without reflecting upon the means, provided only they are novel? Perhaps, after all, this latter question suggests the true solution. In either case, Scribe is as bad a teacher of morals as he is an unwise and unsafe illustrator of history. It will be said that he does not aspire to be either. If so, let him remove his enervating pictures of an ill drawn and worse imagined state of society from beside the rich comedy of Molière, whose joyous mirth, not overnice neither, no more shocks the delicacy of those that witness it, than would, to use the illustration of Sterne, 'the sprawlings of a naked infant.' Let Scribe return to the Gymnase, now under the ban of the displeasure of the authors' society. Let him fix again in some new combination his never-changing personages. The old colonel of the empire; the rich young widow; the banker; the gallant sea lieutenant; and the half-sentimental heiress. In his hands these are marionettes' to be shifted about at his pleasure: without character, colour, or physiognomy, it is true, but exciting curiosity by varying changes of position, and still appearing to talk from themselves, though it be but the author's voice which is heard in the one unchanged tone, cutting his jokes upon the passing occurrences of the day. In this light walk of the drama, M. Scribe could not do much harm. The amount that he ever did or might do, is accurately summed up by the writer of the 'Galerie des Contemporains illustres, par un homme de rien.'* "Having said that there is no poison in the pieces of M. Scribe, I do not mean to gainsay my assertion-no! They do not contain this strong poison which kills at once, but they are charged with that sort of sentimental opium which, distilled in petty doses, undermines strength, and disposes the heart to dangerous capitulations. While avoiding an air of over-rigid puritanism, I must say that we live in a state of moral apathy, in producing of which M. Scribe has had no share. Admitting his innocence in this respect, it must still be declared that he has pushed quite far enough his system of toleration in the affairs of the heart. Having already opened a thousand little charming channels, through which to slip from the true to the false-having created a thousand little delicate shades, which form so skilful a gradation, that the eye fails to separate black from white, good from evil -he must now advance further, and carry into the affairs of life a desolating doubt and unexhaustless raillery in place of his former playfulness, and its accommodating mode of compromise." We apprehend that in Une Chaine,' presented since M. Scribe was hung up in the Authors' Gallery, the sentimental opium is more largely distilled, the shades of gradation more difficult to seize, the eye more confounded. M. Scribe has become more grave, and his gravity and poison are spread over five acts instead of two: in every respect changes for the worst. It is much to say, in praise of the writer under this signature, that in drawing the likeness of the Duke of Wellington for his gallery, he has painted that great man with a precision, impartiality, and justice, such as could hardly have been expected from a Frenchman writing under the influence of excited public opinion. ( 169 ) ART. X.- Erinnerungen aus dem aussern Leben von ERNST MORITZ ARNDT. (Reminiscences from the Life of ERNEST MAURICE ARNDT.) 3te Auflage. Leipzig. 1842. THIS is one of the best books of German memoirs that we have seen; and that for two reasons. First, because it is the production of a downright honest hearty fellow, who is no proser and philosophizer (as Germans are so apt to be): one who prefers hard practice to vague speculation in all things, and yet has a colour of enthusiasm and a dash of poetry in his composition that might shame many a rhymer: secondly, because it treats principally of a theme which it is impossible for a man with a heart and a hand, by any solemn trick of book-making, altogether to stilt up into a cold formality, or to dilate into a wearisome insipidity. That theme, we mean, of more genuine epic dignity, and more substantial moral contents, than any other that the recent history of Europe presents the Liberation-war of the Germans in the year 1813. We are happy to observe that our brethren beyond the Rhine have been remarkably busy lately in recalling their glowing reminiscences of that patriotic epoch; and though the pipe be now shrill and small that quavers out the tremulous voice of the tenues sine corpore vitas-the tenuous lives without a body that once were stout Napoleon-haters and sturdy French-eaters, with hair upon their teeth (as the Germans phrase it)-yet is it sublime even in echo to hear the far pealing of that thunder, and inspiring even in fancy to break through the circumvallation of Prussian red-tapists, and scour the fire fields hurry skurry with Marshal Blücher, and Theodore Körner, and the whole generation of German Pa triots. British thanks have already been given to the writers of books in Germany for those glowing pictures from the romance of real life in 1813, with which the first number of the Pandora' We know not whether a like acknowledgment presented us.* has anywhere in British literature been made to the value of the present work: happy, however, are we to see, that in Germany it has reached a third edition since the year 1840, when it was first published: and with regard to the English reader we may confidently say this, that, though, if ignorant of the practical working of the censorship of the press in Germany, he may be somewhat disappointed in these reminiscences, he cannot peruse them without Erinnerungen aus dem Befreiungskriege, in Briefe gesammelt von FRIEDRICH having added distinctness to the features of his historic comprehension, and fervour to the pulses of his human heart. Ernest Maurice Arndt, the writer of these personal memoirs, is a name better known to the mere English reader than many of far greater note in the literary roll of Germany. We all saw him indeed, or might have seen him, making the tour of our liberal papers a few years ago, when the late King of Prussia restored him to the exercise of his functions as Professor in the University of Bonn, from which he had been suspended since the year 1820. And why suspended? Not a strange thing at all, but somewhat shabby: one of those ugly things that small politicians will do at times, when they have to do with great souls: They conjure up a spirit in their need, And when it comes they blench to look on't. Arndt was a man to whom the late King of Prussia owed the throne on which he sat, more almost than to the dogged patriotism of the Muscovites, the fires of Moscow, the snows of Lithuania, and the anti-gallican crusade of Alexander. He was a man—the representative of a body of men-whom Napoleon had more cause to fear than all that terrible three days cannonading at Leipzig. He was not a soldier; he was only a rude sort of a song-writer; but he was a singer that spoke the heart of the people in those earnest days, when songs were sermons, and sermons were swords. This man, the late King of Prussia, or his ministers rather, after the war was over, and fire and energy no more in request, first harassed with all manner of police examinations and inquisitorial investigations, and then turned fairly adrift. All this was natural enough, and not at all to be wondered at, as things go in this world; for they do not understand popular movements in Prussia, and a bonfire made by a few idle students will be strong enough, on occasion, to shake a whole phalanx of their smock-faced bureaucratists into a fever. But still it had an ugly air, and was likely to sound well nowhere except at Vienna. pro Who that knows any thing of the recent history of social gress on the continent, has not heard the name of the Baron von Stein, the man who, with the Chancellor Hardenberg, so boldly conceived, and so triumphantly carried into execution, the Prussian agrarian laws of 1810? Of this man Arndt was, during the eventful period of the great German rising, the private secretary. He went after him first to St. Petersburg, to be out of the way of Napoleon's spies, in the autumn of 1812; from that he came back with him in the spring of 1813; and though his office called upon him to use the pen not the sword, Blücher himself was not more of a soldier in his heart. This being the situation of the writer, Madame de Stael in St. Petersburg. 171 the reader will have no difficulty in understanding what he is to expect from the book: a few vigorous and racy sketches of Russia in 1812, and Prussia in 1813. We shall make a few extracts, following the natural progress of the events. First, of the state of public feeling at Petersburg in the summer of 1812, and of the national character and capabilities of the Russians generally, we have the following interesting notices: "Petersburg was in those days a sort of rendezvous for all those who hated Napoleon and loved Europe, to whatever country they might belong. Among other European notabilities, Madame de Stael and Herr August W. von Schlegel made their appearance in the northern capital. What shall I say of the famous woman, so often described, and so much bepraised? I saw her: and can only say what others have said before me, that her body was any thing but beautiful: almost too strong and masculine for a woman. But with what a head was this body crowned! Her brow, her eyes, her nose, were noble, and lighted up with the flash of genius; mouth and chin less beautiful. And with that magazine of wit which scintillated in her eyes, and streamed on her lips, she possessed also an expression of sense and goodness quite enchanting. Oh, what a shrewdness she had! she knew every bird by his beak, and shaped her address accordingly: a truly regal quality of intellect, however few kings nowadays seem to possess it. It was a real treat to see her and my master sitting together on the sofa; truly two mortals with more life in their souls were never together before. And how they did carambole! I shall mention a sort of a scene with Madame de Stael, which shows how much every Frenchman is French, and how they often possess too much of that love of country of which we Germans possess too little. The French players in Petersburg gave the 'Phædra.' Rocca, de Stael's friend, and her son had gone to the theatre: I and a few others, who were dining with her, remained at home: when lo! the two came back again in a state of considerable excitement, shortly after they had gone out, and told us how such a din had been raised in the theatre, and such a violent outcry against Frenchmen and French plays, that the manager had been forced to give up the performance for that night. And so indeed it turned out to be. And there was an end now to the French play in Petersburg altogether for that year; after this untoward display of popular feeling, the comedians took the earliest opportunity to depart. And Madame de Stael?-she forgot time and place, and thought only of herself and her nation. She lost all selfcommand, and, bursting into tears, exclaimed, The barbarians !— that would not see the Phædra of Racine.' "As for the Russians themselves, as I did not know their language, my oral intercourse with them was necessarily confined to that section whom the use of the French and German languages had brought more into the current of European civilization, and in whom, of course, the strong lines most significant of national character had been, to a certain extent, rubbed down, or even altogether obliterated. I always, however, kept my eyes open eagerly (where my ears could profit me nothing) to scan the real Russians: the soldiers, the peasants, the retail tradesmen, the carriers, the coachmen, the players, the pantomimists, and the dancers of the Russian theatre. The study of character was indeed a part of my nature; and here I had scope enough on all sides to exercise my instinct. During the first month of our residence in Petersburg I used often to walk about the streets at random with my excellent old master; and we used to amuse ourselves not a little with guessing at the nationality of the different persons we met: determining from the gait, the air, and a thousand untangible circumstances, whether this or the other on whom we fixed our mark, were a German, a Russian, a Frenchman, an Englishman, or what. By frequent practice in this way I could in a short time tell a Russian at once, even from a considerable distance. My master, not being able to acquire the same facility, used to jest at me, and say that I was certainly no true German, but a changeling whom some hag of a witch had brought from North America, where the wild Indians have such extraordinarily sharp noses. The Russians are truly a strange people. 'Tis quite correct what is commonly said, that in the features and whole expression there is a something neither European nor Asiatic, but a combination of both; but this is not all; there are strange analogies besides; traits of a Scandinavian, of a Tartar, and of a Finnish relationship, appear undeniably. With a language so like to that of the Poles, how different is the character of the people! They possess indeed that lightness and jocularity of nature which belongs to the whole Sclavonic race; but they have much more conscious sportive talent than the Poles; a much more marked expression of cunning shrewdness; and with a great pliancy and mobility of limb and gesture, they are very obstinate and determined; and when they are once fairly in earnest, how great is that earnest! What an expression of doggedness and determination, what a patience, what a pertinacity, what a capacity of work! Moreover they have a deep sense of religion. Often have I seen them when the hour struck for midday or evening prayer, and looked at their faces not without astonishment. Suddenly, as if struck with thunder, they turned away from the whole worldly train of their thoughts; the features that had but the moment before been relaxed in rude jests, instantly became fixed in an expression of the deepest devotion; and now with reverential eye and folded hands they seemed to feel nothing but heaven and their own heart! To see this people so earnestly devout you must be convinced that there is a substantiality in them, and an indestructible principle of national life. There is something indeed in the expression of the commonest fellow in Russia which seems to say-I am somebody. There is the expression of a great ineffaceable community of interest, a something like pride, of which the humble German has no conception. I say this not at all as a person having any particular love and respect for the Russians; only this is the general impression they made on me. The Germans they don't like ; nay, they despise them. This contempt I certainly cannot honestly pay |