any advice from us, which he will not, here were the arena in which, and not in the Fate-drama, he would exclusively continue to fence, for his bread or glory. He is not without a vein of small wit; a certain degree of drollery there is, of grinning half-risible, half-impudent; he has a fair hand at the feebler sort of lampoon; the German Joe Millers also seem familiar to him, and his skill in the riddle is respectable; so that altogether, as we said, he makes a superior figure in this line, which indeed is but despicably managed in Germany; and his Mitternacht-Blatt is, by several degrees, the most readable paper of its kind we meet with in that country. Not that we, in the abstract, much admire Dr. Müllner's newspaper procedure; his style is merely the common tavern-style, familiar. enough in our own periodical literature; riotous, blustering, with some tincture of blackguardism; a half-dishonest style, and smells considerably of tobacco and spirituous liquor. Neither do we find that there is the smallest fraction of valuable knowledge or opinion communicated in the Midnight Paper; indeed, except it be the knowledge and opinion that Dr. Müllner is a great dramatist, and that all who presume to think otherwise are insufficient members of society, we cannot charge our memory with having gathered any knowledge from it whatever. It may be too, that Dr. Müllner is not perfectly original in his journalistic manner: we have sometimes felt as if his light were, to a certain extent, a borrowed one; a rushlight kindled at the great pitch-link of our own Blackwood's Magazine. But on this point we cannot take upon us to decide.

One of Müllner's regular journalistic articles is the Kriegszeitung, or War-intelligence, of all the paper-battles, feuds, defiances and private assassinations, chiefly dramatic, which occur in the more distracted portion of the German Literary Republic. This Kriegszeitung Dr. Müllner evidently writes. with great gusto, in a lively braggadocio manner, especially when touching on his own exploits; yet to us it is far the most melancholy part of the Mitternacht-Blatt. Alas, this is not what we search for in a German newspaper; how "Herr Sapphir," or Herr Carbuncle, or so many other Herren Dous.

terswivel, are all busily molesting one another! We ourselves are pacific men; make a point "to shun discrepant circles rather than seek them: " and how sad is it to hear of so many illustrious-obscure persons living in foreign parts, and hear only, what was well known without hearing, that they also are instinct with the spirit of Satan! For what is the bone that these Journalists, in Berlin and elsewhere, are worrying over; what is the ultimate purpose of all this barking and snarling? Sheer love of fight, you would say; simply to make one another's life a little bitterer; as if Fate had not been cross enough to the happiest of them. Were there any perceptible subject of dispute, any doctrine to advocate, even a false one, it would be something; but, so far as we can discover, whether from Sapphire and Company, or the "Nabob of Weissenfels " (our own worthy Doctor), there is none. And is this their appointed function? Are Editors scattered over the country, and supplied with victuals and fuel, purely to bite one another? Certainly not. But these Journalists, we think, are like the Academician's colony of spiders. This French virtuoso had found that cobwebs were worth something, that they could even be woven into silk stockings: whereupon he exhibits a very handsome pair of cobweb hose to the Academy, is encouraged to proceed with the manufacture; and so collects some halfbushel of spiders, and puts them down in a spacious loft, with every convenience for making silk. But will the vicious creatures spin a thread? In place of it, they take to fighting with their whole vigor, in contempt of the poor Academician's utmost exertions to part them; and end not, till there is simply one spider left living, and not a shred of cobweb woven, or thenceforth to be expected! Could the weavers of paragraphs, like these of the cobweb, fairly exterminate and silence one another, it would perhaps be a little more supportable. But an Editor is made of sterner stuff. In general cases, indeed, when the brains are out the man will die : but it is a well-known fact in Journalistics, that a man may not only live, but support wife and children by his labors in this line, years after the brain (if there ever was any) has been completely abstracted, or reduced by time and hard usage into a state of dry powder.

What, then, is to be done? Is there no end to this brawling; and will the unprofitable noise endure forever? By way of palliative, we have sometimes imagined that a Congress of all German Editors might be appointed, by proclamation, in some central spot, say the Nürnberg Market-place, if it would hold them all here we would humbly suggest that the whole Journalistik might assemble on a given day, and under the eye of proper marshals, sufficiently and satisfactorily horsewhip one another, simultaneously, each his neighbor, till the very toughest had enough both of whipping and of being whipped. In this way, it seems probable, little or no injustice would be done; and each Journalist, cleared of gall for several months, might return home in a more composed frame of mind, and betake himself with new alacrity to the real duties of his office.

But enough! enough! The humor of these men may be infectious it is not good for us to be here. Wandering over the Elysian Fields of German Literature, not watching the gloomy discords of its Tartarus, is what we wish to be employed in. Let the iron gate again close, and shut in the pallid kingdoms from view: we gladly revisit the upper air. Not in despite towards the German nation, which we love honestly, have we spoken thus of these its Playwrights and Journalists. Alas, when we look around us at home, we feel too well that the Germans might say to us: Neighbor, sweep thy own floor! Neither is it with any hope of bettering the existence of these three individual Poetasters, still less with the smallest shadow of wish to make it more miserable, that we have spoken. After all, there must be Playwrights, as we have said; and these are among the best of the class. So long as it pleases them to manufacture in this line, and any body of German Thebans to pay them in groschen or plaudits for their ware, let both parties persist in so doing, and fair befall them! But the duty of Foreign Reviewers is of a twofold sort. For not only are we stationed on the coast of the country, as watchers and spials, to report whatsoever-remarkable thing becomes visible in the distance; but we stand there also as a sort of Tide-waiters and Preventive-service men, to con

tend, with our utmost vigor, that no improper article be landed. These offices, it would seem, as in the material world, so also in the literary and spiritual, usually fall to the lot of aged, invalided, impoverished, or otherwise decayed persons; but that is little to the matter. As true British subjects, with ready will, though it may be with our last strength, we are here to discharge that double duty. Movements, we observe, are making along the beach, and signals out seawards, as if these Klingemanns and Müllners were to be landed on our soil: but through the strength of heaven this shall not be done, till the "most thinking people" know what it is that is landing. For the rest, if any one wishes to import that sort of produce, and finds it nourishing for his inward man, let him do so, and welcome. Only let him understand that it is not German Literature he is swallowing, but the froth and scum of German Literature; which scum, if he will only wait, we can farther promise him that he may, ere long, enjoy in the new, and perhaps cheaper form of sediment. And so let every one be active for himself: :

"Noch ist es Tag, da rühre sich der Mann;

Die Nacht tritt ein, wo niemand wirken kann."

VOLTAIRE.1

[1829.]

COULD ambition always choose its own path, and were will in human undertakings synonymous with faculty, all truly ambitious men would be men of letters. Certainly, if we examine that love of power, which enters so largely into most practical calculations, nay which our Utilitarian friends have recognized as the sole end and origin, both motive and reward, of all earthly enterprises, animating alike the philanthropist, the conqueror, the money-changer and the missionary, we shall find that all other arenas of ambition, compared with this rich and boundless one of Literature, meaning thereby whatever respects the promulgation of Thought, are poor, limited and ineffectual. For dull, unreflective, merely instinctive as the ordinary man may seem, he has nevertheless, as a quite indispensable appendage, a head that in some degree considers and computes; a lamp or rushlight of understanding has been given him, which, through whatever dim, besmoked and strangely diffractive media it may shine, is the ultimate guiding light of his whole path: and here as well as there, now as at all times in man's history, Opinion rules the world.

Curious it is, moreover, to consider in this respect, how different appearance is from reality, and under what singular shape and circumstances the truly most important man of

1 FOREIGN REVIEW, No. 6.- Mémoires sur Voltaire et sur ses Ouvrages, par Longchamp et Wagnière, ses Secrétaires; suivis de divers Ecrits inédits de la Marquise du Châtelet, du Président Hénault, &c. tous relatifs à Voltaire. (Me moirs concerning Voltaire and his Works, by Longchamp and Wagnière, his Secretaries; with various unpublished Pieces by the Marquise du Châtelet, &c. all relating to Voltaire.) 2 tomes. Paris, 1826.