price were the English bowes in that season, that nothing was able to withstand them; whereas now our archers covet not to draw long and strong bowes, but rather

to shoot compass, which are not meet for the wars, nor greatly to be feared, though they come into the field."

From Tait's Magazine.

THE NEW GERMANIC EMPIRE.

(1.) Deutschland und Friedrich Wilhelm IV.; von J. V. Radowitz; 2te Auflage; Hamburg, 1848.

(2.) Sechs Theologisch-politische Volksreden; von David Friedrich Strauss. gart und Tubingin. 1848.

Stutt

(3.) Die Deutsche Bundesverfassung, und ihr eigenthümliches Verhältniss zu den Verfassungen Englands und der Vereinigten Staaten; von Christian Karl Josias Bunsen, der Philosophie und der Rechte Doctor; Frankfort am Main.

1848.

(4.) Das verjüngte oder vielmehr das zu verjüngende Deutschland; von C. M. Sondt. Bonn. 1848.

(5.) Bunden Reform, Deutsches Parliament und Bundesgericht; von Dr. Heinrich Zöpfl, Professor des Staatrichts an der Universität Heidelberg. Heidelberg. 1848.

THE German Michel has appeared to the horse. Further we have, and we know British John Bull at various times, under familiarly, the sentimental German, with a various Avatars. Not to mention the an- novel in one hand, and a pocket-pistol in cient barbarico-heroic manifestations of the the other, weeping frequent tears over ButTent-manifestations, indeed, that occur-terkrod and Saeurkraut, creeping languidly red previous to the existence of the English- through moon-lit glades and silent cloisters, man, properly so called, and which concern unsheeting the pious ghosts of the middle us nothing we have had, in these recent times, Germans of many descriptions, made, not only as we islanders are apt to imagine (like the French), "for the amusement of the English," but for some higher purpose also, no doubt. We have had, for instance, the theological German, full of vigor and fire, in Martin Luther; cold as ice, and rigid as iron, in the Caloos and the Clemnitz of post-Lutheran orthodoxy; inquisitive, speculative, and sceptical, in the modern Neologian. Nearly akin to him is the philologer, or the scholarly German, generally the ponderous architect of dictionaries in folio, and grammars in quarto, erudite editor of old codicis that few read, and investigator into old languages that none understand. Then we have the philosophic German, a comprehensive and allharmonizing Leibnitz, a subtle and piercing Kant, a Schelling all the world, and a Fichte all himself. Then the imaginative German, a reinless sweeper of the ample fields of space and time, in all directions, and a free dealer with the devil in all shapes, from a blue-bottle fly to a river

ages, and marching them uncomfortably through the profane streets of modern Vienna and Berlin; and, akin to him, we have the mystagogic German, the diviner of delicate spirits, the potent master of magnetic maids, that read books with the pit of their stomachs, and see further through a stone-wall than other people can do through a telescope. All these, and many more Avatars that might be named, John Bull has for some time been sufficiently familiar with; but there is another Avatar of which he hitherto knows little or nothing, the most recent, perhaps the most serious of all, and one that must be seriously studied-we mean the political German. The great preparatory blast of German nationality, that in the famous 1813 startled the plains of Leipzig with its terrible blaze for three whole days, is now swelling out into a continuous organ peal; the "holy Roman Empire" is about to be, perhaps already is, resuscitated; the imperial tricolor

not the gay French ribbon, which has been so prostituted, but the grandeur of black, red, and gold-is fluttering on the

breasts of political students in Vienna, | house of Hohenzollern, and a conglomeraand citizen policemen in Berlin; and if you tion of infinitesimal princes and princelings, think all this is no serious matter, at least stuck up in the centre of Europe like nineof no practical concernment to us, consult the Baltic merchants in the good town of Kingston-upon-Hull, and they will tell you some things that, if you are not too sublime for ledgers and log-books, may demand digestion.

pins, to be knocked down by the French. But it requires more than one hundred or two hundred years to sopite the recollections of a people of forty millions; and an old nationality is as obstinate to die sometimes as an old church. Accordingly, no Paris has hitherto been the great centre man had reason to be surprised, if the utter of political movement in Europe; and prostration of Prussia, by the battle of Frankfort, with its snug board of red-tap- Jena in 1806, was followed by a resurrecists and protocol-framers, has been almost tion, not of Prussia merely, but of German entirely overlooked. Deservedly so, also, feeling, as potent as had existed in the we must say; but whatever Frankfort famous days of Charlemagne-in the days of might decree, in fitful blasts of barren east the Othos, the Henrys, and the Fredericks, wind, they knew little of Germany, who when Deutschland was looked on with adlooked for the political soul of Germany miration as the champion of Europe, there: it was in the secret workings of the against the Moor on one side and the Hun wise-hearted patriots of Baden and Wur- on the other; and when the lordly Pope of temberg, and in the memories of all the Rome could make no prouder earthly great and good who had been deeply stir- boast, than that his stirrup had once been red by the eventful 1813, that the future held by a Swabian Barbarossa. It is good political life of Germany lay hid. Politi- for great nations, as for great saints, to be cal men were wise not to look for the out-afflicted." The ambition of Edward I. laid burst of any great political movement from Frankfort; the historical eye was fixed, wisely, on the pillars of smoke that, from time to time, rose ominously from the fermenting crater on the banks of the Seine; but whosoever thought that there was no political life in broad Deutschland, because there as no political movement, actual or possible, among the board of diplomatists at Frankfort, saw only the superficial crust of German society, and, with purblind vision, mistook, on that mere crust, a little artificial green paint for natural growing grass. The English student, also, of German literature, busied in trimming afresh the rich artistical arabesques of Goethe-in ballooning grandly over the florid tropic vegetation of Jean Paul Richter-in taking the measure of the universe with the compasses of transcendental logic supplied by a Hegel-this man also, though knowing much of German things, mistook the matter sadly, when he taught us that the Germans were essentially a nation of mere thinkers, capable of learnedly investigating, and curiously discussing, history; but not, like the Englishman and the old Roman, of acting

it.

Since the sorrowful peace of Westphalia, indeed, (in 1648, exactly two hundred years ago), general Deutschland had not appeared with recognition on the grand platform of European politics; but, instead of that venerable name, we had only a waning house of Hapsburg, and a crescent

Scotland low, only that it might be raised in patriotic consciousness by a Wallace, and planted on the foundation of an assured nationality by a Bruce. So Napoleon, when he struck old Deutschland with these terrible blows at Wagram and Glaci, did not bind the impotent, as he vainly imagined, but only startled the sleeper. From that moment to the present, there has been a cry of resuscitated nationality in Germany, from the Eyder to the Danube, that will not be choked; and this voice is even now making itself audible, in accents hard to be understood by uninitiated Europe; and amid the struggling voices, that are able at first to achieve more distinct utterance, we discern above the rest, pre-eminent, these two-CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOM for the several members; NATIONAL UNITY for the whole body.

In order that our English readers, accustomed hitherto to point their ears only at the report of Parisian thunder, may be enabled to receive a living impression from the rush of political life that is now shaking the long-stagnant air of Germany, we have thought we could do nothing better than spread before them a few of those flying leaves of political appeal that are now leaping forth from all brains in Germany, like children from the womb of the barren, wondrously. Political pamphlets from Germany! Verily, the thing sounds strange. A treatise on the benefits of free-trade by the celestial eye of China, or on the rights

country as Germany; but political lessons are the last and the most difficult that a well-educated man has to learn; and a few extravagant flights and eccentric wheels might well have been forgiven in the young eagle when first let loose from the bars of its academic cage. The Germans, however, in their new political Avatar, seem to start into life like a panoplied Pallas from the brain of Jupiter. The fact is, as we have already indicated, they have been undergoing a serious political education in secret ever since the year 1806; and their stout Saxon temper is much more capable of receiving such discipline with benefit than the explosive wit of their Celtic neighbors beyond the Rhine. Of this our readers shall now judge.

of capitalists by Louis Blanc, would not sound stranger. Heretofore, in Germany, all sorts of ponderous publications were tolerated and approved; recondite folios on all histories, specially the pre-Adamite and the ante-Noahidian; subtle dissections of all political constitutions, specially the constitution of Rome before Romulus, and the theory of Jewish legislation before Moses; devout inquiries into the origin of all religions, specially of the "mythe" of the Trojan war before the laying of Leda's egg, and of the old Roman creed before the birth of Numa Pompilius. The German mind for the last fifty years has labored after a truly Herculean fashion with the laborious-piled fruits of this far-sought curiousness. But a political pamphlet a short, direct, unencumbered address on a practi- The first extract which we shall make is cal matter of public interest, lying directly from the pamphlet entitled "Germany and before honest Michel's nose-this was an Frederick William IV.," which is, in subexhibition of the powers of "articulate stance, a defence of the King of Prussia, speaking man" not to be tolerated within and especially of his conduct during the the glance of the young Prussian eye, or late important movements in Berlin. In the sniff of the old Austrian nose. A poli- these his recent doings, many persons seem tical pamphlet might appear once in ten to look upon him as a clever comedian years perhaps; but the penalty was certain suddenly assuming a new part, while to -a residence in Spandau, or the Spielberg, other eyes he appears even more trivial, as or a trip to the back woods in the Far West, a wisp of straw whirled aloft by the hasty as many a sad history of broken hearts rush of events; but Von Radowitz, the auand blighted hopes from the year 1815 thor of this pamphlet, which public approvdownwards but too openly testifies. Now, al has now sanctioned by the call for a sehowever, the strange silence is suddenly cond edition, makes it clear that the conbroken-the professor becomes a parliamen- duct of the monarch, in putting himself, as tary orator, the book becomes a speech, and he did, at the head of the new German the folio dictionary dwindles to a pocket movement, was not a forced conversion or pamphlet of thirty-two pages. We hail the metamorphosis. Henceforth German speculations are like to be more practical, German wit less lumbering, German sentences less perplexed, and German books of all kinds (for we hope the Germans may still remain par excellence book-makers) more comfortable to be read.

a momentary whim, but the swift launching of a bark which had for many years been waiting for a tide. In the appendix to this pamphlet there is printed a remarkable memorial, dated Berlin, November 20th, 1847, in which, after shortly sketching the history of the German Diet since its constitution in 1815 to the present time, a plan The pamphlets which stand at the bot- of reform is proposed, altogether in the tom of our page are calculated to give a spirit, and comprising most of the details, very favorable idea of the political capacity of the present movement. This memorial, of the German mind. They have no lack the pamphleteer certifies, was read and enof fire, vigor, and the impulse of a con- tirely approved (durchweg Jenehmigt) by the centrated charge on a given point, without Prussian monarch, three months before the which an effective pamphlet is impossible February revolution of the French; a most but they are also remarkable for a tone important fact, both as explaining the fuof sober Conservatism and self-imposed mo- ture conduct of the king, and as showing deration, with which pamphlets, as light- from what truly German depths (no superfiwinged fugitive existences, too often think cial ripple of Gallic sympathy) the recent they may be allowed to dispense. This is no surges of public life in Germany have promore indeed than what we had reason to ex-ceeded. The historic sketch of the Gerpect from so serious and meditative, so well man Diet is as follows:instructed and systematically drilled at

"These tendencies to dissolution in the States composing the Confederation produced a sort of reaction, to which the European Congresses, and the issue of the Spanish and Italian wars, mainly contributed. The Final Act of Vienna (Die Wiener Schlussacte*) has with its great defects, the "The year 1840 is connected with the memory merit of giving a sort of solution to many questions of a rise in the tide of public feeling in Germany, which had previously been shoved aside. such as could scarcely have been considered pos"Scarcely, however, had the dangers of separa-sible. Austria and the smaller German States tion receded a little into the rear, when the jealousy of Austria against Prussia revived with such strength as to give a decided character to the history of the Confederation for the years that follow up the year 1830. This opposition of the two principal

was passed, everything relapsed immediately into ently; it is connected at too many points with the the old apathy, into a deep-rooted conviction on the great political world; it is too far removed from part of the public, that nothing good could be expect-immediate German interests to be materially affected from the Diet. In the smaller States, certainly ed by the good or evil condition of the German some hope yet lived. A feeling had been cherished Confederation. Only a that there were many important measures called for by the several divisions of Germany, to which an impulse could be given effectively only by the collective body of Germans; but these hopes and feelings remained without fruit, because they were always lamed by the apprehension that any interference on the part of the Diet might tend to cut down unduly the powers of the particular governments.

power which stands or falls with Germany can exercise a moral weight in this matter; this is felt more or less daily by every man; and such a moral weight will never be exercised till Prussia, in the consciousness that it is seeking only the good of the whole, comes boldly forward, and seizes the reins that are dragging on the ground. What is requir ed is only the first stroke of propulsion, the opening of the path, on which, being once entered, Germany may expect her regeneration; when, with this principle of new life once awakened, the mission of Prussia is fulfilled, and the indispensable central authority in the Confederation will receive its consitutional shape by the free agreement of all.

In this manner has arisen the lamentable condition of the Diet, which lies, at the present moment, patent to every seeing eye. To the question, What has the German Diet done, during the 32 years of its existence (32 years of a protracted, almost unexampled, peace), for the strengthening and the advancement of Germany?' no answer is possible. The injury hence resulting is not to be "We have said derman unity has, since the reckoned. Of interests merely material, great as creation of the Det, been the great problem for they confessedly are, we need say nothing; the Prussia; it is a problem also, in a special way, moral injury, the effect on the feeling and temper proposed for he solution of the present monarch. of the nation, is momentous. The public life of The King & Prussia requires, more than common the present times has concentrated itself almost ex- sovereigns at the present juncture, the confidence, clusively on the interests and relation of Church the sym-athy, the enthusiasm of his people. Now and State. The most potent influence of the day, that the political and ecclesiastical parties have the influences of nationality, has been allowed to turnes into a waste and a wilderness the field of become a dangerous weapon in the hands of the his est and purest intentions, there remains for enemies of public order. This is a FACT which his now, in order to excite these feelings in the must be recognized and accepted, in all the sharp- people, but one resource, viz: that he should ness of its real outline, before any one can pretend unite himself with the better spirit of the nation, to have cast a glance of insight into the real dan- ' by coming boldly forward as the champion of gers of the times. The minds of all Germans are their political interests and aspirations. The king at the present moment possessed by a longing after a Germany strong and respected abroad, internally stable and harmonious; this is by far the most popular and the most powerful thought that now animates the Teutonic family. Nay, more; it is the only feeling now existing, to which differences of historical tradition, of Church and of State, are willing to subordinate themselves; and it is for this reason, the only broad foundation on which a common political structure for Germany can be raised; the only channel into which the devastating floods of party violence can with safety be ied. Every other essay, with the means hitherto at our command, with the forms hitherto used, will be found inadequate, and that to the irreparable loss of all parties concerned.

must win Prussia through Germany; and this becomes a double gain. The time is now advanced : years have gone by-irrevocable years--and with them a great part of the possible blessing with which they were laden; every succeeding season unused has made it more difficult to do that which at first had been achieved with ease; but it is not yet too late. The urgent hour, perhaps the very last moment for action, has arrived."

Of the correctness of the views set forth in this document, always making allowance for a little Prussian color in the tone, the most superficial retrospect of the history of Europe during the last thirty years will convince the reader. Two facts cannot be "If these considerations are true with regard to denied, that the action of the German Diet Germany generally, they have a special point in the since 1815, in reference to German rights case of Prussia. This country has, by the course and interests, has been almost entirely neof events, risen to form one of the great European pentarchy; and the position thus attained, it will gative and repressive-say rather counteracand must endeavor to maintain. But, whatever tive of all that had been hoped on the its weight be, it is impossible to deny that Prussia bloody field of Leipzig, and promised in in its present state of isolation is not in a condi- the solemn conclaves of Vienna; and that tion to exercise an influence equal to that exercised the only grand national measure that sigby each of the other four powers. Only in the nalizes that long period of pernicious triclosest and most intimate union with the rest of fling, the Zollverein, or Customs' Union, Germany, can Prussia find the necessary comple ment of political weight which it requires. That was a product of the voluntary activity and Germany be strong and united, this is for Prussia subtle combinations of Prussia.* This a vital question-the first condition of its exist- Menzel, in his history, states, that the first germ In this view, Austria is situated very differ- of the Zollverein proceeded from the poetical King

ence.