thinks, and he whose existence is merely material, are alike insensible to all external distraction.

Fields deserted, houses blackened by smoke, Gothic churches, are all so many preparatives for stories of ghosts and witches. The commercial cities of Germany are large and well built; but they afford no idea of what constitutes the glory and interest of the country-its literary and philosophical spirit. Mercantile interests are enough to unfold the understanding of the French, and in France some amusing society may still be met. with in a town merely commercial; but the Germans, eminently capable of abstract studies, treat business, when they employ themselves about it, with so much method and heaviness, that they seldom collect from it any general ideas whatever. They carry into trade the honesty which distinguishes them; but they give themselves up so entirely to what they are about, that they seek in society nothing more than a jovial relaxation, and indulge themselves, now and then, in a few gross pleasantries, only to divert themselves. Such pleasantries overwhelm the French with sadness; for they resign themselves much more willingly to grave and monotonous dulness than to that witty sort of dulness which comes, slowly and familiarly, clapping its paws on your shoulder.

The Germans have great universality of spirit in literature and in philosophy, but none whatever in business. They always consider it partially, and employ themselves with it in a manner almost mechanical. It is the contrary in France; the spirit of business is there much more enlarged, and universality is admitted neither in literature nor in philosophy. If a learned man were a poet, or a poet learned, he would become suspected among us, both by learned men and poets; but it is no rare thing to meet, in the most simple merchant, with luminous perceptions on the political and military interests of his country. Thence it follows, that in France there are many men of wit, and a smaller number of thinkers. In France, they study men; in Germany, books. Ordinary faculties are sufficient to interest one in speaking of men, but it requires almost genius itself to discover a soul and an impulse in bocks.

Germany can interest only those who employ themselves about past events and abstract ideas. The present and the real belong to France, and, until a new order of things shall arise, she does not appear disposed to renounce them.

I think I am not endeavoring to conceal the inconveniencies of Germany. Even those small towns of the north, where we meet with me of such lofty conceptions, often present no kind of amusement--no theatre, little society; time falls drop by drop, and no seɑnd disturbs the reflections of solitude. The smallest towns in England partake of the character of a free State, in sending their deputies to treat of the interests of the nation. The smaller towns of France bear some analogy to the capital, the centre of so many wonders. Those of Italy rejoice in the bright sky and the fine arts, which shed their rays over all the country. In the north of Germany there is no representative government, no great metropolis; and the severity of the climate, the mediocrity of fortune, and the seriousness of character, would combine to render existence very irksome, if the force of thought had not set itself free from all these insipid and narrowing circumstances. The Germans have found the means of creating to themselves a republic of letters, at once animated and independent. They have supplied the interests of events by the interest of ideas. They can do without a centre, because all tend to the same object, and their imagination multiplies the small number of beauties. which art and nature are able to afford them.

The citizens of this ideal republic, disengaged for the most part from all sort of connection either with public or private business, work in the dark like miners; and, placed like them in the midst of buried treasures, they silently dig out the intellectual riches of the human race.

CHAPTER XIV.

SAXONY.

SINCE the Reformation, the princes of the house of Saxony have always granted to letters the most noble of protections, -independence. It may be said without fear, that in no country of the earth does there exist such general instruction as in Saxony, and in the north of Germany. It is there that Protestantism had its birth, and the spirit of inquiry has there maintained itself ever since in full vigor.

During the last century the electors of Saxony have been Catholics; and, though they have remained faithful to the oath, which obliged them to respect the worship of their subjects, this difference of religion between prince and people has given less of political unity to the State. The electors, kings of Poland, were more attached to the arts than to literature, to which, though they did not molest it, they were strangers. Music is generally cultivated throughout Saxony; in the gallery of Dresden are collected together chefs-d'œuvre for the imitation of artists. The face of nature, in the neighborhood of the capital, is extremely picturesque, but society does not afford there higher pleasures than in the rest of Germany; the elegance of a court is wanting-its ceremoniousness only finds an easy establishment.

From the quantity of works that are sold at Leipsic, we may judge of the number of readers of German publications; artisans of all classes, even stone-cutters, are often to be seen, resting from their labors, with a book in their hands. It cannot be imagined in France to what a degree knowledge is diffused over Germany. I have seen innkeepers and turnpikemen well versed in French literature. In the very villages, we meet with professors of Greek and Latin. There is not a small town

without a decent library; and almost every place boasts of some men, worthy of remark for their talents or information. If we were to set ourselves about comparing, in this respect, the French provinces with Germany, we should be apt to believe that the two nations were three centuries distant from each other. Paris, uniting in its bosom the whole flower of the empire, takes from the remainder every sort of

interest.

Picard and Kotzebue have composed two very pretty pieces, both entitled The Country Town. Picard represents the provincials incessantly aping Parisian manners, and Kotzebue the citizens of his little community delighted with and proud of the place they inhabit, which they believe to be incomparable.' The different nature of the ridicule gives a good idea of the difference of manners. In Germany, every residence is an empire to its inhabitant; his imagination, his studies, or perhaps his mere good-nature, aggrandize it before his eyes; everybody knows how to make the best of himself in his little circle. The importance they attach to every thing affords matter of pleasantry; but this very importance sets a value upon small resources. In France, nobody is interested out of Paris; and with reason, for Paris is all France; and one who has lived only in the country can not have the slightest notion of that which characterizes this illustrious nation.

The distinguished men of Germany, not being brought together in the same place, seldom see each other, and communicate only by writing; each one makes his own road, and is continually discovering new districts in the vast region of antiquity, metaphysics, and science. What is called study in Germany is truly admirable: fifteen hours a day of solitude and labor, for several years in succession, appear to them a natural mode of existence; the very ennui of society gives animation to a life of retirement.

The most unbounded freedom of the press existed in Sax

Picard is a celebrated French, Kotzebue a celebrated German, writer of plays.-Ed.

ɔny; but the government was not in any manner endangered by it, because the minds of literary men did not turn towards the examination of political institutions; solitude tends to deliver men up to abstract speculations or to poetry: one must live in the very focus of human passions, to feel the desire of employing and directing them to one's own purposes. The German writers occupied themselves only with theoretical doctrines, with erudition, and literary and philosophical research; and the powerful of this world have nothing to apprehend from such studies. Besides, although the government of Saxony was not free by right, that is, representation, yet it was virtually free through the habits of the nation, and the moderation of its princes.

The honesty of the inhabitants was such, that a proprietor at Leipsic having fixed on an apple-tree (which he had planted on the borders of the public walk) a notice, desiring that people would not gather the fruit, not a single apple was stolen from it for ten years. I have seen this apple-tree with a feeling of respect; had it been the tree of the Hesperides, they would no more have touched its golden fruit than its blossoms.

Saxony was profoundly tranquil; they sometimes made a noise there about certain ideas, but without ever thinking of applying them. One would have said that thought and action were made to have no reference to each other, and that truth, among the Germans, resembled the statue of Hermes, without hands to seize or feet to advance. Yet is there nothing so respectable as these peaceful triumphs of reflection, which continually occupied isolated men, without fortune, without power, and connected together only by worship and thought.

In France, men never occupied themselves about abstract truths, except in their relation to practice. To perfect the art of government, to encourage population by a wise political economy--such were the objects of philosophical labor, especially in the last century. This mode of employing time is also very respectable; but, in the scale of reflection, the dignity of the human race is of greater importance than its happiness, and, still more, than its increase: to multiply human