This was plain enough, and the baron looked a little angry at first, but speedily recovering his composure. replied with a smile, 'After all, the fault is with myself, a practical man, and speculating by the ell here with a mere speculator about speculation.'

front, otherwise one was sure to be overwhelmed. He attacked me, too, on one of his favorite themes; but I was happily prepared to meet him, and the more stoutly I gave him battle to-day, the more did he seem inclined to renew the combat to-morrow. He, the mighty man of the direct deed ('der mächtige Mann der unmittelbaren That'), who pierced through the In this direct-hitting, thoroughly practimoment there, as it lay before him, and com- cal Prussian baron we seem to recognise manded it, was, or at least was wont to express the type of a new phasis of the German himself as, the enemy of all speculation, and attacked me with the most pitiless energy, as mind, whose first appearance dates from Bethe representative of German metaphysics. I this very era of the Liberation war. accepted the challenge. I was several times fore that era, whether in the artistical voinvited to dine with him at Dresden: I and luptuousness of Goethe, the vast intellecMaurice Arndt were the only guests. Your tual mensuration of Kant, or the wild and constructions a priori,' said he, are mere brilliant careerings of Richter, we find words, a pitiful school jargon, and made for no purpose so much as to cripple every deed that every thing in German literature, only not is worth the doing.' 'Your excellence,' rewhat is directly practical and political. The plied I, 'will be pleased to observe, that though year 1813, however, with its terrible severI were given to construct systems a priori ity of battle, and glorious but dearly earned (which qualification, however, I deny). I, at laurels, gave a definite, practical, and polileast, construct them in a practical direction; tical direction to the lawless bickerings and how otherwise would I be standing here now random undulations of the German soul; in this uniform before you? But the endeavor the cosmopolite became a patriot, the artist to bring one's whole experience, both of inward emotions and outward facts, under the a historian, and the philosopher a politician. category of what may properly be called This change in the national cast of thought knowledge; the striving to give an intellectual brought along with it naturally a change in anity to the complex phenomena of which the the style and expression of the national thing called our life is made up; this is not an literature; the formal and academic, the arbitrary product of one mind or the other, but involved, unwieldy, and perplexed, yielded it is a national and truly German tendency; to the clear, the direct, the vigorous, and and if my friend Schelling, at the present mo

sciously to himself a change from the speculative to the practical, which the whole nation was destined to make; and if the new character be as yet only partially adopted, and imperfectly sustained by the general mass, this is but natural, and was prefigured also in the first martial experiments of the professor. 'Aller Anfang ist schwer,' says the proverb; a new trade is always difficult." Of this, the following account of Steffens' doings at the battle of Lützen affords characteristic evidence.

ment, commands the public mind in Germany, the flexible, in language. The Breslau he does so only because he commands the do-Naturphilosoph,' when he doffed the gown main of speculation.' 'Yes, I know well and donned the cloak, indicated unconenough,' said Stein, 'I know our German youth is incurably infected with this fever of empty speculation; the German has an unfortunate instinct that leads him to grope in abstract corners; and it is for this reason that he never understands the present moment, and has, accordingly, always fallen an easy prey to the cunning aggressor from without.'Tis quite true,' retorted I, 'that our students are given to speculation; but all the young men have not followed me to the war; and I should wish you to inquire, whether the greatest speculators are those who have staid at home. or those who are here with me. I guess all the incurably infected' have come with me. Or what public men have come more boldly forward on the present occasion, than that Castor and Pollux of our philosophical world, the twin arch-speculators, Fichte and Schleiermacher? Your excellency will forgive me for saying it, but it is possible that the tendency to useless abstract speculation may assist even where an outward war is carried on against it; and yourself, at this present moment, might certainly be judged a most unpractical person to overlook in your estimate of the moral materials before you in Germany, a thing, which, whether you approve it or not, is and must be an essential element of the national mind.'

"On the evening of the 1st of May I sat, anxious, and full of expectation, alone in a hut; although I felt a deep interest in the issue of the approaching contest, I was by no means in good spirits, and must, alas! confess that what disquieted me was something purely personal. I had been violently taken out of my former narrow sphere, and transplanted, as it seemed, into a wider one; but my present position, unfortunately, was one of which I was utterly ignorant. Yes, to that moment I had during my whole life been absolute master of my own occupation, now I had to submit to the it into execution; but in the first place, I knew thought of another as an instrument to carry

not what that thought was, nor what peculiar had hitherto been carried by the guide, was sphere of activity it would shape out for me; now strapped on behind me; but I had much and in the second place, even when set in mo- ado before I could stimulate the unwieldy beast tion, I knew not whether I might not prove into a trot. In the meantime I was utterly more a hindrance than a help in a situation so ignorant in what direction the field of battle strange to me. To act cheerfully as an instru- lay. The day began to dawn, and I discoverment in the hands of others, the individual ed some troops in the distance; in my ignomust, at least, know his relation to the whole rance I could not tell whether they were the of which he is a part; but I felt myself sud- enemy's men or our own; but I rode up to denly, and in a moment the most critical for the them, and reached a wide field, sloping gradcause I had espoused, transported into the ually upwards. Here I discovered Prussian midst of a bustling activity of which I knew infantry forming a long front. How it happenneither the scope nor the detail; every body ed I cannot say; but before I knew, my horse was busy around me, I alone had nothing to was standing in front of the line, and directly do: no one spoke to me, for to me no one had in the way of the advancing troops. A nobleany thing to say. There is something terribly looking officer, who could not but be surprised humiliating in such a situation; the accumu- at the sight of so strange a cavalier, came lated patriotic longings of years had now with an angry look towards me, and cried out, worked themselves up to a climax, and never-Was Teufel haben Sie hier zu thun? (What theless seemed destined, on the very verge of the devil business have you here?) In Altenthe perfect deed, to end in powerlessness. I burg General York had been pointed out to paced restlessly up and down the little room, me-and full of terror, I now recognized him; when a horse at full gallop stopped before my I was unable to answer a word; but I have a quarters. Its rider hastily entered, and de- dim recollection of endeavoring, for some livered into my hands a letter from Scharn- minutes in extreme desperation, to make the horst; I expected an order. Has he at length, stubborn brute move from the spot. How I thought I, succeeded in getting me some defi- at length got out of the way I don't know. nite employment for this important day? Be- When on a future occasion I made the persontween hope and fear I unsealed the letter. al acquaintance of this great general, I informed him under what circumstances I had first encountered him and he was vastly delighted. After much riding about and interrogating, I found Scharnhorst. 'Keep close by me,' said he; and Lieutenant Greulich, one of his adjutants, had the goodness to give me the horse of one of his baggage-wagons. It was now about mid-day; the battle commenced, but I had no idea whatever of the position of our own or our enemy's troops. The roar of the canon was heard in all directions; but the enemy, posted probably behind the village of Gross-Görschen, I could nowhere discover.

""Lieber Steffens,' said he, 'I am sorry that I must ask back from you the horse which I lent you; and I lament much that you will thereby be put out of condition for taking any share in the impending battle. It is the horse which I am accustomed to ride on critical occasions; you must, therefore, be content to wait, in the rear of the army, the expected good issue of the battle.' I delivered him the horse, and my situation was now more comfortless than ever. One thing was plain, I must appear upon the field of battle, otherwise I would have been perfectly affronted, and have felt myself incapable of showing my face with any honor in the future course of the war. I hear the name of the village in which the Jager battalion of the guard was quartered; there was a full mile between me and it; I lost no small time before I could find a guide, and when I arrived daylight was fast approaching, The commander of the battalion was asleep, but I caused him to be roused, and adjured him to put me in a condition to get a horse. He complied, and I was led to a boor, who, however, at first stoutly opposed the requisition. At length however he yielded, and produced the animal! It was a sorry bay, an old, lean, broken-down cart-horse; the haunch bones stood out like two steep rocky walls-the ribs could be counted. I swung myself into a miserable saddle that the boor drew out of a lumber-room, and bestrode the deep-hollowed backbone of the brute; it required great exertion to set the stiff legs into motion; hard and stubborn, it had long lost all feeling for bit and bridle. Never did Prussian knight appear more laughably and strangely mounted. The valise, which

"I rode beside Gneisenau, among the officers who formed the escort of Marshal Blücher. The enemy stood in front of the village; a cavalry attack on our side took place, and I was all at once in the midst of a shower of balls. Prince Henry's horse was shot beneath him. The attack was repulsed. How I at first came into the attack-how I again got out of it, I never knew. Only one thing I remember-the impression which the grape shot of the enemy made on me. I felt as if the balls were coming from all directions towards me in thick masses-as if no one could possibly escape-as if I were in the midst of a violent shower of rain, and yet somehow or other was not wet. At the same time, I cannot say that I was in the least affected by fear; the whole affair seemed to me rather strange and curious than terrible. Gneisenau was quite in his ele. ment; almost merry. After the attack I received from him a commission to General Wittgenstein; what it was I don't exactly remember: but now began the dark side of that day for me. I rode on; I looked round about

The Prince of the Asturias, Eldest Son of Don Carlos, and the proposed Husband of the Queen of Spain, &c. By F. F. Ivers, Esq., of the Middle Temple. Pp. 28. Hatchard and Son. THIS pamphlet, setting forth the desirableness of a union between the young Queen of Spain, at present a mere puppet in the hands of others, and the Prince of the Asturias, contains many particulars concerning the latter, of considerable interest, and not generally known in England. It may, inbe said on the part of the prince for the expediendeed, be considered as a manifesto of all that can tion in Spain as most dangerous to neighboring cy of this marriage. Viewing anarchy and revolu and restless France especially, and to all the nations of Europe eventually, Mr. Ivers describes the Carlos party as still numerous and strong, whilst the Liberals are split into a thousand factions; and contends for a compromise, by uniting all the moderate people of the country, and establish

me; a heavy cannonade from the enemy was going on in all quarters. I did not know where I might find Wittgenstein. Every thing about me appeared in confusion, and covered as with a dark veil. I felt a mysterious quaking; a strange undulation shook my inmost frame, became more apparent; it was evident that I was under the influence of the cannon fever; however, I found Wittgenstein, executed my commission, and returned to Gneisenau. Here I found every thing in motion. Every man had his appointed employment, and knew his relative position, only I was without any definite occupation, and no one concerned himself about me; thus situated the feeling of my powerlessness overcame me, and I was conscious that I must appear in my present place as a supernumery spectator. I heard that Scharnhorst had been carried away wounded from the field of battle. Gneisenau had disap-ing a constitutional government under this royal peared; the others were strangers to me, and I quickly found myself alone, with the balls of the enemy whistling around me."

a

"Providence seems to have formed the Prince

so essential to the man destined to take a lead in

pair. The Prince, it is stated, was educated by the Rev. Hardinge Ivers, a brother of the author, fully competent to the important task of forming One is most tempted, in reading this, to future king; and his portraiture is thus given agree with Görres, who, when Steffens met of the Asturias for the high station to which he him at Coblentz, after the battle of Leip- would be called, were the statesmen of the day sig, did not scruple to express his disap- to consult the true interests of Spain, and which, probation of the professor's military recrea- in spite of their neglect, and in spite of the temtions altogether; for, der Gelehrte,' said Porary triumph of the enemies of his family, he he, ist verpflichtet sich für sein geistiges sooner or later. Many things have contributed is yet pretty sure to occupy, some day or other, Werk zu erhalten.' (It is the duty of the to mature his mind, which is naturally sagacions man of letters to spend and be spent only and sedate. Adversity led the son of Don Carlos, in the cause of letters.) And to the same his own; and of those who know his royal highwhen young, into countries very different from purpose Schelling would frequently add a ness, not one will say that its lessons have postscript to his letters to Steffens, Wozu been lost upon him. Matter-of-fact and businessund warum solten wir uns in die Verir-like, he has applied himself to those sciences rungen der Welt hineinstürzen? Ist doch which are not often the study of princes, and unser Reich nicht von dieser Welt.' (Where- which yet, in these days of commercial power, are fore, and for what purpose, should we public affairs. The Prince of the Asturias saw plunge ourselves into the perplexities of the fallen state of his own country, and he obthis world? Our kingdom is not of this served the flourishing and progressing state of the world.) But the benefit which an academic countries around her; and he resolved to master man like Steffens conferred on his country, tistical and commercial science, politics, and histhe problem of the causes of the difference. Staby taking part in the military movement of tory, have always been his favorite study; and the times, consisted not so much in the the writer of these pages was struck, some years amount of his individual services in the ago, when the prince was very young, with his field, as in the moral influence of his pre-specting England, and his evident familiarity questions on commercial and financial facts resence and example. The presence of so many distinguished volunteers was, to the professional soldier, a continual living remembrancer, that in this war not a common point of international policy, or the mere military point of honor, but the dearest interest, the very existence of fatherland, was at stake; and when we bear in mind how gallantly the raw militiamen at Dennewitz carried the day over the experienced French soldiery, we shall, perhaps, be inclined to think that even the most unmilitary Professor Steffens, on his scrag

Rosinante, stumbling on before the front gy line of General York's advancing columns, was not there altogether without a purpose.

with such subjects; displaying in his youthful eagerness a more noble ambition than that which prompted Alexander in his warlike inquiries of the Persian ambassadors.-Lit. Gaz.

BONE-CAVE. The Westmoreland Gazette gives an account of a bone-cave recently explored The details as yet possess little scientific particuon an eminence looking upon Morecombe Bay. larity; but a number of bones have been found, said to belong to the hyena, wolf, and other extinct animals, and forwarded to a distinguished zoologist for examination. The length of the pears to have been formed by a geological rift in cavern is estimated at about 60 feet, and it apan age long past.—Lit. Gaz.

PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A RADICAL. Mr. Bamford. On all the questions con

From the Quarterly Review.

Passages in the Life of a Radical. By Samuel Bamford. Third Edition. Printed for the Author. 2 vols. 12mo. Heywood. 1843.

nected with the years 1816-1820, which he treats of, or alludes to, this Journal long ago expressed opinions from which we have never seen the least reason to depart. We have the fortune, or misfortune, to hold that the maintenance of the agriculture of this MR. SAMUEL BAMFORD-bred, it seems, country is the very first duty of the governamong the Methodists, and for a short time ment and the legislature; and among all in very early life a sailor-was one of those the dangers which we foresaw from 'ParliaLancashire weavers whom the eloquence of mentary Reform,' not one appeared to us at Cobbett and the impudence of Hunt seduc- the time, or appears now, more serious than ed into premature Radicalism shortly after the increase of strength which such a the close of our protracted warfare against change in the constitution must give to the revolutionary France. He was twenty-nine domestic enemies of our primary domestic years of age when his name began to attract industry-that which is the basis and safenotice among the patriotic clubs of his dis-guard of all the rest. On the last of these trict; but had he been only nineteen we great questions Mr. Bamford thought, and should be at a loss to account for a gross thinks, diametrically otherwise. As to misstatement with which he opens his Nar- Parliamentary Reform, his opinions seem rative. He alleges that all was quiet among to have undergone a considerable change the northern operatives until the Corn Laws since 1820. He is still, indeed, a Reformwere altered in 1815. Is it possible that er, and would fain be a sweeping one; but he can have forgotten the whole series of the lessons of experience have not been entumults and trials-and alas! executions-tirely thrown away upon a man of great that occurred in the manufacturing districts natural shrewdness, and many upright between 1810 and 1815? He is a poet and amiable feelings. Whatever Mr. Bamhas he forgotten what was the subject of Lord Byron's maiden speech in the House of Peers? Has he forgotten the memorable Rejected Addresses' of that same year one thousand eight hundred and twelve' 'What made the baker's loaf and Luddites rise, And filled the butchers' shops with large blue flies?' &c.

6

ford's theoretical notions of political perfection may be, he has had motives and means for watching sedulously the doings of his own time, and arrived at the conviction that no real good can ever be achieved through such men and such arts as he has seen prominently connected, in every successive stage, hitherto, with the political disturbances of England. We shall quote But if Mr. Bamford had used a very little by and by some striking passages on this reflection, he must have perceived the in- head: but our principal object is to make consistency between his own statement of our readers acquainted with his personal the cause of the turmoil, and his own enu- history in its stormiest season, and espemeration of its leaders. Were Hunt and cially with some of his very clever sketches Cobbett first heard of at the time of the of the Reformers of the Regency period, Liverpool Corn Bill? Is it not notorious and of the modes of life in the districts to all the world that these persons had been which they agitated and perverted, to the indefatigable in the excitement of political ruin of many well-meaning people, and to disaffection for many years before the down- the ultimate benefit, not even of themselves fall of Bonaparte ?-that they had acquir--not even of one among them. ed, long before there was any thought of a Mr. Bamford, writing apparently from new Corn Bill, that influence over multi-scanty notes, after the lapse of two-andtudes of their fellow-citizens which hap-twenty years, is not very bountiful of dates: pened to pull Bamford into its vortex when but we gather that, having earned some disthe Corn Bill was the favorite cry, but tinction in his own town of Middleton, near which would have been the same, except as Manchester, as a writer of anti-bread-tax to some of its pretences and symbols, al- songs and a speaker at a branch Hampden though the war had proceeded, and the club,' held in a Methodist meeting-house, Corn Laws remained as they were in the he was one of the Lancashire delegates days of Tilsit? sent to London about the opening of the Session 1815-16, to watch over the fate of a petition for radical reform and universal

But we are not about to enter on a controversy, either historical or political, with

suffrage about to be presented to the House | mored archness. He was dressed in a blue of Commons. coat, yellow swansdown waistcoat, drab kersey small-clothes, and top-boots. His hair was gray, and his cravat and linen were fine, and very white. In short, he was the perfect representation of what he always wished to be: an English gentleman-farmer.'-Vol. i. p. 18.

he revered, and whom in the sequel he un-ly manner and attire' so attentively as Mr.