of human feeling and life, the writer's wit and wisdom were all sufficient for his purpose. Not so with Candide. Here Voltaire had to give pictures of life as well as to convey philosophic truth and satire, and here we feel the want of humor. The sense of the ludicrous is continually defeated by disgust, and the scenes, instead of presenting us with an amusing and agreeable picture, are only the frame for a witticism. On the other hand, German humor generally shows no sense of measure, no instinctive tact; it is either floundering and clumsy as the antics of a leviathan, or laborious and interminable as a Lapland day, in which one loses all hope that the stars and quiet will ever come. For this reason, Jean Paul, the greatest of German humorists, is unendurable to many readers, and frequently tiresome to all. Here, as elsewhere, the German shows the absence of that delicate perception, that sensibility to gradation, which is the essence of tact and taste, and the necessary concomitant of wit. All his subtlety is reserved for the region of metaphysics. For Identität in, the abstract, no one can have an acuter vision, but in the concrete he is satisfied with a very loose approximation. He has the finest nose for Empirismus in philosophical doctrine, but | the presence of more or less tobacco-smoke in the air he breathes is imperceptible to him. place of Pantomime and the immortal PulTo the typical German Vetter Michel-it cinello; Spain had produced Cervantes; is indifferent whether his door-lock will catch, France had produced Rabelais and Molière, whether his tea-cup be more or less than an and classic wits innumerable; England had inch thick; whether or not his book have yielded Shakspeare and a host of humorists. every other leaf unstitched; whether his But Germany had borne no great comic dramaneighbor's conversation be more or less of a tist, no great satirist, and she has not yet reshout; whether he pronounce b or p, t or d; paired the omission; she had not even produced whether or not his adored one's teeth be few any humorist of a high order. Among her and far between. He has the same sort of great writers, Lessing is the one who is the insensibility to gradations in time. A Ger- most specifically witty. We feel the implicit man comedy is like a German sentence: you influence of wit- the "flavor of mind ". see no reason in its structure why it should throughout his writings; and it is often conever come to an end, and you accept the con- centrated into pungent satire, as every reader clusion as an arrangement of Providence of the Hamburgische Dramaturgie remembers. rather than of the author. We have heard Still, Lessing's name has not become EuroGermans use the word Langeweile, the equiv-pean through his wit, and his chaming comedy, alent for ennui, and we have secretly won- "Minna von Barnhelm," has won no place dered what it can be that produces ennui in on a foreign stage. Of course, we do not a German. Not the longest of long tragedies, for we have known him to pronounce that höchst fesselnd (so enchaining!); not the heaviest of heavy books, for he delights in that as gründlich (deep, Sir, deep !); not the slowest of journoys in a Post-wagen, for the slower the horses, the more cigars he can smoke before he reaches his journey's end. German ennui must be something as superlative as Barclay's treble X, which, we suppose, implies an extremely unknown quantity of stupefaction. It is easy to see that this national deficiency in nicety of perception must have its effect on the national appreciation and exhibition of Humor. You find in Germany ardent admirers of Shakspeare, who tell you that what they think most admirable in him is his Wortspiel, his verbal quibbles; and one of these, a man of no slight culture and refinement, once cited to a friend of ours Proteus' joke in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona ". Nod, I? why that's Noddy," as a transcendent specimen of Shakspearian wit. German facetiousness is seldom comic to foreigners, and an Englishman with a swelled cheek might take up Kladderadatsch, the German Punch, without any danger of agitating his facial muscles. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that, among the five great races concerned in modern civilization, the German race is the only one which, up to the present century, had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of European wit and humor; for Reineke Fuchs cannot be regarded as a peculiarly Teutonic product. Italy was the birth-, - pretend to an exhaustive acquaintance with German literature; we not only admit-we are sure, that it includes much comie writing of which we know nothing. We simply state the fact, that no German production of that kind, before the present century, ranked as people are in the lowest condition of social | grees, and which are to the transient feelings comfort, the nobles and upper classes are and measures of this or that section of polivery luxurious, and nearly all their luxuries ticians, what the quiet and uniform current come to them from abroad, and are intercepted or enhanced in price by war. In the second place, while our blockade has destroyed the navy of our foe and greatly impeded her commerce, our overwhelming superiority at sea, and the confined area in which hostilities are carried on, have secured our trade from the slightest interruption, so that, except in the increase of taxation, the nation is scarcely cognizant of being at war. And in the third place, the conflict is carried on exclusively on the Russian soil, yet at the same time on a portion of the territory which, though vital, is virtually nearer to us than to herself. All these things tell immensely in our favor. It is true that both we and France have lost many thousand men, whom it will take years to replace, and who are in one sense irreplaceable: but the losses of Russia are tenfold ours; and with this exception our inconvenience from the war is scarcely more than that of a wealthy proprietor who, by being chosen High Sheriff, is compelled for a time to an extravagant and unproductive expenditure. All the most reliable information we can collect confirms the opinion generally held as to the exhaustion of the Russian resources both in men, money, cattle, and military stores. It is possible, no doubt, that, beaten on all hands may the conquest of the Crimea completed, the fall of Kars redeemed, the emancipation of Transcaucasia effected, Cronstadt destroyed, and St. Petersburg, perhaps, threatened Russia still take refuge in a sullen obstinacy, and refuse, though vanquished, to sue for peace or to sign a treaty. But if so, we can await her pleasure. A blockade will be cheap and easy; Turkey and the Principalities will be secured and arranged without her; and the war will, in fact, be as really and as satisfactorily terminated as if a formal pacification had been made. Russia will have been just as completely defeated as if she had frankly acknowledged her defeat. of a mighty river is to the waves and eddies which ripple its surface and divert for a time the direction of some infinitesimal portion of its waters. The national sentiment is made up of the sentiments of all classes, divisions, and dispositions in the nation; all contrib ute to form it; all share it in diverse proportions; some of the elements of which it is composed are strongest in one rank or party, some in another; but none are altogether without any, and none dissent materially from its ultimate and epitomized expression. All love liberty and justice; all abhor tyranny and rapine; the hottest Tory detests the cruelty of the despot who brings discredit on the cause of loyalty and order; the wildest Radical deplores and deprecates the anarchy which has so often disgusted virtu. ous men with the name of freedom; the greatest deliberate discrepancy among us is scarcely more than this: that some of us hate most vehemently and would visit most severely the excesses of unbridled power, and others those of unbounded license; some of us hope most from the maintenance of established authority, and others from the energy of popular aspiration. But in the midst of all this apparent opposition, it is not difficult to discover that under-current of consentaneous tendency and harmonizing will, which constitute the sentiment of the great British nation. In the first place, then, we are not a grasp ing or ambitious people.* We may have been so once, but we are no longer so. We have reached the summit of our wishes, and something both of the indolence and the Ecclesiastes-philosophy which beset middle life is creeping over us. We not only do not desire, we sincerely and earnestly deprecate, any territorial aggrandizement. Even in India, where it is forced upon us, we see it with uneasiness and regret. Having once got a good frontier, we are annoyed and irritated when compelled to step beyond it. Our continental rivals, who see us partly in the mir ror of history, partly through the distorting FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN. telescope of a jealous fancy, will laugh at From The Economist, 5 Jan. NO. VIII. THE NATIONAL SENTIMENTS WHICH DICTATE It is obvious that the foreign policy of England, in order to be consistent and commanding, must be in accordance with the expression of those permanent instincts, principles, and sentiments which lie deep at the nation's heart, which override all minor considerations and disturbances, of which all party differences are little more than the varying de this description of our moderate disposition and retiring temper. Nevertheless the de lineation is scrupulously correct. We need nothing more; no new acquisitions could add to our grandeur and hardly to our power, and would be certain to add to our embar rassments, our trouble, and our expenditure. We are positive that if Germany were offered *Certainly the "rest of mankind" are behind the age as to the character of the English, if this writer is correct. telligent writer, is curious. — Living Age. The article, as a specimen of self-portraiture by a very in us as a gift and Denmark bequeathed to us and orators fined for an incautions word; as an inheritance, we should not only decline of spies surrounding the family dinner-table the fatal acquisitions, but they would not and the friendly fireside; of patriotic minispresent to us even a momentary temptation; ters of state condemned to loathsome dungeons and if Asia Minor or Italy were to press for holding opinions precisely similar to our their sceptres on our acceptance, not even own; of gentlemen, well-born and refined in our earnest wish to ameliorate their wretched habits and in manners, chained for life to condition and develop their magnificent re-filthy malefactors, though scarcely guilty of sources, would seduce us into receiving so an indiscretion and assuredly innocent of responsible an addition to our Empire. Those all that the most hostile scrutiny could sentiments are genuine, unfeigned, and un- pervert into a crime. On the other hand, we forced; they have nothing of the nolo epis- abominate all mob excesses. We shrink from copari in them; they are prompted by tem- the violence and bloodshed which bring disperament; they have been fostered by credit on the cause we have so much at heart, experience; they are justified and confirmed and which stain the banner that has marby reflection. shalled ourselves to so many untarnished Nor, though essentially a commercial victories. We are always ready to fancy people, are we any longer commercially ag- that people who abuse their freedom are gressive or exclusive. More generous feelings unfit to be free. The moment insurgent have been engendered by a wiser policy and patriots have gained the upper hand, we sounder knowledge. We now desire no begin to preach to them moderation and markets which we do not owe to the superior forgiveness. We are also exceedingly borné quality or cheapness of our goods. We covet and dogmatic in our liberal sympathies. We no carrying trade which is not honestly and can encourage and cheer on those who fight securely ours by right of superior punc- for parliamentary government, for trial by tuality, rapidity, integrity, and economy. jury, for extensive electoral rights, for open We are confident alike in the justice of un- courts of justice, for constitutional liberty, limited competition and in its turning to our in short; but on men who would overthrow ultimate advantage. In a word, we desire monarchy and dispense with aristocracy, nothing in the way of personal aggrandize- who proclaim republics and believe in uniment that is not already ours. If a grateful versal suffrage, we look grave, we question world, awakened to a tardy appreciation of their wisdom, and scarcely know whether to our merits, were to propose to "pleasure "wish for their success. Thousands of the us by some welcome present, it would be scarcely possible to discover any one possession, which, for our own sake, we should wish to have. Our national desires may be fairly said to be limited to security and freedom from molestation for ourselves, and to the progress of prosperity and civilization for the world at large. Happily for the plainness of our path, it is one and the same line of This genuine wish for the extension of policy which will tend most certainly to en-moderate freedom-this enthusiasm for lib. sure both. erty as long as liberty will confine itself withIn the next place, our sympathies with in the forms and garments of the British conaspirants after liberty have always been stitution-is the result of a certain antagosincere and generally ardent-but never ex-nism of forces which goes on in the bosom of cessive or irrational. We expend an infinite the community. There are many of the amount of compassion on nations who have lower and some of the middle classes who no Habeas Corpus and no free press. We would willingly establish republics throughfeel a deep interest in people who are strug-out Europe, and abolish monarchs, peers, gling for those rights of citizenship which our and priests, as the great enemies to human ancestors won some centuries ago. We truly progress. There are some among the old desire the extension to all other countries of those institutions and those arrangements for self-government which we have felt to be such signal blessings. We hate oppression. Our blood boils when we read of men, in lands which we have visited and which lie not far distant from our own, sent to the galleys and the scaffold for acts such as we daily perpetrate and glory in ourselves; of writers imprisoned for a generous sentiment most determined Liberals among us are not prepared to go those lengths. Hence our frequent blunders. We would confer parliaments and free elections on people as unfit for them as the Arabs or the Chinese; and force monarchs and upper chambers on people to whose genius these British treasures are utterly alien and unsuited. and rusty ranks of the community who scarcely think that kings can go far wrong, and who, when they hear of instances of flagrant cruelty, argue that it must have been bitterly provoked, and was probably richly deserved. But, generally speaking, even the languid feelings and conventional morality of the upper classes are scandalized and revolted by the stupid brutalities of arbitrary power, and would be thankful to place a for the sake of progress. Some will tolerate much injustice for the sake of peace. But the love of freedom and justice is strong in the breast of the Conservative, and the love of order and stability in the mind of the Radical. And out of the varying but not discrepant affinities springs an aggregate feeling which is not so much a compromise between opposing principles as a blending of dissimilar but harmonious ingredients, and which needs only to be condensed into some expressive formula in order to become the avowed and guiding maxim of the nation's policy. constitutional control upon the depraved appetites of despotism; and the bounding ambition and generous aspirations even of the more decided Radicals among us are tempered by the conviction that rights too easily won are seldom stubbornly maintained, that every liberty well used becomes an instrument and a stepping-stone to further ones, and that reaction follows excess and abuse by a law as righteous as it is irrevocable. The result is a national sentiment, of which strong sympathy with foreign struggles for freedom is the groundwork, and a caution, almost amounting to coldness, the external feature. For want of some such condensed expresA statesman who should give utterance to sion-some motto in which the faith can be any opinion or desire hostile to patriotic ef- embodied-it is often inconsistent, often forts in other lands, would soon be made inarticulate, and often too late. Sometimes aware that he had outraged the feelings of one element of it speaks; sometimes another; the people whom he aspired to govern and comparatively seldom the concordant fusion professed to represent. A statesman who of them all. Thus we allowed the Hungashould commit himself daringly and officially rian patriots (constitutional as they were) to to any overt act of sympathy with a resist- be trampled down without intervention: the ance to arbitrary power not confined within country did not know its own mind till too strict constitutional limits, would soon find late, and the Government, not knowing the that he did not carry with him the senti- feeling of the country, followed its conments of the upper circles of society, whose servative* instinct, and remained inactive. concurrence, however reluctant, must be won But no sooner did the oppressors, intoxicated to any action that is intended to be author- with their triumph, summon Turkey to itative because national. Selfish and ungen- deliver up the fugitives, than the spirit of erous language would as little be endured as humanity awoke in us at once; the Governbold and forward conduct would be backed. ment did not wait for the expresssion of the Hence our rulers always endeavor to show nation, but sent aid to the Porte with a that their heart is in the right place," by promptitude which showed tyranny that it professing the most ardent wishes that sub- had gone too far for British long-sufferance. jects may succeed in persuading or extorting In a somewhat similar case the good sense from their sovereigns free institutions and and good feeling of the nation showed itself rational securities for justice ;· while at in harmonious action. When foreign Govthe same time they show that their heads are ernments remonstrated with us on giving an cool and their doctrines "sound," by acting asylum to the victims who had fled from their and speaking in their diplomatic capacity as dungeons or their swords, statesmen and peoif they dreaded anarchy more than they detest ple were unanimous in resenting the impertioppression. To despots they say: Be equi- nence, and proclaiming that the unfortunate table and humane in the exercise of your patriots of every land should find here an power in order that you may secure society inviolable refuge. But at the same time, against risks which would ensue if that when there was reason to believe that some power be wrested from you. To insurgent of these fugitives were abusing the hospitalpatriots they say: Be moderate that we may ity we had afforded to them to turn England be able to support you; make the best terms into an arena for conspiracies and warlike you can, and be content with such small enterprises against States with whom we instalments of your demands as may be were in alliance or at peace, offered you. and peremptorily warned them that, though we were the protectors of the unfortunate who sought a sanctuary, we would not be made the screen or tool of the plotters who sought only a shelter behind which to continue their machinations. -- As a nation we stand in the van of civilization; as individuals we are all of us hearty in its cause. We all hate anarchy; we all loathe oppression. We are all lovers of justice; we are all friends of freedom. The sentiments are not hostile: they are only different phases of one common feeling. Some of us hate anarchy more than they hate pression. Some of us love liberty more than they love order. Some will endure much license op we at once From The Independent. which the engineers and labors of the whole earth could not do in years! But let the wind arise (itself but the Is there anything in the world so devoid movement of soft invisible particles of air), of all power as snow-flakes? It has no life. and how is this peaceful seeming of snowIt is not organized. It is not even a positive flakes changed! In an instant the air raves. thing, but is formed negatively, by the with- There is fury and spite in the atmosphere. drawal of heat from moisture. It forms in It pelts you, and searches you out in every silence and in the obscurity of the radiant fold and seam of your garments. It comes ether far up above eye-sight or hand-reach. without search-warrant through crack and It starts earthward so thin, so filmy and un- crevice of your house. It pours over the substantial, that gravitation itself seems at a hills, and lurks down in valleys, or roads, or loss to know how to get a hold upon it. cuts, until in a night it has entrenched itself Therefore it comes down with a wavering formidably against the most expert human motion, half attracted and half let alone. strength. For, now, lying in drifts huge and We have sat and watched the fall of snow wide, it bids defiance to engine and engineer. until our head grew dizzy, for it is a bewitching sight to persons speculatively inclined. There is an aimless way of riding down, a simple, careless, thoughtless motion, that leads you to think that nothing can be more nonchalant than snow. And then it rests upon a leaf or alights upon the ground with such a dainty step, so softly, so quietly, that you almost pity its virgin helplessness. If you reach out your hand to help it, your very touch destroys it. It dies in your palm, and departs as a tear. Thus, the ancients feigned that let me see, what was it that they feigned? Lot's spouse went into salt. That was not it. Niobe to stone, several into vegetables, some into deer; but was nobody changed to a fountain? Ah yes, it was Arethusa. But now that we have hit the thing that dimly floated in our memory, it is not a case to the point, so we will let Arethusa flow (slide), and return to our snow. All these thoughts and a great many others, we had leisure to spin, last night, while we lay within two miles of Morristown, N. J., beating away at a half-mile inclined plane heaped with snow. We look upon the engine as the symbol of human skill and power. In its summer rush along a dry track it would seem literally invincible. It comes roaring up towards you, it sweeps gigantically past you, with the wild scream of its whistle, waving the bushes and rustling the grass and flowers on either side, and filling the air with clouds of smoke and dust, and you look upon its roaring course gradually dying out of sight and hearing, as if some supernatural development of Might had passed by you in a vision. But now this wonderful thing is as tame as a wounded bird; all its spirit is gone. No blow is struck. The snow puts forth no power. It simply lies still. That is enough. The laboring engine groans and pushes; backs out and plunges in again; retreats and rushes again. If any one should ask what is the most harmless and innocent thing on earth, he might be answered, a snow-flake. And yet, in its own way of exerting itself it stands! It becomes entangled. The snow is every among the foremost powers on earth. When where. It is before it and behind it. It it fills the air the sun cannot shine, the eye penetrates the whole engine, is sucked up in becomes powerless; neither hunter nor pilot, the draft, whirls in sheets into the engineguide nor watchman, are any better than room; torments the cumbered wheels, clogs blind men. The eagle and the mole are on the joints, and, packing down under the a level of vision. All the kings of the earth drivers, it fairly lifts the ponderous engine could not send forth an edict to mankind, off from its feet, and strands it across the saying, "Let labor cease." But this white-track! Well done, snow! That was a plumed light infantry clears out the fields, notable victory! Thou mayest well consent drives men home from the highway, and puts now to yield to scraper and snow-plough! half a continent under ban. It is a despis- However, it was not our engine that got er of old landmarks and very quietly unites off the track, but another beyond' Morrisall properties, covering up fences, hiding town. Ours could not get off nor get along. paths and roads, and doing in one day a work It could only push and stop. The pushing |