ART. IV-Memoiren des KARL HEINRICH, RITTERS VON LANG. (LANG'S Memoirs.) Brunswick. 1843.

THERE has been a great variety of lives and autobiographical sketches published in Germany of late, as well of men still living, such as Steffens and Arndt, as of others less remarkable in a country where despotic government admits of the shining forth of no eminence short of the very great man. These memoirs are not, any one of them, very interesting as such; for the Germans want the inventive, exaggerative, and ostentatious qualities or the French memoir writers; but still each with its obscure history gives some curious insight into the domestic life and habits of the people, and contains matter that is worthy of attention.

The two volumes before us are the autobiography of the Ritter or Chevalier von Lang, a friend and employé of Prince Hardenberg, engaged all his life in diplomacy or administration, and consequently coming in contact with all that was eminent in Germany. With more than ordinary interest and expectation, therefore, we took up his personal sketches. For independently of these opportunities, he was a man known by his writings and his independence of character. He was one of the few who, amidst the almost universal degradation, political and social, into which his country had fallen, kept clear of the moral contagion; and no one could be more intimately acquainted, not only with the relations of the times in which he lived, but with the characters of the paltry political drama that was acted in his life. That all our expectations have been realized we cannot say. There is no lack of diverting incidents, of masterly sketches from the life, and of diplomatic and court chit-chat; but we had looked for more. We expected, besides the humorous strokes of character and satire for which Lang was famous, something of the grasp of events and relations for which his historical writings were admired; and, while he dwelt on the incapacity and misrule to which the destinies of Germany were in those days so unfortunately intrusted, something of his old manly earnestness. There is little of either. The main tone throughout is that of ridicule and humour. A desire of procuring for the book something of the popularity which attended his Hammelburger Reisen,' but which was denied to his more serious efforts, will at the same time better account for this than any change in his earlier convictions, or any acquired lukewarmness for the interests of humanity. As it is, the memoirs have considerable value. They are a sufficiently faithful delineation of the deplorably corrupt condition of the states of the empire in his time.

Well might the first shock from without shake such a rotten fabric to its base.

The book opens with an account of the author's native district, the principality of Oettingen Wallerstein. His father was priest of the parish of Balgheim therein, where our Ritter was born in 1764. His grandfather had been bred in the prince's palace, and was, to his great horror, created Kammer Director, or chancellor of the prince's exchequer, about the middle of the century. Old Lang was rich, with a competent landed property, and therefore was he elevated to the rank of minister; for the prince wanted to go to the baths of Pyrmont, and had not a louis to pay the expenses of his journey. He therefore promoted old Lang to be Kammer Director, in order that Lang might, on the credit of his own property, obtain money for the prince from the court-Jew, Rotschild. The said court-Jew would not, of course, have lent a stiver to the bankrupt prince. He lent it to Lang, however, for the prince: who went to enjoy himself with the money at Pyrmont, whilst the Langs were ruined, and only obtained a small indemnity for their loss in the great year of 1815. This little story strikes us as highly illustrative of the poverty and morality of a petty German court.

The subject of the present memoir was at first in the service of this potentate. Having left the university of Jena, where he studied the laws for three years, he obtained the post of secretary to the judicial court and council of government of the Prince of Oettingen. The description which Lang gives of the sittings of this judicial court of a petty German prince, is as ludicrous as, at the present day, it must seem incredible.

"The gentlemen did not arrive before ten o'clock, when a long conference immediately began, which every moment passed over to the news of the day, and other irrelevant topics. Frequently, when a counsellor would open a cause, involving perhaps a question of inheritance, and another member, or the president, desire to inspect the documents, these, on presentation, would be found to treat of a sale of oxen, or of something quite as foriegn to the matter in hand. At the stroke of twelve, every member got up to go: the usual phrase being, Mr. Secretary, here are the papers; please to put the tails to them.' All then instantly left the court, to adjourn to the tavern."

Lang, having been much noticed by the president for his promising talents, had soon to share the discredit in which the latter, who happened to be a man of impartial conduct and honourable sentiments, stood with the prince and the rest of the council. He was accused to the prince of being a freethinker, and required to take the sacrament, or quit his service. Lang would willingly have chosen the latter alternative; but the court-Jew who had

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advanced old Lang the money, now thinking he might lose it altogether in case young Lang were dismissed, entreated him with all the zeal of a missionary, to communicate; and at last, in conjunction with his cook, who was also interested in the matter, fairly forced him into the church, where the clergyman received him "with a real Catilinian discourse." Soon after this he gave up his place, as the prince threatened to have him conducted into the sittings by a corporal!

Lang now repaired to Vienna, where, disappointed in finding any employment, his limited means at last obliged him to accept of a tutor's situation in Hungary. This, being but little suited to his taste, he soon relinquished, and returned once more to Vienna, where he succeeded in obtaining the office of private secretary to the Wurtemberg ambassador there, Baron Bühler, with a salary of 200 dollars. The picture of German diplomacy and diplomatists which is now presented, is not less astounding than his picture of the petty German principality's court of law. On every post-day, that is, twice in the week, after the ambassador had passed the whole morning with his colleagues, court-agents, brokers and Jews, in collecting intelligence, the secretary was required to draw up a despatch for the court at Stuttgard. This was done amidst endless orthographical disputes between his Excellence and the secretary; and when at last they had come to an agreement on these points, the whole was copied fair, with numberless fine flourishes, and sent off at night. A secret bulletin for the Duke, in French, always accompanied these important despatches; and this cost the ambassador no little time and labour, when he was not so fortunate as to receive it, ready drawn up, from some old Frenchman, who made it his business to collect all the on dits in circulation. The despatches which the embassy received from Wurtemberg were quite of a similar description. The ambassador was required to procure certificates of deaths, &c.; to give orders to tradesmen from the duke; or to commission the secretary to look out for old bibles and black-letter rarities! The following anecdotes, which the author relates, are quite unique.

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"The ambassador's valet, on one occasion, knocked at two o'clock in the morning at my door, with the words, Monsieur Lang, son Excellence vous désire parler ce moment.' On arriving to learn what important matter could so unexpectedly have happened, the Baron began by saying, Monsieur Lang, I have long noticed, that you do not place your dots directly over the i's in writing, but on the side; sometimes too much to the right, sometimes too much to the left. I intended several times to tell you of this; but as it just now occurred to me in bed, I preferred to send for you, at once, lest I should again forget it.' On another occasion, I confess I was much annoyed at not having been

called up. The valet, with an air of great mystery, informed me one morning that the Baron had been engaged the whole night in writing; a courier having arrived late from Stuttgard. The bulletins of the next day contained the following information: 'On dit que son Excellence M. le Baron de Bühler, Ministre Plenipotentiaire de S. A. Monseigneur le Duc de Wurtemberg, avait reçu la nuit passée un courier, qui a remis des dépêches de sa cour d'une très-haute importance, et qui doivent concerner, à ce qu'on présume, la nouvelle dignité électorale, qu'elle est due à cette maison illustre il y a long temps." Desperate at not being able to get at the truth, I seized on a moment, when the Baron was gone to see his little boy, to pounce upon the compartment where the court despatches were usually deposited, and found the following communication: My dear Baron von Bühler-By the present courier, my private secretary Pistorius, I send you a shoe of the duchess, my spouse, as a pattern for you to get twelve pair made by the most celebrated workmen in Vienna, but with such expedition, that the returning courier may be able to deliver them in time for the next grand assembly on the The present letter not having any other object, accept

my greeting, &c.'

Tired of the wretched trivialities of diplomatic life in Vienna, Lang seized with ardour a proposal from the ambassador to attend the hearing of a cause at some court in Moldavia; on his return from which, he was offered the post of court-secretary to Prince Wallerstein, a nomination which presents us with other satirical pictures, in this court of a petty German prince. The collegium, or ministry, one and all, were, it seems, in disgrace at the time of his arrival. The prince, therefore, only intrusted to it, with considerable restrictions, the administration of justice: all other business he took under his own direction. The service which Lang had to perform was rendered intolerable by the prince's capricious humour. Although often in attendance by appointment, he, and every one else, whatever their rank or business, had to wait day and night in the anteroom, till the prince was pleased to admit them. When, at last, he did succeed in obtaining an audience, it seldom lasted less than three hours, at which, after speaking of the four quarters of the globe, the conversation ultimately reverted to the affairs of the principality of Wallerstein. The mode in which the prince transacted business was as follows. The documents presented to him he laid one upon another till they reached a certain height, when he set to work to reduce the pile, taking a paper sometimes from the top, at other times from the bottom or middle. After writing his decision in a few words on each, they were handed to the secretary to be despatched to the collegium. The latter, however, annoyed at many decisions having been delayed for several years, determined to make the prince feel the injustice he committed, by sending in

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every month a fresh copy of the original document of such cases: so that at last, from the prince's manner of doing business, it often happened that five or six different judgments were pronounced in

the same case.

"One poor devil was kept in prison at Harburg, for several years, because the ministers did not know which of the sentences pronounced in his case was to be carried into execution, whether he was to be hung, or whipped, &c. At last he settled the point himself by breaking out of prison."

Though highly entertaining, our limits do not allow us to accompany Lang to the coronation of the Emperor Leopold II., at Frankfort, whither he was sent to make observation for transmission to the court of Wallerstein. Soon after this service, Lang, in irrepressible disgust, quitted his post at the prince's court, and repaired to Göttingen, where he once more resumed his academic studies; and from whence he was induced to solicit Prince Hardenburg, the Prussian minister, to give him employ. He obtained promises, but nothing positive, until he offered to write a history of the Hardenberg family. This offer caught the old prince, and Lang was instantly taken into pay, and given apartments in Hardenberg Castle for the purpose. He describes the ancient family-seat of the minister on the road between Göttingen and Nordheim, and the estate and all the old odd domestics. He depicts the castle in its solitary state, and contrasts this with the bustle which reigned when the prime minister came there with his numerous suite and world of suitors. Hardenberg employed Lang on several state occasions, which let him into some strange secrets. One was at the death of the old, and the election of a new, Prince Bishop of Wurtzburg and Bamberg. On this occasion Hardenberg distributed 30,000 florins amongst the electors, on the condition that they would elect the most incapable fool that could be found, and one who could make no effectual opposition to Prussia in central Germany. The electors performed their stipulation. So much for episcopal election. Hardenberg afterwards gave Lang the post of councillor and archivist at Bayreuth, though he had completed the family history not quite to the content of his chief, who expected to be shown to have descended at least from Wittikind, the Saxon.

Lang came into employ more honourable and congenial to him, when sent by Hardenberg as attaché to the legation going to the congress of Rastadt. Haugwitz, whom Lang depicts as a timid, irresolute, and jealous dreamer, had been so envious of Hardenberg's success in negotiating the free accession of Nuremberg to Prussia, that he actually broke that most advantageous engage