poses the fibre of the mind in both sexes, — by such readers, Prik p the present tale may not be highly relished: for to be cheated even by a fiction into sound reflection, or useful instruction, Is a fraud which they will not easily forgive. They may find out that it is full of historical research, and of political and moral reasoning, and they may therefore lay it aside: - but there are higher suffrages to gain, and this writer has well earned them. He will receive the thanks of the scholar, who values the purity and beauty of the English tongue; of those to whom information is amusement; and of all who are at the same time willing to augment their stock of innocent gratification, and to multiply their sources of liberal knowlege. ART. III. A Memoir of Charles Louis Sand; including a Narrative of the Circumstances attending the Death of Augustus Von Kotzebue : also, a Defence of the German Universities. With an Introduction and explanatory Notes, by the Editor. 8vo. pp. 130. 5s. 6d. Boards. Whittaker. 1819. ART. IV. Germany and the Revolution. By Professor Goerres, late Editor of the Rhenish Mercury. Translated from the original German, by John Black. 8vo. pp. 336. 10s. 6d. Boards. Longman and Co. 1820. BOTH the volumes, of which translations are now before us, have a German origin*, and throw light on the pursuits and opinions of the patriotic party in Germany: we shall consider them, therefore, in connection, and bring together the remarks which we have to make concerning the revolutionary tendencies now more than ever conspicuous in several leading minds of that country. The wish for a fundamental change in the political constitution of Germany is of antient date, and had acquired during the reign of the Emperor Joseph II. a systematic tendency, and a formal though secret body of co-operators. In our xxvth volume, p. 309. and p. 505., and in our xxviith volume, p. 511., we endeavoured to describe the Bavarian Illuminati; and to prove that they contemplated the consolidation of Germany under one uniform representative body, and the coalition of its dissident churches under the comprehensive creed of Servetus. A free constitution was the price at which they wished to hold their country at auction; and they would gladly have knocked it down whole to the first Austrian or Prussian sove * We have also on our table, "L'Allemagne et La Révolution, par J. Goerres; traduit de l'Allemand, par C. A. Scheffer." 8vo. Paris. 1819. Imported by Treuttel and Würtz. Price 6s. reign who had the courage to bid. These Illuminati were dissolved and dispersed by the interference of the Bavarian government; and every concern of that order had ceased in the year 1790. Still, the detection and exposure of their private views has operated, not to the extinction of the pursuit, but to its public continuation. The secret of the mysteries is betrayed, but the adhesion of the initiated remains. New combinations have been formed, free from the mummery of the original confederates, and less prone to a suspicious privacy; anniversary conventions have been founded in honour of the worthies of the country; schools for gymnastic and military exercises have been extensively patronized; students from different universities have coalesced into one common collegian's club; and itinerant lecturers have carried into the principal cities those inferences of speculative patriotism, which had been approved by the educated world in the lessons of distinguished professors. It was particularly during the year 1814, that the zeal for the consolidation of Germany acquired a stable and radical popularity. The courts of Austria and Prussia were then in alliance to expel the French from Germany, and had dragged into their combination the somewhat reluctant efforts of Saxony and Bavaria. The whole periodical press of Germany now broke loose at once against the common foe; the people were exhorted to arm, on the principles of their national militia, or Landwehr; they moved to the field under officers not separated by nobility from sympathies with the many; they expressed a wish for representative constitutions, and received the promise of one from their sovereigns. Animated by gratitude and patriotism, they waged this warfare at their own expence; sons of gentlemen crowded the inferior ranks of the German army; they fought, conquered, and expelled the foreign foe. The vow made in emergency, however, ease has recanted; and the Germans regard as perfidious and traitorous the new explanation given to the promise of their princes, which aims at eluding the grant of an elective house of legislators. It was peculiarly the interest of Great Britain to facilitate at this period the consolidation of Germany, because the nation had been aroused on principles decidedly Anti-gallican; and, if the then literary and practical leaders of the people had been assisted into stationary influence, the entire country would have acquired a permanent hostility to French power, French aggrandizement, and French principles. It would also have lifted off our tired shoulders the weight of habitual opposition in Europe to French ascendancy; and it would have become the regular counter poise to France, the cheap and voluntary preserver of the balance of power. A danger is now approaching of a different kind. If the hegemony, or direction, of Catholic Germany habitually resides with the house of Austria, and that of Protestant Germany with the house of Prussia, neither of these governments possesses the entire confidence of the provinces which they undertake to represent. In fact, it is the public opinion of Bavaria which gives the tone to the liberal Catholics, and it is the public opinion of Saxony which gives the tone to the liberal Protestants. Now, both these courts gallicize. Hence, the longer the consolidation of Germany is under any pretext delayed, the more the patriotic party will approximate to French views. Already the Liberalists of Paris are afresh insinuating themselves into German party, and are indirectly inquiring whether the French side of the Rhine would be ceded as a reward for mediatizing the Austrian, Prussian, and superfluous princes on the other. The Monument à la gloire Nationale, the Catechisme des Braves, nay the very project of giving to the legislature at Paris an uninterrupted duration of five or seven years, are but so many forms of investigating whether a new continental crusade of liberty would be welcome. These things, we trust, will be prevented by a courageous determination of the Prussian court to proclaim at home a rational constitution, and to accept at all risks the political organization of native and domestic choice. Such a leaning might be accelerated by the ministers of this country, who might apply to the regency of Hanover to abolish in that kingdom the existing censorship of the press. Vast and wealthy bibliographical establishments would then be transferred to Hanover, which would become a city of printers, a mart of literature, a fountain of opinion, a fortress of independence, a congress of authors, and the brain of Germany; and here would be erected that steam-pump of instruction, the periodical press. If, however, sovereigns have not the courage to let it work uninterrupted, and to trust in literature itself for the cure of its own evils, the edifice should not be attempted. A lack of moral courage and a puny fear of abuse exist in Germany, which are more excusable among public men there than in England, because they have less experience on the Continent of the evaporating nature of contumely; and it is this timid apprehension of satire which continues the pernicious censorship. Yet, without abolishing it, Germany will never know what are the wishes and wants of the people; or in what direction the path of innovation must be smoothed to produce a voluntary and lasting allegiance, allegiance. Give to publicity its swing, exacting personal responsibility from every publisher, and no author will incline to utter counsels more violent than courts of judicature would tolerantly absolve. Every body knows that speculation must go beyond practice, that the exaggerations of eloquence must exceed precise justice, and that, to act strongly on the imagination, metaphors must be drawn from pictures of animal violence. News-papers are to our northern pot-houses what dancers are to those of the east. The rant of the press is commonly felt like the declamation in a tragedy; that brisk excitement of mind is welcome which it arouses, but nobody goes out with an intention to perpetrate the act to which it points. There is great difficulty in consolidating Germany, and it can be equitably accomplished only by gradual means. To have mediatized at Aachen more of the petty princes would have diminished the difficulty. The transfer of the Austrian metropolis to Buda, and the permission to aggran dize herself eastward along the Danube, on condition of throwing into the German mass what little she possesses that would interfere with the rotundity of the empire, are projects not now in agitation. The most efficacious step of all, however, would have been for those very authorities, which met to recommend every where a consistent censorship, to have begun on the contrary by the introduction of some popular improvements, such as the amendment of roads, letter-conveyance, and diligences, the abolition of interior tolls and customhouses, the enterprize of canals, and the reform of jurisprudence. Thus they might, in their collective capacity, and strengthened by public opinion, have overcome the local resistance of peculiar interests, and have accustomed the country to obey a common force: but they considered themselves as agents of the separate courts by whom they were sent, instead of assuming the independent rights and duties of their aggregate institution. Neither of the writers, whose productions are before us, appears to us to have seized in the happiest point of view the resources of Germany. Neither of them enough seeks the germ of consolidation from within; or looks round for the extant institution, out of which could be evolved a legitimate collective national authority. Neither of them exhorts the imperial free cities, for instance, to hold meetings of the respectable inhabitants, and to suggest in their local municipal organization such changes as would place elective magistrates at the head of the respective corporations. Yet this step, realized in the large towns, and copied in the smaller, would quickly generate a sort of Anseatic league of the represented cities, cities, presided by some high master, to whom kings would have to sue. Such city-delegates would be able to negotiate loans, and to contract for military services with the feudal chieftains of the nation; and they might efficaciously petition for several progressive facilitations of the book-trade, of the forms of conveyance, of the internal traffic, and even of the political distribution of the people. In time, these things would require the habitual attendance of the Anseatic deputies at Frankfort, or some more convenient metropolis. Accomplish this, and the rest follows. The nucleus of crystallization is wanting, not the temperature that would precipitate the salt. One danger may be apprehended from the extant plan of abandoning to professors, students, and men of letters, the whole management of the changes projected'; namely, that sweeping theories of institution will be applied in every case, with little regard to local collision or to individual interests. These are more likely to be considered by burghers of opulence; and hence the expediency of calling out into action the property of the country in the name of the intellect, rather than the intellect in the name of the property. The universities of Germany may be ripe for a change: but that moral revolution, which is the true harbinger of a physical one, can scarcely be considered as accomplished in a state in which great proprietors and men of title are not found at all generally to court popularity, in the form of recommending and protecting improvement. However, we ought not to oppose inferences drawn in the closet to those of local inspection. The Editor of the Memoir concerning Sand has recently visited Germany; and He has observed the extraordinary sensation created by the fate of M. Kotzebue, and has been very forcibly struck by the great degree of involuntary sympathy every where so eagerly manifested in favour of the perpetrator Sand, whose portrait he frequently saw exhibited in frames containing those of the most distinguished German patriots; while various pamphlets, and numerous elegiac stanzas, extolled his early virtues and deplored his melancholy fate. It was natural for him to feel the utmost surprize at these circumstances, and that too, in a country whose inhabitants are, above all others, least likely to advocate or approve the dreadful crime of assassination. * Concluding, therefore, that this singular state of the public mind, must have originated in some cause arising from the peculiar nature of the times and condition of the people, he determined to extend his inquiries; and although the more minute • Robberies and murders are less frequent in the German states than in any part of Europe.' L REV. FEB. 1820. results |