Frederick did a real injury to his country by proclaiming his contempt for the genius of the Germans. It has thence resulted that the Germanic body has often conceived unjust suspicions against Prussia herself.

Many German writers, of deserved celebrity, made themselves known towards the end of Frederick's reign; but the unfavorable opinion, which this great monarch had imbibed in his youth against the literature of his country, was never effaced; and, a few years before his death, he composed a little work, in which he proposed, among other changes, to add a vowel at the end of every verb, to soften the Teutonic dialect. This German, in an Italian mask, would produce the most comic effect in the world; but no monarch, even in the East, possesses so much power as to influence in this manner, not the sense, but the sound of every word that shall be pronounced throughout his dominions.

Klopstock has nobly reproached Frederick with his having neglected the German muses, who, unknown to him, essayed to proclaim his glory. Frederick did not at all divine the real character of the Germans in literature and philosophy. He did not give them credit for being inventors. He wished to discipline men of letters as he did his armies. "We must conform ourselves," said he, in bad German, in his instructions to the Academy," to the method of Boerhaave in medicine, to that of Locke in metaphysics, and that of Thomasius in natural history." His instructions were not followed. He never doubted that, of all men, the Germans were those who were least capable of being subjected to the routine of letters and philosophy: nothing announced in them that boldness which they have since displayed in the field of abstraction.'

1 "Thus the two German Emperors, Fritz [Frederick the Great] and Wolfgang [Goethe], held no spiritual congress; perhaps no good result could have been elicited by their meeting. Yet they were, each in his own sphere, the two most potent men then reigning. Fritz did not directly assist the literature of his country, but his indirect influence has been indieated by Griepenkerl. He awoke the Germans from their sleep by the rolling of drums; those who least liked the clang of arms or the divisions

strangers, and the Nothing, it must be

Frederick considered his subjects as Frenchmen of genius as his countrymen. confessed, is more natural than that he should have let himself be seduced by whatever was brilliant and solid in the French writers of this epoch; nevertheless, Frederick would have contributed still more effectually to the glory of his country, if he had understood and developed the faculties peculiar to the nation he governed. But how resist the influence of his times? and where is the man, whose genius itself is not, in many respects, the work of the age he lives in?

CHAPTER XVII.

BERLIN.

BERLIN is a large city, with very broad streets, perfectly straight, the houses handsome, and the general appearance regular; but, as it has been but lately rebuilt, it displays no traces of ancient times. Not one Gothic monument remains amid its modern habitations; and nothing of the antique interrupts the uniformity of this newly created courtry. What can be better, it will be said, either for buildings or for institutions, than not to be incumbered with ruins? I feel that, in America, I should love new cities and new laws: there, nature and liberty speak so immediately to the soul, as to leave no want of recollections; but, in this old world of ours, the past is needful to us. Berlin, an entirely modern city, beautiful as it is, makes no serious impression; it discovers no marks

of a battle-field,' were nevertheless awakened to the fact that something important was going on in life, and they rubbed their sleepy eyes, and tried to see a little into that. The roll of drums has this merit, at all events, that it draws men from their library table to the window, and so makes them look out upon the moving, living world of action, wherein the erudite may

6 considerable sensation' made even by men unable to conjugate a Greek verb in '.'"-(G. H. Lewes' Life of Goethe, vol. i. p. 396.)-Ed.

of the history of the country, or of the character of its inhab itants, and its magnificent new-built houses seem destined only for the convenient assemblage of pleasures and industry. The finest palaces in Berlin are built of brick; hardly any stone is to be found even in its triumphal arches. The capital of Prussia resembles Prussia itself; its buildings and institutions are of the age of man, and no more, because a single man was their founder.

The court, over which a beautiful and virtuous queen presides, was at once imposing and simple; the royal family, which threw itself voluntarily into society, knew how to mix with dignity among the nation at large, and became identified in all hearts with their native country. The king had found the means of fixing at Berlin, J. von Müller, Ancillon, Fichte, Humboldt, Hufeland, a multitude of men distinguished in different ways; in short, all the elements of a delightful society, and of a powerful nation, were there; but these elements were not yet combined or united together. Genius was attended with much more success, however, at Berlin than at Vienna; the hero of the nation, Frederick, having been a man of uncommon brilliancy, the reflection of his name still inspired a love for every thing that resembled him. Maria Theresa did not give a similar impulse to the people of Vienna; and whatever, in Joseph, bore the least appearance of genius, was sufficient to disgust them with it."

"The city is situated in the midst of a dreary plain of sand, destitute of either beauty or fertility. It is surprising that the foundation of a town should ever have been laid on so uninteresting a spot, but it is far more wonderful that it should have grown up, notwithstanding, into the flourishing capital of a great empire. Previous to the reign of Frederick I, it was an unimportant town, confined to the right bank of the Spree, and to the island on which the palace and museum now stand. Since that time, in one hundred and fifty years, its population has increased tenfold, and its limits have extended until its walls are twelve miles in circumference. Frederick the Great, being ambitious to possess a capital proportionate to the rapid increase of his dominions, at once inclosed a vast space with walls, and ordered it to be filled with houses. As the population was scanty, the only mode of complying with the wishes of the sovereign was by stretching the houses over as wide a space as possible. In consequence

No spectacle in all Germany was equal to that which Berlin presented. This town, situated in the centre of the north of Germany, may be considered as its focus of enlightenment. Sciences and letters are cultivated there; and at dinners, both ministerial and private, where the men meet together, the

some of the handsomest hotels are only two stories high, and have as many as twenty windows on a line. The streets are necessarily broad, and therefore generally appear empty. Owing to the want of stone in the neighborhood, the larger part even of the public buildings are of brick and plaster. The flatness of the ground, and the sandy soil, produce inconveniences which the stranger will not be long in detecting. There is so little declivity in the surface, that the water in the drains, instead of running off, stops and stagnates in the streets. In the Friedrichsstrasse, which is two miles long, there is not a foot of descent from one end to the other. In the summer season, the heat of the sun reflected by the sand becomes intolerable, and the noxious odors in the streets are very unwholesome as well as unpleasant. A third nuisance is, that the streets are only partially provided with trottoirs, so narrow that two persons can scarcely walk abreast; and many are infamously paved with sharp stones, upon which it is excruciating pain to tread.

"The mere passing traveller, in search of amusement, will exhaust the sights of Berlin perhaps in a fortnight, and afterwards find it tedious without the society of friends. The stranger coming to reside here, provided with good introductions, may find an agreeable literary society, composed of the most talented men in Germany, whom the government has the art of drawing around it in an official capacity, or as professors of the University. The names of Humboldt, the traveller; Savigny, the jurist; Ranke and Raumer, the historians; Ehrenberg, the naturalist; Von Buch, the geologist; Ritter, the geographer; Grimm, the philologist, and editor of the Kinder and Haus-Märchen; Schelling, the metaphysical writer; Cornelius, the painter; Tieck, the author (who spends three months of the year here, the king having granted him a pension on that condition), all residents of Berlin, enjoy a European celebrity. The society of the upper classes is on the whole not very accessible to strangers, nor is hospitality exercised to the same extent among them as in England, chiefly because their fortunes are limited. The hotels of the diplomatic corps are an exception, and in them the most agreeable soirées are held in the winter

season.

"Notwithstanding the disadvantages of situation, Berlin is certainly one of the finest cities in Europe. Some of the most splendid buildings are concentrated in a very small space between the palace (Schloss) and the Brandenburg Gate, or very near it. Few European capitals can show so much architectural splendor as is seen in the colossal Palace, the beautiful colonnade of the Museum, the chaste Guard-house, the great Opera, and the University opposite."(Murray's Hand-Book for Northern Ge rany, n. 332.)--Ed.

separation of ranks, so prejudicial to Germany, is not rigidly enforced, but people of talent of all classes are collected. This happy mixture is not yet, however, extended to the society of women. There are among them some whose talents and accomplishments attract every thing that is distinguished to their circles; but, generally speaking, at Berlin, as well as throughout the rest of Germany, female society is not well amalgamated with that of the men. The great charm of social life, in France, consists in the art of perfectly reconciling all the advantages which the wit of the men and women united can confer upon conversation. At Berlin, the men rarely converse except with each other; the military condition gives them a sort of rudeness, which prevents them from taking any trouble about the society of women.

When there are, as in England, great political interests to be discussed, the societies of men are always animated by a noble feeling common to all; but in countries where there is no representative government, the presence of the women is necessary, to preserve all the sentiments of delicacy and purity, without which the love of the beautiful must perish. The influence of women is yet more salutary to the soldier than to the citizen; the empire of law can subsist without them much better than that of honor, for they can alone preserve the spirit of chivalry in a monarchy purely military. Ancient France owed all her splendor to this potency of public opinion, of which female ascendency was the cause.

Society at Berlin consisted only of a very small number of men, a circumstance which almost always spoils the members of it by depriving them of the anxiety and of the necessity to please. Officers, who obtained leave of absence to pass a few months in town, sought nothing there but the dance or the gaming-table. The mixture of two languages was detrimental to conversation, and the great assemblies at Berlin afforded nc nigher interest than those at Vienna; or rather, in point o manners, there was more of the custom of the world at the iatter than at the former of those capitals. Notwithstanding this, the liberty of the press, the assemblage of men of genius