a waste of labour for so perfectly childish an object, and philosophy execrates the whole, because it influences a trifling people to admire a magnificence that is purchased with their own degradation. Most of these playthings were made by sovereigns who lent their armies to Great Britain. They were, in fact, paid for by the bones and the blood of those Hessians who were sold by their fathers,—for so the sovereigns call themselves,—as soldiers, to put down [II-472] freedom in America. It is left to nice casuists to determine, whether there be more guilt in buying or in selling men; but surely nothing but an utter forgetfulness of the fact, could save any man from the reproaches of his own conscience, who could look on this blood-bought splendour with any feeling but horror. Yet men do look on it with rapture, and our modern Iscariots are prevented from hanging themselves, because they find a world to flatter, to imitate, and to worship them. But it is perhaps wrong thus to speak of the great; for he who ridicules their splendour, though it be bought by oppression, and their amusements, though they are childish and absurd, is known to weaken the claim they make to the respect of mankind, and he rebels against that authority to do mischief which they are said to derive from God. Such, however, were some of my reflections as I strolled through the beautiful gardens, and I felt no gratitude to the prince for any pleasure I enjoyed.

Some of the ornaments of the Wilhelms Höhe, particularly the water-works, were made in the beginning of the last century, but the new palace and the new old castle were built, and many of the other wonders were made, by the present sovereign, who began to reign in the year 1785. He inherited a large treasure from his father, the Landgraf Frederic, although he had always been a prince who loved pomp. But the historian accounts [II-473] for his leaving this behind him by saying, “he had kept a large army on foot, the greater part of which was in the pay of Great Britain.” The palace contains a number of pictures, most of which are the work of Tischbein; some few are by Böttner.

The new-town of Cassel, ornamented by the palaces of the sovereign and of his son, is well built. The streets are wide and well paved, and the Elector is about to make it still more magnificent by rebuilding the ancient residence of the Landgraves. The orangery, the park, and the walks, are all very fine, but Frederic’s Square and Bellevue are the handsomest parts of the town. In the former stands a colossal statue, fifteen feet high, of the Landgraf Frederic, erected to his honour by the states of the country. It was the last work of a sculptor called the famous Nahl, and it is recorded, as something extraordinary, that for this work he received 1000 R. Thalers, about L. 160 Sterling. At one side of this square stands a superb palace built by Frederic. He was the father of the present Elector, and reigned between the years 1760 and 1785; he was the great beautifier of Cassel; he loved magnificence, and was a patron of the arts; he founded an academy for them, and an agricultural society, and he built the palace just mentioned, which is now named Frederic’s Museum.

It contains a library, galleries of pictures, statues, urns, and antiques, collections of curious workmanship [II-474] in ivory, of minerals, and insects, of medals, of mathematical and optical instruments, of old arms and armour, of figures in wax, particularly all the family of Hesse Cassel, dressed in the very clothes they wore while living,—of musical instruments, and, in short, there is an immense building full of all sorts of curiosities. Indeed, a museum means a collection of things that are of themselves of no value. They are full of the baubles of nature, or the remains of antiquity; they are of great use to idle men, by enabling them to pass their time without doing mischief, and they afford the rich a manner of disposing of their wealth somewhat less pernicious than gambling or debauchery. A few hours might be passed in them with pleasure, if doing so did not tend to encourage people to form them, and if they, too, were not a part of that splendour or dissipation in the rulers of nations, which the subjects are impoverished and oppressed to support.

On several occasions I have mentioned the taste for trifles and absurdities which yet so much distinguishes scientific Germans, that their country is sometimes called a madhouse of natural philosophers. This unhappy propensity has undoubtedly been invigorated by the honours bestowed on such pursuits by the numerous sovereigns of Germany. At Cassel I was informed of a physician of Heidelberg, who, in the madness of scientific, or rather [II-475] witchcraft experiments, prescribed human brains to be taken inwardly as a cure for violent fevers, and he had worked something like a wonder on his patients, probably by affecting their imagination. Another celebrated man had recently adapted the entrails of cats as a specific for all disorders. And a public newspaper, while it announced the death of the child of a celebrated physician, also announced his intention of preserving it in his anatomical museum, along with some more of the issue of his loins who had before died. I give these anecdotes as forming the best illustration I know of the effects on the human mind of the patronage of scientific trifles.

Cassel possesses a great number of pictures, both in the Academy and in the Gallery of the reigning sovereign. Many of them are works of famous Italian and Dutch masters. The works of Tischbein are seen in various parts of the city. It was here the celebrated painters of this name, for there were two, lived and flourished. Cassel is ranked, by connoisseurs, as fourth in the list of the cities of Germany which ought to be visited. Vienna is first, then Berlin, Dresden, Cassel. Travellers, therefore, who have not grown weary of seeing wonders and sights, would do well to visit the palaces and curiosities of those fathers of their people, the Landgraves and Electors of Hesse Cassel.

With fine palaces in a land without commerce [II-476] there may be much poverty and many beggars, and I saw more of the latter in Cassel than I had seen for some time. They are not shy in demanding alms. When I had given one a Hessian albus, about a penny, to buy potatoes, as he explained it, he asked me for another, “that he might buy fat to them.” He was an old soldier, left to beg or starve. I met two or three such instances, and one old man said he had served in America.

The character of the Hessian people among the Germans is, that they are rather stupid and heavy, but very loyal and faithful. No stranger must breathe a word against their prince; and, with such devotion, they, of course, think the splendour of Cassel cheaply purchased with their own blood. Loyalty of subjects says nothing for the character of sovereigns. Men may be degraded to honour mortals who inflict misery and death on them. The inhabitants of Morocco are undoubtedly very loyal.

This disposition of the Hessian people accounts, however, for the joy which was exhibited by all classes as the Elector re-entered his dominions in the year 1813. He has since been involved in disputes, and has grown unpopular. He has forfeited love, though he is not yet hated. He seems to have forgotten that, in 20 years, another generation is walking the earth, who differ from their fathers. He returned too rashly to his former plans of government. [II-477] Every part of the country to which regulations could reach, even to the ancient uniform of the soldiers, pig-tails and all, was to be restored to the precise same state as it was in the year 1798. This, of course, excited some murmurs;—even the military were offended at being exposed to the laughter of the rest of their fellow-citizens and of Germany. The students of Göttingen, who make frequent excursions to Cassel, helped to ridicule the whole. To do honour, they said, to the Elector, they visited Cassel in a large body; and every one wore a tail that reached to the ground. The citizens chuckled—the soldiers were offended—and the Elector himself, though he could not openly be angry, sent a message to Göttingen requesting the young men might be kept in better order.

The splendour of Cassel made me more sensible of the difference occasioned by the sovereign living in or out of the country. Hannover, whose sovereigns have long been more powerful than the landgraves of Hesse, has no sort of magnificence. Cassel has a great deal. The sovereign of the one draws as large a revenue from his country as the sovereign of the other, but the electors of Hannover have resided out of the country for more than a century, while the landgraves of Hesse have lived at home. This is probably the point on which the natives of Hannover have suffered most by their sovereign being king of Great Britain. I do not believe much of [II-478] their wealth has been imported into Britain; and I am sure there are no traces of the wealth of Britain in Hannover, but the Hannoverians have wanted all the advantages which the residence of a sovereign brings. His revenues have been divided amongst numerous nobles, who have spent them in trifles, and have left no memorial, either of usefulness or magnificence. The sovereigns of Hannover have, however, nourished one of the best universities of Germany; and probably the encouragement which they have given to learning by the establishment at Göttingen would not have been bestowed had not their taste for magnificence been gratified at the expence of another nation. The Hannoverians may have lost something by wanting the splendour of a capital, but the dignity of their sovereign has been a means of increasing their attachment to him; and, like the Hessians, they also are distinguished for their loyalty.

It is by no means a revolutionary practice, that sovereigns should keep mistresses while their wives are yet living. This is an immorality of the old school, which is still practised by the Elector of Hesse Cassel, probably from his reverence for former customs. Three ladies have been distinguished as having enjoyed his embraces. He has still one. In this point, his son follows his example. In one part of a square is the palace where the wife of the young prince lives; in another is a house [II-479] which is the residence of his mistress. The elector openly lives with his mistress, but the son only openly visits his, as if he were ashamed of following too closely the example of the father. Sovereigns deserve to have tales of scandal told of them by their flatterers; and they would not be here mentioned, were it not that their example has a vast deal of influence on the morality of the world; the guilt of corrupting it attaches much less to the Jacobins than to them.

Between Cassel and Frankfort, which it cost me three days to reach, the country for the whole distance is fertile and agreeably diversified. It is well peopled, and there is a considerable traffic, but the roads are by no means good. The inns are large, but dirty and ill-provided. Some traces of prosperity were visible, but more of poverty and want. At Fritzlar, which is a Catholic town, I was rather incommoded by intrusive begging boys. There had formerly been a large convent of Ursulines here, which was recently destroyed,—though a few pious nuns still remain, who employ themselves educating girls. A considerable number come from the neighbouring villages to learn fine needle-work. The former revenues of the convent will now swell the revenues of the prince; and the people, on whose industry they are a tax, will derive no benefit from the change. The evident poverty and beggary of this little town, while it is situated [II-480] in a pleasant fertile country, was undoubtedly owing, in a great measure, to the convent and the Catholicism.

Some students, who came from Göttingen, and were going to Nassau, were my companions for some time. They were quite boastful of what they had done at Göttingen, and seemed to think they could accomplish whatever they pleased. They sang as we marched; and though they had been so reduced by their pranks, that one of them was actually without shoes, and they had but little money to pay their travelling expences, they were merry companions. The Germans understand, in general, the art of self-denial very little; and these young men, as they encountered any person by the road, adopting the phrase of relationship, ( Vetter, cousin,) borrowed tobacco, or stopped the traveller till he had given them a light. Their quarters at night did not precisely suit me; and I left them to enjoy their thick milk covered with grated bread and sugar for supper, and their straw to sleep on; and, by walking some distance further, I procured a good bed, a cleaner inn, and better food.

The sovereign of Cassel levies a tax on people passing through his dominions, by making them pay for their passports. The fee, which was twopence, was exacted at Marburg. There is a university here. It is the only one belonging to Cassel, but is not very celebrated at present. The [II-481] whole population of the town does not exceed 6000 souls.

The town of Giessen, where there is another university, and which is very little more populous than Marbourg, is situated about 20 miles from it. It is in the territories of Hesse Darmstadt, and on the high road. Not far from Giessen, but out of the high road, lies the town of Wetzlar, which was formerly celebrated as the seat of the Cammergericht, one of the highest tribunals of Germany under the old constitution of the empire, and one of the means by which the subjects of every part of it were protected from arbitrary injustice. Like the other tribunals of Germany, the judges belonging to it were divided into two banks—a bank of nobles, and a bank of jurists; and it exercised a considerable degree of power over the minor princes of the empire. It was one of the means by which the jurisconsults established their extensive dominion in Germany. It lasts to this day. They are, and have long been, as councillors and as judges much more the rulers of Germany than the nobles. Their fetters bind even the princes. Wetzlar is also celebrated as the place where Goethe composed the Sorrows of Werther, and where he placed the scene of this romance. This circumstance, with the fountain of Charlotte and the tomb of Werther, both of which exist as described by the poet, may still induce travellers to visit it; but its political [II-482] importance was destroyed with the ancient constitution of the empire. And there is now no tribunal but the public press, to which complaints can be carried of the sovereigns of Germany.

The whole of the country through which I passed to arrive at Frankfort abounds in fruit. Apples, pears, and plums, are preserved and dried on an extensive scale, and form a considerable article of commerce. The road-sides were planted with fruit trees, which seemed common property; for every body plucked and eat their produce. When the traveller is oppressed with heat and dust, no labour appears so benevolent as that which thus supplies him both with shelter and refreshment. Even in places where the trees were inclosed, their branches hung so often temptingly in the road, that it was impossible to refrain from plucking the fruit; and the gardeners and labourers seemed not to envy the traveller the trifling theft. As I saw some bare-footed women travellers doing this, I could not avoid thinking, if mother Eve had been a German soldier’s wife, travelling on a dusty road, on a hot day, there would have been some excuse for her breaking the command by which she doomed her posterity to sin and misery. But, living in the midst of sweets, of fragrant flowers, and refreshing streams, and not condemned to labour, she could only have done it from that disposition to disobey arbitrary commands, which, whether she [II-483] bequeathed it to her descendants or not, is now evidently universal. The luxuries of fruit and fine weather made a walk, otherwise solitary, extremely pleasant.

There was a fair in Frankfort when I reached it, and every inn was so full that it was with great difficulty I procured a lodging. This is a city which has been so recently described by other travellers, that I shall say nothing of it. I was surprised by the whirl and the bustle in its streets, and by the immense quantity of itinerant musicians whom the fair had brought together. There was not a street in which three or four parties or bands were not playing; not a day passed in which the inn was not visited during dinner by several companies, and there was no inn in which their strains were not heard at various hours of the day. I once formed a devout wish that music might be more spread amongst our people—that it might be taught to them in their daily schools, and in large assemblies of children. Frankfort led me to modify this wish. If such an improvement should be the result of the sovereign patronising music; if it should not grow from the people feeling the want themselves; if they should be schooled into it; and, above all, if it should precede political knowledge, and political improvement, as it has done in Italy and Germany; it will only render a vast number of our people like so many Italians [II-484] and Germans—beggarly and wandering musicians. It may be wished that our countrymen may become more musical; but they should think only of music as an amusement, not as an employment, and they should spurn it, while it can be regarded as a means of making them content with the misery inflicted by bad governments.

Frankfort differs from Cassel as much as Cassel does from Hannover in its splendour; but, in Frankfort, it is spread over a great part of the city. It is not confined to a palace or a hill, but adorns the gardens and houses of numerous wealthy merchants, and beautifies both the town and the environs. The suburbs are ornamented with fine walks; and the taste for flowers and gardens which distinguishes the other parts of Germany is very conspicuous in Frankfort.

From Frankfort I floated down the Rhine into Holland, where I remained some weeks; and then returned to England, where I arrived in November, after an absence of more than three years.

APPENDIX.

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[II-489]

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