as if it were lodged in a royal or imperial bosom. In "free" Dantzig, the most wealthy and respectable of the artisan class could not give a wedding-feast without the presence of a municipal officer in full dress, with a sword by his side, to count the guests and see that they did not exceed the number prescribed by the laws of the city, and to ascertain that the bride wore no forbidden ornaments, such as real pearls. Before Madame Schopenhauer was married, Dantzig had fallen into the hands of Frederick of Prussia, and soon after their marriage her husband went to Berlin and requested an interview with the Prussian king: "It was immediately granted, and Frederic,, struck by his frank, upright character, and his knowledge of commercial affairs, pressed him to settle in his dominions, and offered him every possible privilege and protection. M. Schopenhauer was beginning to feel the resistless influence which Frederic exercised on all around him, when the king, pointing to a heap of papers in the corner, said Voilà les calamités de la ville de Danzig. These few words broke the spell for ever; and though Frederic afterwards repeated his offers, the sturdy patriot never would accept the smallest obligation from him. At length, seeing that all hope of the deliverance of his native city from a foreign yoke was at an end, he determined to quit it for ever, and to seek a freer home. In this determination his young wife fully concurred, and they set out on a tour of observation through the Netherlands, France, and England. The free citizen was well matched. They stopped a short time at Pyrmont,-then, except Carlsbad, the only one of those German baths whose names have become legion; and here the republican bride, together with a sister Hanseate from Hamburg, had a glorious opportunity of showing their disdain of courts and sovereigns. The then reigning Duchess of Brunswick very good-naturedly asked to have these young ladies presented to her. They professed their ignorance of court etiquette, but were told they had only to make an inclination, as if to kiss the hand or the garment of the Duchess. This was too much. 'We, free-born women, subject of no prince, kiss the hand of another woman, neither our mother nor our grandmother? The very thought made my republican blood boil, and, supported by my Hamburg friend, I declined the proffered honour."" From the free towns and domestic life of German citizens Mrs. Austin takes us to the German courts of the latter portion of the last century, when the holy Roman empire was on the verge of dissolution, through the decay of its system and the impetuous onslaught of French ideas and French conquerors. As her story advances nearer to our own times, she enters more fully into the influence of public events upon private life, and illustrates the miseries that war brings, not only in its train, but to all who are remotely influenced by it. VOL. II.-NEW SERIES. N Some of her anecdotes are striking proofs of the ruin which official stupidity and conceited pedantry bring upon a people who are living solely upon the past, when they come into conflict with such a race as the revolutionary armies of France. She has many stories which show the wretched incapacity which prevailed among the nobles of Germany, and account for the prostration of the national power before the arms of Napoleon. There is nothing of this kind in the following sketch of a Servian noble; but we may gather from it the small progress in civilisation of no inconsiderable portion of the subjects of Austria: "At four in the morning,' says the Ritter von Lang, from whom Mrs. Austin quotes,' the old lord called up his lieges with a speakingtrumpet:-Domine Pater! surgas! Domine Provisor! Domine Cancellista Frumentarie! surgas! He did not desist till he saw through the windows the glimmering of their newly-lighted candles, or till he was greeted in return by the morning salutation-Salve, Domine perillustris ! In half an hour they were all assembled round him to receive their orders for the day. "The castle stood in the midst of a swamp, where nothing vegetable was to be found but rushes and Indian corn; and nothing animal, but herds of swine and wolves. To keep off the latter, every evening as soon as it was dark a great fire was lighted in the castle-court, by which five-and-twenty Pandours kept watch all night. As a precaution against bands of robbers from the Turkish frontier, all the doors were strongly barred, and arms loaded every night. "The Slavonian peasant seemed to me little better than half swine, half wolf. He works little, and drinks and sleeps away most of his time. When he has nothing in the house to eat, he goes to the swamp, catches a pig, kills it, and roasts it whole. Every one who enters the house cuts off what he likes, and this goes on till it is quite putrid.' "At length our author quitted these barbarous regions, in company with several other travellers. We were,' said he, 'all crowded into a carriage together, the Dominus spectabilis, the Domini perillustres, myself-Dominus clarissimus,-and several Domini humanissimi. Arrived at the place where they were to stop, the drivers and Pandours who escorted us dragged all the luggage out of the carriage, kissed our coats, knelt down to ask us for a trinkgeld, and, as soon as they had got it, set off back again.' "This was the state of things in 1790. In 1842 we happened to travel with a Mecklenburger who had lived some years in Agram, the capital of Croatia, and was returning to Mecklenburg with his Hungarian wife. We lament to say, that his description of the peasantry of that country was little more consolatory than this. He said it was no uncommon thing to see a peasant bring his whole crop into the town, sell it, take the money to a public-house, and never move from the spot till he had drunk out the whole produce of his harvest." In the archives belonging to the Hardenberg family, the same Ritter von Lang discovered a document containing the rules established for the conduct of the Petty Court of Hardenberg about a hundred years before, which showed what were the notions of the feudal lords of the seventeenth century on the noble science of government. It is worth quoting as it stands : "The Rules for House and Court,' according to which his Excellency the Lord Statthalter commands his people to conduct themselves, given the 10th March, 1666, begin by declaring to his servants that they are all rude, unpolished, stupid, and inattentive fellows; to whom he is now, with fatherly care, going to give the following rules for the government of their lives and manners; at the same time telling them that he shall take care to make them remember any departure therefrom. Thus, for example, he who can give no account of the sermon shall eat his dinner like a dog, lying on the ground; whoever swears, shall kneel for an hour on the sharp edge of a plank. Whoever neglects to take the Lord's Supper when it is notified to him, shall ride upon an ass loaded with heavy weights, or receive a flogging, as circumstances may be. "Domestic thieves are promised the gallows. Whoever peeps into a letter, even if it lies open, shall have the bastinado three days running, and be sent out of the house as infamous. "Before the Statthalter rises, the clothes must be brushed clean, and laid in good order on the table; shoes and boots cleaned, and set under the bench; fresh water and a towel must be in readiness. His Excellency must be most delicately (subtilstermassen) dressed, and what he lays aside be carefully put by. "The meals are to be served in good order, without spilling, and the dishes to be taken away with a bow. If any one nibbles at things, and puts his fingers or his mouth into the dishes, he shall be made to eat scalding food to cure him of his greediness. Every one is bound, when called upon, to step forward, making a reverence, and to say grace with a clear and audible voice. He who stutters or hesitates shall receive six fillips on the nose (spanische Nasenstüber). If any man waits at table with dirty hands, he shall do as if he were washing them, while one pours water over them, and another dries them with two sharp rods till they bleed. In like manner, he who waits uncombed, shall be well curried in the stable with the curry-comb. "The tablecloth is to be spread at one cast; every plate to have a napkin, and the salt-cellars to be filled with clean salt. At the proper time candles are to be brought, and to be constantly snuffed, every time beginning at the place where the highest guest sits. Lastly, the tablecloth is to be removed in a mannerly way (manierlich); and the servants are to retire with a reverence, under pain of six fillips on the nose. "Whoever mixes in the conversation, or grins at what is said, shall be made to blow till he is tired; whoever laughs loud, shall have four raps over the fingers. Whoever fills a glass too full, and then sups it out with his own mouth, shall have twenty lashes with a whip. He who hands a dirty glass, may have his choice between four boxes on the ear or six fillips on the nose. After dinner a basin of water and a clean towel is to be handed (with a bow) to every guest. "As it is a scandalous and insufferable thing for servants to be long at meals, those who are more than a quarter of an hour at dinner shall have it taken away from them. He who will not eat what is set before him shall fast twenty-four hours. If the Statthalter orders a servant to do any thing, and he neglects it, and bids another to do it instead, he shall receive four boxes on the ear from him whom he so ordered; who, in return, shall have six. "If any man waits in dirty or torn clothes, he shall run the gauntlet. If two go to blows, they shall fight out their quarrel with staves, in the presence of the house-steward; and he who spares the other shall have a flogging. "If any one goes out without leave, or murmurs against his lord, he may expect to be flogged, put in chains, or tied to a post, according to circumstances." It is curious also to remark the effects of Frederick the Great's influence on the Prussian army, after his living influence had passed away. It produced an intolerable arrogance, and issued in the indisputed reign of pipe-clay and pigtails. One old captain wore a pigtail which required seventy or eighty ells of ribbon to tie it up, and trailed on the ground, so that he was obliged to tuck it into his coat-pocket on parade. At length came the battle of Jena. Certainly the absurdities of real life surpass all caricatures. In the closing sentence of the following extract the very bathos of military martinetship is surely attained: "As the confused rout came in by the same gate through which they had marched forth, the people gathered in knots, looking on with alarm and still incredulous wonder. 'These are the first fugitives,' I heard people say: 'they are never in order; have patience, the regular regiment will come soon.' But noon came,-afternoon came, evening drew on, and the pell-mell had not ceased; the disorderly mob which had been an army still filled the streets. At length came some troops in marching order, as exceptions to the miserable rule; covered were now the banners which had floated so proudly in the breeze. Most of them marched in silence,once only the music sounded, loud and clear, like the laughter of despair. It was the trumpeters of a cuirassier regiment;-their regiment was not behind them, they were quite alone, and blew the Dessauer march, just as if all were in the best possible order. They looked well too, and were mounted on high-fed horses. Indeed, generally speaking the men did not look jaded, nor hungry, nor worn; and the contrast between their personal good condition with the general destruction, exhibited in the strongest light the depth of the calamity. In the evening every body knew that a Prussian army no longer existed. A helpless grief sat on men's faces. But even then, the indescribable spirit which characterised that period was not extinguished. I heard a man say to his neighbour, That may be as it will; things have gone badly, no doubt, but we have lost with honour; for I heard just now that the Prussians did not once lose the step through the whole battle." We conclude with an anecdote, betokening a spirit in the German people as unlike as possible to the formal stupidity of their army, as it was in those terrible days: "After the battle of Austerlitz, the Emperor Francis, a fugitive, mounted on a sorry jade, attended by one aide-de-camp, defeated and almost dethroned, was about to make his inglorious entry into his capital he was met by the citizens, who had of their own accord dragged out the state carriage, and now seated him in it, and drew him, as if in triumph, to his palace. 'Why, what would you have done if your Emperor had been victorious?' asked a stranger. 'Oh! then we should not have needed to do any thing,' was the answer." Poetry. THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. WHEN this half-century its course has sped, Then,-gazing back upon the years that now Accessible to friends, impervious to foes; History will tell, and men amaz'd will see Of torn affections-friendship's ruptur'd chain- Were its high bulwarks rear'd. Ah! Jesu, say Pure Faith should scatter thorns upon her way No wonder that the world should her approach deplore. |