the public, instead of us, is to correct; and then, in the second edition, we can pare off somewhat, and clap on somewhat.

But it is precisely this late correction, when the former author, with his former mood and love, is no longer forthcoming, that works with dubious issue. Thus Schiller justly left his Robbers unaltered. On the other hand, the same sun-warmth of creation can, in a second hour, return as a sun-warmth of ripening. Writers who mean to pay the world only in plated coins can offer no shadow of reason for preferring first thoughts; since the very thought they write down must, in their heads, during that minute's space, have already gone through several improved editions.

Still deeper thanks than those of the critic to our Authoress, let the patriot give her. Through the whole work there runs a veiled sorrow that Germany should be found kneeling, and, like the camel, raise itself still bent and heavy-laden. Hence her complaints1 that the present Germans have only a philosophical and no political character; farther, that the German,2 even through his moderate climate, in which he has not the extremes of heat and cold to encounter, but without acquirement of hardiness easily secures himself against evils of an equable nature, should be softening into unwarlike effeminacy; farther, those other complaints," about our division of ranks, our deficiency in diplomatic craft and lying; about the German great, who, to the tedium of the French themselves, still take an interest in Louis Fourteenth's mistresses and anecdotes. she says,5

Thus

'Les Allemands ont besoin de dédaigner pour devenir les plus forts; ' and two lines lower,

'Ce sont les seuls hommes, peut-être, auxquels on pouvait conseiller l'orgueil comine un moyen de devenir meilleurs.'

She is almost right. Not as if, one towards another, and in words, we did not set ourselves forward, and take airs enough, on printed paper; each stands beside the others with a ready-plaited garland for him in his hand; but in actions, and towards foreigners and persons in authority, it is still to be lamented that we possess but two cheeks for the receiving of cuffs, in place of four, like the Janushead; although, in this cheek-deficiency, we do mend matters a little, when we turn round, and get the remainder. During the French war, and in the peace before it, there were many statesmen, if not states also, that considered themselves mere half-stuff, as rags

1 Tom. v. ch. 11.
4 Tom. i. ch. 9.

2 Tom. i. p. 20.
5 Tom. v. p. 200.

3 Tom. i. ch. 2.

in the paper-mill are called, when they are not cut small enough, till once they were ennobled into whole-stuff, when the devil (so, in miller-speech, let Napoleon's sceptre be named) had altogether hacked them into finest shreds.

In vol. v. p. 123, is a long harsh passage, where the German subserviency is rated worse than the Italian; because our physiognomies and manners and philosophical systems promise nothing but heart and courage—and yet produce it not. Here, and in other passages regarding Prussia, where 1 she says,

'La capitale de la Prusse ressemble à la Prusse elle-même: les édifices et les institutions ont âge d'homme, et rien de plus, parcequ'un seul homme en est l'auteur,'

one willingly forgives her the exaggeration of her complaints; not only because time has confuted them, and defended us and re-exalted us to our ancient princedoms, but also because her tears of anger over us are only warmer tears of love, with which she sees, in the Germans, falling angels at war with fallen.

The Preface gives a letter from Police-minister and General Savary to Madame, wherein, with much sense, he asserts that the work is not of a French spirit, and that she did well to leave out the name of the Empereur, seeing there was no worthy place for him. 'Il n'y pouvait trouver de place qui fût digne de lui,' says the General; meaning, that among so many great poets and philosophers, of various ages and countries, the Elbese would not have cut the best figure, or looked digne (worshipful) enough. The gallant Police-minister deserves here to be discriminated from the vulgar class of lickspittles, who so nimbly pick up and praise whatever falls from princes, especially whatever good, without imitating it; but rather to be ranked among the second and higher class (so to speak), who lick up any rabid saliva of their superior, and thereby run off as mad and fiery as himself. Only thus, and not otherwise, could the General, from those detached portions which the censor had cut out, have divined, as from outpost victories, that the entire field was to be attacked and taken. Accordingly, the whole printed Edition was laid hold of, and, as it were, under a second paper-mill devil, hacked anew into beautiful pulp. Nor is that delicate feeling of the whilom censors and clippers to be contemned, whereby these men, by the faintest allusion, smell out the crown-debts of their crown-robber (usurper), and thereby proclaim them. The Sphinx in Elba, who, unlike the ancient one, spared only him that could not rede his riddle, (a riddle consisting in this, to make Europe like the Turkish grammar, wherein there is but one conjugation, one declension, no gen

1 Tom. i. p. 108.

der, and no exception), - could not but reckon a description of the Germans, making themselves a power within a power, to be ticklish matter. And does not the issue itself testify the sound sense of these upper and under censors ? Forasmuch as they had to do with a most deep and polished enemy, whom they could nowise have had understanding enough to see through, were it not that, in such cases, suspicion sees farther than your half-understanding. She may often (might they say), under that patient nun-veil of hers, be as diplomatically mischievous as any nun-prioress.

But, not to forget the Work itself, in speaking of its fortunes, the Reviewer now proceeds to some particular observations on certain chapters; first, however, making a general one or two. No foreigner has yet, with so wide a glance and so wide a heart, apprehended and represented our German style of poetry, as this foreign lady. She sees French poetry, — which is a computable glittering crystal, compared with the immeasurable organisation of the German, - really in its true form, though with preference to that form, when she describes it as a poésie de société. In the Vorschule der Aesthetik,1 it was, years ago, described even so, though with less affection; and in general terms, still earlier, by Herder. The Germans, again, our Authoress has meted and painted chiefly on the side of their comparability and dissimilarity to the French; and hereby our own self-subsistence and peculiar life has much less clearly disclosed itself to her. In a comparison of Nations, one may skip gaily along, among perfect truths, as along radii, and skip over the centre too, and miss it.

Concerning the chapters in the First Volume, one might say of our Authoress in her absence almost the same thing as before her face. For generalities, such as nations, countries, cities, are seized and judged of by her wide traveller-glance, better than specialities and poets, by her Gallic, narrow, female taste; as, indeed, in general, large masses, by the free scope they yield for allusions, are, in the hands of a gifted writer, the most productive. However, it is chiefly polite Germany, and most of all literary Germany, that has sat to her on this occasion; ad of the middle class, nothing but the literary heights have come into view. Moreover, she attributes to climate what she should ha e le ked for in history: thus 2 she finds the temperate regions more favourable to sociality than to poetry, 'ce sont les 'délices du midi ou les rigueurs du nord qui ébranlent fortement l'imagina'tion; therefore, South Germany, that is, Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria and Austria. Now, to say nothing of the circumstance that, in the first three of these countries, the alternation between the flowersplendour of spring and the cloudy cold of winter raises both the temperate warmth and the temperate coldness to the poetical degree, 2 Tom. i. c. 5.

1 B. iii. k. 2.

thereby giving them two chances, the opinion of our Authoress stands contradicted by mild Saxony, mild Brandenburg, England, Greece, on the one hand, and by warm Naples and cold Russia on the other. Nay, rather extreme frost and extreme heat may be said to oppress and exhaust the poet; and the Castalian fountain either evaporates or freezes. On the other hand, regions lying intermediate between these temperatures are those where mind and poetry are met with unshackled.

In chap. ii., de l'esprit de conversation, she describes very justly the art of talking (different from the art of speaking) : 1

'Le genre de bien être que fait éprouver une conversation animée ne consiste précisément dans le sujet de conversation; les idées ni les connaissances qu'on peut y développer n'en sont pas le principal intérêt; c'est une certaine manière d'agir les uns sur les autres, de se faire plaisir réciproquement et avec rapidité, de parler aussitôt qu'on pense, de jouir à l'instant de soi-même, d'être applaudi (applaudie) sans travail, de manifester son esprit dans toutes les nuances par l'accent, le geste, le regard, enfin de produire à volonté comme une sorte d'électricité, que fait jaillir des étincelles.'

The passage 2 where she counsels the Germans to acquire social culture and resignation in respect of social refinement, merits German attention. It is true, she should not, before denying us and prescribing us the French art of talking, have said: 8

'L'esprit de conversation a quelquefois l'inconvénient d'altérer la sincérité du caractère; ce n'est pas une tromperie combinée, mais improvisée, si l'on peut s'exprimer ainsi :'

which, in plain language, signifies, in this art there is one unpleasant circumstance, that sometimes your honesty of heart suffers thereby ; and you play the real, literal knave, though only on the spur of the moment, and without special preparation. For the rest, it must be such passages as this, where she denies us these moral and æsthetic Gallicisms, allowing us, for compensation, nothing but learning, depth of heart and thought; such passages it must be by light of which the Journal de Paris, finding us denied not only the tromperie combinée, but now even the improvisée, has discovered that our Authoress is a secret enemy of the Germans; who will surely (hopes the Journal) get into anger with her, though, as always, not till late. For sharply as she attacks the French, she does it only on the moral side, which these forgive the more easily and feel the more faintly, the more she is in the right; but we again are assaulted in graver wise, and with other consequence, namely on the side of our understanding, which, as com2 Page 81. 3 Page 70.

1 Page 68.

pared with the Gallic, in regard to business, to knowledge of the world, nay to combining and arranging works of art, she everywhere pronounces inferior.

'Les Allemands mettent très-rarement en scène dans leurs comédies des ridicules tirés de leur propre pays; ils n'observent pas les autres; encore moins sont-ils capables de l'examiner eux-mêmes sous les rapports extérieurs, ils croiraient presque manquer à la loyauté qu'ils se doivent.'

To form the plan, to order the whole scenes towards one focus of impression (effet), this, says she, is the part of Frenchmen; but the German, out of sheer honesty, cannot do it. Nevertheless, our Lessing vowed that he could remodel every tragedy of Corneille into more cunning and more regular shape; and his criticisms, as well as his Emilia Galotti, to say nothing of Schiller and all the better German critics, are answer enough to Madame de Staël's reproach.

Three times, and in as many ways, she accounts for our deficiency in the art of witty speech. First, from our language: but had she forgotten her German when she wrote concerning it, 'La construction ne permet pas toujours de terminer une phrase par l'expression la plus piquante?' For does not directly, on the contrary, our language, alone among all the modern ones, reserve any word it pleases, any part of speech without exception - - nay sometimes a half-word,2naturally and without constraint, for a dessert-wine of conclusion? Madame de Staël should also, to inform herself, have read at least a few dozen volumes of our epigram-anthologies with their thousand endstings. What do Lessing's dialogues want, or our translations from the French, in regard to pliancy of language? But, on the whole, we always, this is her second theory of our conversational maladroitness, wish too much to say something or other, and not, like the French, nothing: a German wishes to express not only himself, but also something else; and under this something we frequently include sentiment, principle, truth, instruction. A sort of disgust comes over us to see a man stand speaking on, and quite coolly determined to show us nothing but himself: for even the narrator of a story is expected to propose rather our enjoyment in it than his own selfish praise for telling it.

In the third place, we are too destitute, complains our Authoress, of wit, consequently of bon-mots, and so forth. Reviewer complains, on the other hand, that the French are too destitute thereof. A Hippel, a Lichtenberg, like a Young or Pope, has more and better wit

1 Tom. i. p. 84.

2 Paul has made this very sentence an example of his doctrine; one half of the word 'reserve' (heben) occurring at the commencement, the other half (auf) not till the end.-T.