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must insensibly become a book of contrasts. [of Germany;-which would prove to the The more English the writer, the less likely satisfaction of all the world, that if their is he to form independent opinions. Free- cattle are not so prettily grouped, nor their dom from national predilection is at least trees so agreeably scattered, they possess as necessary as mental activity and honesty this material advantage, that they are conof intention. tent in their condition, and always have enough to eat. Mr. Howitt himself fully acknowledges this. He says that when an Englishman visits Germany, he sees many things from which he might derive valuable hints for improvement at home.

The effect of this strong nationality is palpable in these volumes. Mr. Howitt is ever yearning towards his English homestead; and while he is depicting German characteristics, cannot restrain himself from reverting to customs endeared to him by early associations. The comparison under "He sees a simple and less feverish state of such circumstances cannot be otherwise existence. He sees a greater portion of popthan unfavorable to Germany-be it in re-ular content diffused by a more equal distribuality just or unjust. Thus in speaking of the aspect of the country, he cannot resist the recollection of the trim hedge-rows and picturesque cottages of home:

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tion of property. He sees a less convulsive straining after the accumulation of enormous fortunes. He sees a less incessant devotion to the mere business of money-making, and, consequently, a less intense selfishness of spirit; a more genial and serene enjoyment of life, a more intellectual embellishment of it with mu

sic and domestic entertainment. He sees the inous taxation, of an enormous debt recklessly means of existence kept by the absence of ruand lavishly piled on the public shoulders, by the absence of restrictions on the importation of articles of food, cheap and easy of acquisi tion."-Experiences.

It cannot escape the reader that in this description Mr. Howitt employs a variety We ask any man possessed of an average of the most captivating terms. When he share of common sense, which of these speaks of England, the fields of necessity pictures is the more substantially attractive must be green; nor is he satisfied with the sweet cottages and the misery, or the mere groups of cattle,-the cattle must bald, fenceless landscape with content and needs be beautiful; nor will he allow the an equitable distribution of means? Alas! flocks simply to graze-to heighten the syl- it is grievously to be feared that the inhabvan charm he must make them graze in itants of the sweet cottages would gladly peace; and the cottages must be sweet, and exchange conditions with the German peasthe mansions of the gentry must be beauti-antry, and compound all their hedge-rows ful. Of all intention wilfully to convey an and white gables for a little ease of mind unfavorable impression of Germany, by ex- and a sufficiency of wholesome fare. aggerating the pastoral beauties of England, we fully acquit Mr. Howitt. It is quite evident to us that he never meant any thing of the kind; on the contrary, he wrote of such things, of which there are numerous instances, unconsciously, out of that irrepressible love of country which comes in full flood upon the heart in remote and strange scenes. But we refer to the passage for the sake of illustrating the insensible coloring such feelings inevitably impart to books of this class.

Were it a matter of much practical importance, it would be easy enough to turn this enchanting picture inside out, and show how much misery and want are frequently found lurking under all this beauty and sweetness, and to draw from thence a contrast with the social condition of the people

But is it quite true that the external aspect of country life in Germany is so unpromising? Is it quite certain that distance in this case, as in many others, has not lent a little enchantment to the view? The close pastoral landscape of England is undoubtedly very charming. It is a thing not to be met with any where else. The whole of Europe contains no parallel for the garden beauty of the Isle of Wight. But is there no other kind of beauty worthy of admiration except hedge-rows and cattle, cottages, groups of trees, and green lanes ? Let us imagine a German visiting England, and giving vent to his poetical spirit in this fashion:

'Here you look in vain for any thing like magnificent ancestral forests of the growth of ages, and richly wooded valleys, and vast

mountains, with their weird solitudes and solemn forms, their swooping_eagles, their torrents, and their rocks. It is all one tame region, pranked out with neat houses and cropped trees.'

the odd differences between it and England, it seems as if the traveller were going about, not to collect facts, but to flatter the national vanity at home.

This is certainly not the general tendency of Mr. Howitt's first book upon Germany; for, although it is full of laments for the rural English sights and usages he misses in the fatherland, it must be accepted upon the whole as a most able exposition of the actual condition of the country, bearing high and honorable testimony to the character and industry of the people. It is in his second and smaller book that we find his dissatisfaction break out; and it is in this volume chiefly we discover those statements which we hold to be objectionable.

Upon the whole, there is a marked discordance in the spirit of the two volumes, not very easy of illustration or solution. The larger and more tolerant work was published while Mr. Howitt was yet residing in Germany-the other since his return to England. He reserved his final indictment against the country until he had left it, a course which is perfectly justifiable in itself. But this will not account for the startling opposition, not so much in matters of mere statement as in matters of feeling and judg ment, presented by these two books. When the first book appeared, Mr. Howitt was absolutely attacked for its Germanic enthusiasm and anti-English tendency. The impression made by the second is precisely the reverse. How is this?

Yet this would be quite as reasonable and as well founded as Mr. Howitt's regrets for the absence of English scenery in the broad champaign of Germany. It is curious enough that Mr. Howitt should expressly recommend the traveller on going to Germany, to cast away as fast as possible all Arcadian ideas! all dreams about graceful youths and maidens, and bands of music' (Experiences, 6, 7); yet that he should himself forget to profit by his own advice, so far as to retain in his mind all the time the most Arcadian visions of the beauty and comfort of England, which he is perpetually drawing into contrast with the rugged features of German life. It is not alone that he falls into the ordinary injustice of setting up the English standard to test another people by, but that he sets up the poetical side of England against the prosaic side of Germany. It is certain that when a traveller is far from his own country, he is apt to carry with him vividly only the most agreeable recollections of it-the pleasant memories, the sunshine, the roses, the happy faces, and so on; dropping wholly out of his calculation the thousand and one petty drawbacks, the small inconveniences, the abiding discontents of all kinds. And all this, the aromatic essence of the distant and the past, is urgently opposed by his imagination to present discomforts, whatever they may be, the unaccustomed ways, the disappointments occasioned less by any deficiency or unfitness in the elements of things, than by his own strangeness in the use or enjoyment of them, and the innumerable obstacles of the present which he stumbles against in unfamiliar scenes. The comfortable. This was an unpropitious beginparison, consequently, is taken at the utmost conceivable disadvantage. It is not merely England against Germany, but the England of an excited fancy, relieved of all its disagrémens, against the real work-aday Germany, disenchanted of all its ro

mance.

Mr. Howitt was singularly unfortunate in his location. He got into a house where the people were prying, curious, gossiping, designing, and roguish. They seem to have entered into a regular system of annoyances, and to have taken extraordinary pains to make him and his family uncom

ning, and its effects appear to have lingered with him to the last hour of his residence at Heidelberg. He never quite got rid of the feeling of distrust and vexation with which that intriguing landlady inspired him in the first instance. The conclusion at which he arrives, drawn of course from Such comparisons are false in principle. his own experience and observation, is not Countries ought to be judged as they are, only that the German lodging-house-keepnot as they are not. It proves nothing to ers constitute a genus of sharpers, but that show that Germany is not England. We they are actually sustained, assisted, and knew that before. What we want exactly protected in their rogueries by an extento be informed about is the place itself, as sive combination amongst the surrounding it is; but if we are to be reminded inces- population! The wholesale imposition is santly of its inferiority to England, or of accomplished in this way. Arriving a NOVEMBER, 1844.

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If we were to treat statements of this description as Mr. Howitt himself treats most of his German topics, we might make a descent upon some of the bye-streets of London, and draw a picture of an English lodging-house keeper, which would show how far inferior in skill, boldness, and magnitude of ambition, these poor German combinators are in comparison with the same genus in this country. It takes a whole town in Germany, private families and all, to cheat a single lodger; while in London a single lodging-house keeper is quite enough to cheat a whole colony of lodgers. The London scale of profit, too, is considerably higher, and, we need not add, that the London mode of extortion is considerably more systematic. But as we do not see how the case of the Germans would be improved, by establishing the undeniable fact that the case of the English is worse, we will not waste time with the useless contrast.

stranger in one of these German towns, ate and become engaged in a mysterious and requiring lodgings, you are supplied conspiracy to cheat him. with a commissionaire, who takes you round from house to house where lodgings are to be let. This fellow is in the pay either of the lodging-house keepers, or the hotel keepers, and he will inevitably deceive you; that is to say, he will try to secure you for his own client, who may in all human probability be just as respectable and as honest as any body else. So far as this part of the commissionaire's scheme is concerned, it does not go for much. It is nothing more than happens every day in the year in every town in Europe. But Mr. Howitt adds, that the commissionaire carries the deception still further. He not only cries up his direct employer, but never cries down any body else. There is a sort of national pride in the fellow (we suppose) which will not allow him to betray even the worst of his countrymen. No matter how notorious the character of a lodging-house keeper may be, the unsuspicious stranger is sure never to hear of it. The commissionaire, says Mr. Howitt, is bribed to silence; from which we are left to infer that in fact the commissionaire is bribed by all the lodging-house keepers, in addition to that particular member of the fraternity whom it is his especial duty to recommend.

Personal experience is the test people usually apply to matters of this nature. No test can be much more fallacious; but it affords a popular, conventional, and easy escape from the responsibility of any graver method of procedure. In this very town of Heidelberg then, we can confidently as "In the second place," continues our author, "it is the interest of too many other people for sert that we have known sundry instances any stranger to receive a warning. The shop- of the utmost honesty, frankness, and cordikeepers will, of course, say nothing, because ality on the part of lodging-house keepers they wish you to settle and be customers, and towards their inmates. The town is not many of them hope to fleece you well too. very large. It occupies only a single street Even if you have letters to German families, running between the river and the hills. they will not breathe a word. It is not their There would be no great difficulty in acbusiness; and it is a part of German caution not to offend their townsmen, especially the quiring in a couple of months a passing acknavish, who may do them mischief."-Ex-quaintance with the character of every inperiences.

dividual in the town; and we assume at once, that this circumstance is in itself an The last important part of this machine- abundant protection against the class of ry of deception is supplied by the domestic frauds indicated by Mr. Howitt. There servants, who are in league with all the are people who have resided at Heidelberg, rest to keep their employers in utter igno- and who speak of the inhabitants in terms rance of the true state of things around the very reverse of those employed by Mr. them; so that, according to Mr. Howitt, Howitt. We state this simply as a piece the moment a stranger enters a German of common justice. Here are two opinions town for the purpose of going into lodg- founded on opposite experiences. ings, the commissionaire of the hotel, with may, both must be right up to a certain the hotel-keeper himself in the back- point; but that part of the inquiry in which ground, the servants of the house, the own-alone the public at large, either of Gerers of the house, the tradespeople of every many or England, can be supposed to be kind and degree, and even the private fami- interested, lies beyond the limits of indilies, however respectable they may be, to vidual instances, and can only be reached whom the stranger may happen to carry by the more philosophical process of genletters of introduction, instantly confeder- eralization.

Both

What is the national character of the But we owe it too many delightful recolGermans? Is it that of a sordid, knavish, lections, not to say of the Rhine, that we over-reaching race? No. Mr. Howitt never heard of these numerous and daring himself explicitly asserts that they are not robberies until we read of them in Mr. slavishly devoted to money-getting. He Howitt's book. Many thousands of stran> even admits in this very book that they are gers traverse the Rhine daily during the honest. 'The Germans,' he says, as a fine season in these steamers. The deck people, are a very honest people.'-Expe- is piled up with trunks and carpet-bags, riences, p. 11. Now it is only as a people and writing-cases and hat-boxes. We conwe have any interest in the investigation of fess we often wondered that where there their character. Let pettifogging chicane- was so much temptation, there should be so ry thrive in Heidelberg, and, if our author little theft; and we were not very much will have it so, in all the small university surprised to find that some thefts were comtowns; let the tradespeople and the ser-mitted at last. But is it fair to draw these vants conspire to the crack of doom; the items into the indictment against GermaGermans, as a people, are a very honest ny? It is all very well for Mr. Hood to people-and we take that to be a very com- call out to the travellers on the Rhine to plete and sufficient answer to all the accu- 'take care of their pockets.' Mr. Hood is sation in detail that may be brought against a humorist and has the license of a motley; them. It is much to the purpose that this but it is only right to advertise such of his answer should be furnished by the author readers as do not happen to know better, of these books; since, however, we may that the whole region of the Rhine is much differ from him on some points, or he may more English than German. It is the frondiffer from himself on others, Mr. Howitt tier where the various races mingle; it is is an unexceptionable witness. the high-way where extravagant foreigners

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of dissipation and vice of every kind it is the last place where one looks for German virtue or German simplicity: it is in fact repudiated by the Germans themselves, as being no longer distinguished by the German character in its native integrity. The best vindication of the people from the imputations which these malpractices might seem to cast upon them, is furnished with his invariable candor by Mr. Howitt himself.

The thieving propensities of the Ger-are always to be found setting an example mans appear to have struck Mr. Howitt most forcibly on board the Ludwig steamboat plying on the Rhine. He says that the Ludwig was a regular den of thieves; that his carpet-bag was cut open on board and plundered, and that several of the people connected with that vessel were afterwards sentenced for similar depredations to six years' imprisonment. He tells us, also, that at Cologne a case of eau-de-Cologne, which he had left on the table at his hotel, was rifled during his absence, and that the landlord, treating the affair, strangely enough, as a matter of course, replaced it at his own charge. It is pleasant to perceive in all these cases that, if there be robbery in the country, there is also a compensatory principle resident somewhere; that the law overtakes the depredators on the steamboats, and that, although theft is a matter of course in the hotels, it is also a matter of course on the part of the landlord to make restitution in full for the inevitable wrongs committed in his premises. So far, therefore, no great harm is done. The river rogues carry on their speculations under the wholesome fear of six years' imprisonment, and the hotelkeepers are always ready to make good the All this while, then, we have been looking losses to which their guests are unavoidably at the Germans through the glasses of our exposed. We know no country where the own deformities. It is clear enough that evils of misappropriation of private property the 'genuine German character' is someis more successfully grappled with. thing very different from the German char

"Vast numbers of our country people flock into the Rhine country, because it is easy of access, because it is a very charming country so far as nature goes; but it is at the same time, with the exception of Prussia, the very dearest part of Germany, and what is worse, it is the most corrupt and demoralized. It is not in the cities of the Rhine that you will find the genuine German character in its primitive truth and simplicity. It is a great thoroughfare of tourists, and that of itself is enough to stamp it as corrupt and selfish. True, it is a lovely country, and if you are content with the charms of nature, you cannot well have a pleasanter. But if you seek either the highest state of German social culture in the purest state of its moral simplicity, you must go farther."-Experiences.

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acter which is brought into contact with dull routine of habits, and secure a laugh tourists and migratory lodgers; and that if at the expense of his simplicity. His cookwe would ascertain what that genuine char-ery is atrocious, sauer kraut is a species acter is, we must go farther.' So that, af- of elaborate barbarianism, dawn-of-day ter all, it is we, the tourists, who are to breakfasts, twelve o'clock dinners, long blame for all the chicanery and fraud; we evenings, and suppers of sliced sausages who introduce the temptation, we who dif- and potato salads, make up a tableau of fuse around us a taste for profusion and human life which may well excite the risiluxury, who inspire the simple and plain- ble muscles of an Englishman. It is im dealing tradesman with new desires, and possible to conceive or invent any thing open to him new vistas of acquisition: it is, more completely opposed to his notions of in fact, our more highly refined civilization, the art of living. He is scarcely at breakwith its attendant train of hypocrisies and fast when the German has done dinner-he intrigues, which is begetting in Germany has hardly sat down to dinner when the all these fraudulent practices, against which German has done supper! What sort of Mr. Howitt so eloquently warns the inno- humanity can reside in these people? Let cent English public!

us see.

We sincerely believe this to be the exact We will go to Mr. Howitt's first book truth-neither more nor less. We sincere- for the answer. He is here describing ly believe that our civilization has been what he designates the singular moral working in Germany much the same sort of characteristics of the Germans;' and sinresults-making the necessary allowance gular they are in comparison with the for difference of circumstances-which it moral characteristics of May Fair on the has worked in a more frightful excess one hand or of our great, moving, bustling, amongst the aborigines of our colonies. money-grasping population on the other. If we would see the people in their true national development, we must go farther,' as Mr. Howitt says; we must go beyond the reach of these blighting and pernicious influences.

"There is not a more social and affectionate

people than they are. They are particularly kind and attentive to each other; sympathize deeply in all each others's troubles and pleasAnd what do we find in those remote ures, successes and reverses. They form the districts? A primitive and laborious race strongest attachments and retain them through -simple in their manners, calm, persever- life. Young men entertain that brotherly feeling, affectionate, unostentatious. A peoing for each other that you seldom see in ple free from the vices of a false refine- England. They go, as youths, often walking with their arms about each other, as only ment-placing no stress upon money, even school-boys do with us. They put their arms as a means to an end-intellectual and over each other's shoulder in familiar convergrave, earnest and independent. We hard-sation in company, in a very brotherly way.— ly understand this sort of character, it is so I say nothing of that hearty kissing of each unlike any thing to which we are accus- other on meeting after an absence, that to an tomed. We can hardly comprehend a English eye, in great, rough-whiskered and whole people without some strong, low, in it. They make presents of memorials to mustached men, has something very repulsive worldly motive power stirring up their pas- each other, and maintain a great and lasting sions and agitating them into action. We correspondence. The correspondence of many are apt to disbelieve in the phenomenon Germans is enormous. Ladies who spend the or to turn it into ridicule. We recognize, morning in household affairs, will also in the it is true, in the absence of frivolity, in the afternoon be as busy in writing to their nuweight and seriousness of the Germans, merous friends. It is in private, social intersomething more closely resembling our uine vivacity and heartiness of their character. course alone that the Germans display the genSaxon qualities than we can discover in In the social and select circle of approved and any other part of Europe. German temper-approving friends, they throw off all formality, ance, German phlegm, German industry, and become as joyous and frolicsome as so are perfectly intelligible to us; but we have no notion of a solid man who places poetry and metaphysics above worldly substance, above the daily struggle for riches and personal ambition. This puzzles us, and so by way of getting out of the difficulty, we turn him into a joke. We pitch upon his

many boys and girls. These same young men that in the street will go by you as swift as a steam-engine, and as dark as a thunder cloud, They are ready to enter into any fun, to act there become the very imps of mirth and jollity. any part-to sing, to romp, to laugh, and quiz each other without mercy."--Rural and Domestic Life.

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