when happily the audience came to an end; and deep repeated bows accompanied the exit of Napoleon; who to me had addressed none of his words, but did, as he passed, turn on me one searching glance of the eye, with the departure of which it seemed as if a real danger had vanished.

"The Emperor gone, all breathed free, as if disloaded from a heavy burden. By degrees the company again grew loud, and then went over altogether into the noisy disorder and haste which had ruled at the commencement. The French courtiers especially took pains to redeem their late downbent and terrified bearing by a free jocularity now; and even in descending the stairs there arose laughter and quizzing at the levee, the solemnity of which had ended here."

strongest feelings I have ever seen, and the completest mastery of them." Richter addresses her by the title geflügelte, "winged one." Such a Rahel might be worth knowing. We find, on practical inquiry, that Rabel was of Berlin; by birth a Jewess, in easy not affluent circumstances; who lived, mostly there, from 1771 to 1833. That her youth passed in studies, struggles, disappointed passions, sicknesses, and other sufferings and vivacities to which one of her excitable organization was liable. That she was deep in many spiritual provinces, in poetry, in art, in philosophy;-the first, for instance, or one of the first to recognise the significance of Goethe, and teach the Schlegels to do it. That she wrote nothing; but thought, did, and spoke, many things, which attracted notice, admiration spreading wider and wider. That in 1814 she became the wife of Varnhagen; the loved wife, though her age was forty-three, exceeding his by some twelve years or more, and she could never boast of beauty. That without beauty, without wealth, foreign ce

Such was Varnhagen von Ense's presentation to Napoleon Bonaparte in the Palace of the Tuileries. What Varnhagen saw remains a possession for him and for us. The judgment he formed on what he saw will depend upon circumstances. For the eye of the in-lebrity, or any artificial nimbus whatsoever, tellect "sees in all objects what it brought she had grown in her silently progressive way with it the means of seeing." Napoleon is a to be the most distinguished woman in Berlin; man of the sort which Varnhagen elsewhere admired, partly worshipped by all manner of calls daimonisch, a "demonic man;" whose high persons, from Prince Louis of Prussia meaning or magnitude is not very measurable downwards; making her mother's, and then by men; who, with his ownness of impulse and her husband's house the centre of an altoinsight, with his mystery and strength, in a gether brilliant circle there. This is the word, with his originality, (if we will under-social phenomenon of Rahel." What farther stand that,) reaches down into the region of the perennial and primeval, of the inarticulate and unspeakable; concerning whom innumerable things may be said, and the right thing not said for a long while, or at all. We will leave him standing on his own basis, at present; bullying the hapless, obscure functionary there; declaring to all the world the meteorological fact, Il fait chaud.

Varnhagen, as we see, has many things to write about; but the thing which beyond all others he rejoices to write about, and would gladly sacrifice all the rest to, is the memory of Rahel, his deceased wife. Mysterious indications have of late years flitted round us, concerning a certain Rahel, a kind of spiritual queen in Germany, who seems to have lived in familiar relation to most of the distinguished persons of that country in her time. Travellers to Germany, now a numerous sect with us, ask you as they return from æsthetic capitals and circles, "Do you know Rahel?" Marquis Custine, in the "Revue de Paris," (treating of this book of "Rahel's Letters,") says, by experience: "She was a woman as extraordinary as Madame de Staël, for her faculties of mind, for her abundance of ideas, her light of soul, and her goodness of heart: she had, moreover, what the author of 'Corinne' did not pretend to, a disdain for oratory; she did not write. The silence of minds like hers is a force too. With more vanity, a person so superior would have sought to make a public for herself: but Rahel desired only friends. She spoke to communicate the life that was in her; never did she speak to be admired." Goethe testifies that she is a "right woman; with the

could be readily done to understand such a social phenomenon we have endeavoured to do; with what success the reader shall see.

First of all, we have looked at the Portrait of Rahel given in these volumes. It is a face full of thought, of affection, and energy; with no pretensions to beauty, yet loveable and attractive in a singular degree. The strong high brow and still eyes are full of contemplation; the long upper lip (sign of genius, some say) protrudes itself to fashion a curved mouth, condemnable in academies, yet beautifully expressive of laughter and affection, of strong endurance, of noble silent scorn; the whole countenance looking as with cheerful clearness through a world of great pain and disappointment; one of those faces which the lady meant when she said, "But are not all beautiful faces ugly, then, to begin with?" In the next place, we have read diligently whatsoever we could anywhere find written about Rahel; and have to remark here that the things written about her, unlike some things written by her, are generally easy to read. Varnhagen's account of their intercourse; of his first young feelings towards her, his long waiting, and final meeting of her in snowy weather under the Lindens, in company with a lady whom he knew, his tremulous speaking to her there, the rapid progress of their intimacy; and so onwards, to love, to marriage: all this is touching and beautiful; a Petrarcan romance, and yet a reality withal.

Finally, we have read in these three thick volumes of Letters,―till in the second thick volume, the reading faculty unhappily broke down, and had to skip largely thenceforth, only diving here and there at a venture with

"You could not speak with her a quarter of an hour without drawing from that fountain of light a shower of sparkles. The comic was at her command equally with the highest degree of the sublime. The proof that she was natural is, that she understood laughter as she did grief; she took it as a readier means of showing truth; all had its resonance in her, and her manner of receiving the impressions which you wished to communicate to her mo

considerable intervals! Such is the melan- | But after all, we can understand how talk of choly fact. It must be urged in defence that that kind, in an expressive mouth, with bright these volumes are of the toughest reading; deep eyes, and the vivacity of social movecalculated, as we said for Germany, rather than ment, of question and response, may have been for England or us. To be written with such delightful; and moreover that, for those to indisputable marks of ability, nay of genius, whom they vividly recall such talk, these letters of depth and sincerity, they are the heaviest may still be delightful. Hear Marquis de Cusbusiness we perhaps ever met with. The truth tine a little farther: is, they do not suit us at all. They are subjective letters, what the metaphysicians call subjective, not objective; the grand material of them is endless depicturing of moods, sensations, miseries, joys, and lyrical conditions of the writer; no definite picture drawn, or rarely any, of persons, transactions, or events which the writer stood amidst : a wrong material, as it seems to us. To what end? To what end? we always ask. Not by looking at itself, but by looking at things out of itself, and ascer-dified them in yourself: you loved her at first taining and ruling these, shall the mind become known. "One_thing_above all other," says Goethe once, "I have never thought about thinking." What a thrift almost of itself equal to a fortune in these days: "habe nie ans Denken gedacht!" But how much wastefuller still it is to feel about Feeling! One is wearied of that; the healthy soul avoids that. Thou shalt look outward, not inward. Gazing inward on one's own self,-why, this can drive one mad, like the monks of Athos, if at last too long. Unprofitable writing this subjective sort does seem; -at all events, to the present reviewer, no reading is so insupportable. Nay, we ask, might not the world be entirely deluged by it, unless prohibited? Every mortal is a microcosm; to himself a macrocosm, or universe large as nature; universal nature would barely hold what he could say about himself. Not a dys-two faculties which are incompatible in ordipeptic tailor on any shopboard of this city but could furnish all England, the year through, with reading about himself, about his emotions, and internal mysteries of wo and sensibility, if England would read him. It is a course which leads nowhither; a course which should be avoided.

Add to all this, that such self-utterance on the part of Rahel, in these letters, is in the highest degree vapourous, vague. Her very mode of writing is complex, nay, is careless, incondite; with dashes and splashes, with notes of admiration, of interrogation, (nay, both together sometimes,) with involutions, abruptness, whirls, and tortuosities; so that even the grammatical meaning is altogether burdensome to seize. And then when seized, alas, it is as we say, of due likeness to the phraseology; a thing crude, not articulated into propositions, but flowing out as in bursts of interjection and exclamation. No wonder the reading faculty breaks down! And yet we do gather gold grains and precious thought here and there; though out of large wastes of sand and quicksand. In fine, it becomes clear, beyond doubting, both that this Rahel was a woman of rare gifts and worth, a woman of true genius; and also that her genius has passed away, and left no impress of itself there for us. These printed volumes produce the effect not of speech, but of multifarious, confused wind-music. It seems to require the aid of pantomime, to tell us what it means.

because she had admirable gifts; and then, what prevailed over every thing, because she was entertaining. She was nothing for you, or she was all; and she could be all to several at a time without exciting jealousy, so much did her noble nature participate in the source of all life, of all clearness. When one has lost in youth such friend," &c., &c. . . . “It seems to me you might define her in one word: she had the head of a sage and the heart of an apostle, and in spite of that, she was a child and a woman as much as any one can be. Her mind penetrated into the obscurest depths of nature; she was a thinker of as much and more clearness than our Theosophist Saint Martin, whom she comprehended and admired; and she felt like an artist. Her perceptions were always double; she attained the sublimest truths by

nary men, by feeling and by reflection. Her friends asked of themselves,-Whence came these flashes of genius which she threw from her in conversation? Was it the effect of long studies? Was it the effect of sudden inspirations? It was the intuition granted as recompense by Heaven to souls that are true. These martyr souls wrestle for the truth, which they have a forecast of; they suffer for the God whom they love, and their whole life is the school of eternity."*

This enthusiastic testimony of the clever sentimental marquis is not at all incredible to us, in its way: yet from these letters we have nothing whatever to produce that were adequate to make it good. As was said already, it is not to be made good by excerpts and written documents; its proof rests in the memory of living witnesses. Meanwhile, from these same wastes of sand, and even of quicksand dangerous to linger in, we will try to gather a few grains the most like gold, that it may be guessed, by the charitable, whether or not a Pactolus once flowed there:

"If there be miracles, they are those that are in our breast; what we do not know, we call by that name. How astonished, almost how ashamed are we, when the inspired moment comes, and we get to know them!" "One is late in learning to lie and late in learning to speak the truth." "I cannot, be

"Revue de Paris," Novembre, 1837.

cause I cannot lie. Fancy not that I take | rentheses in life, which belong neither to us nor

credit for it: I cannot, just as one cannot play upon the flute."

"In the meanest hut is a romance, if you knew the hearts there."

"So long as we do not take even the injustice which is done us, and which forces the burning tears from us; so long as we do not take even this for just and right, we are in the thickest darkness, without dawn."

"Manure with despair,-but let it be genuine; and you will have a noble harvest."

"True misery is ashamed of itself: hides itself, and does not complain. You may know it by that."

"What a commonplace man! If he did not live in the same time with us, no mortal would mention him."

to others: beautiful I name them, because they give us a freedom we could not get by sound sense. Who would volunteer to have a nervous fever? And yet it may save one's life. I love rage; I use it, and patronize it.”—“ Be not alarmed; I am commonly calmer. But when I write to a friend's heart, it comes to pass that the sultry laden horizon of my soul breaks out in lightning. Heavenly men love lightning."

"To Varnhagen. . . One thing I must write to thee; what I thought of last night in bed, and for the first time in my life. That I, as a relative and pupil of Shakspeare, have, from my childhood upwards, occupied myself much with death, thou mayest believe. But never did my own death affect me; nay, I did not even think of this fact, that I was affected by

"Have you remarked that Homer, when-it. Now, last night there was something I had ever he speaks of the water, is always great; as Goethe is, when he speaks of the stars." "If one were to say, 'You think it easy to be original: but no, it is difficult; it costs a whole life of labour and exertion,'-you would think him mad, and ask no more questions of him. And yet his opinion would be altogether true, and plain enough withal. Original, I grant, every man might be, and must be, if men did not almost always admit mere undigested hearsays into their head, and fling them out again undigested. Whoever honestly questions himself, and faithfully answers, is busied continually with all that presents itself in life; and is incessantly inventing, had the thing been invented never so long before. Honesty belongs as a first condition to good thinking; and there are almost as few absolute dunces as geniuses. Genuine dunces would always be original; but there are none of them genuine : they have almost always understanding enough to be dishonest."

"He (the blockhead) tumbled out on me his definition of genius; the trivial old distinctions of intellect and heart; as if there ever was, or could be, a great intellect with a mean heart!"

"Goethe? When I think of him, tears come into my eyes: all other men I love with my own strength; he teaches me to love with his. My Poet!"

"Slave-trade, war, marriage, working-classes:-and they are astonished, and keep clouting and remending?"

"The whole world is, properly speaking, a tragic embarras."

to write; I said Varnhagen must know this thing, if he is to think of me after I am dead. And it seemed to me as if I must die; as if my heart were flitting away over this earth, and I must follow it; and my death gave me pity: for never before, as I now saw, had I thought that it would give anybody pity: of thee I knew it would do so, and yet it was the first time in my life I had seen this, or known that I had never seen it. In such solitude have I lived: comprehend it! I thought, when I am dead, then first will Varnhagen know what sufferings I had; and all his lamenting will be in vain; the figure of me meets him again through all eternity no more; swept away am I then, as our poor Prince Louis is. And no one can be kind to me then; with the strongest will, with the exertion of despair, no one: and this thought of thee about me was what at last affected me. I must write of this, though it afflict thee never so." ***

"To Rose, a younger sister, on her marriage in Amsterdam.-Paris, 1801. . . . . . Since thy last letter I am sore downcast. Gone art thou! No Rose comes stepping in to me with true foot and heart, who knows me altogether, knows all my sorrows altogether. When I am sick of body or soul, alone, alone thou comest not to me any more; thy room empty, quite empty, for ever empty. Thou art away, to try thy for tune. O Heaven! and to me not even trying is permitted. Am not I in luck! The garden in the Lindenstrasse where we used to be with Hanne and Feu-was it not beautiful? I will call it Rose now; with Hanne and Hanse will I go often thither, and none shall know of it. ". . . . I here, Rahel the Jewess, feel Dost thou recollect that night when I was to set that I am as unique as the greatest appearance out with Fink the time before last? How in this earth. The greatest artist, philosopher thou hadst to sleep up stairs, and then to stay or poet, is not above me. We are of the same with me? O my sister, I might be as ill again element; in the same rank, and stand together.though not for that cause: and thou too, Whichever would exclude the other, excludes only himself. But to me it was appointed not to write, or act, but to live: I lay in embryo till my century; and then was, in outward respects, So flung away. It is for this reason that I tell you. But pain, as I know it, is a life too: and I think with myself, I am one of those figures which Humanity was fated to evolve, and then never to use more, never to have more: Me no one can comfort."-" Why not be beside oneself, dear friend? There are beautiful pa

what may not lie before thee! But, no, thy name is Rose; thou hast blue eyes, and a far other life than I with my stars and black ones.

* Salute mamma a million times; tell her I congratulate her from the heart; the more so as I can never give her such a pleasure! God willed it not. But I, in her place, would have great pity for a child so circumstanced. Yet let her not lament for me. I know all her goodness, and thank her with my soul. Tell her I have the fate of nations and

of the greatest men before my eyes here: they too go tumbling even so on the great sea of Existence, mounting, sinking, swallowed up. From of old all men have seemed to me like spring blossoms, which the wind blows off and whirls; none knows where they fall, and the fewest come to fruit."

Poor Rahel! The Frenchman said above she was an artist and apostle, yet had not ceased to be a child and woman. But we must stop short. One other little scene, a scene from her death-bed by Varnhagen, must end the tragedy:

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She said to me one morning, after a dreadful night, with the penetrating tone of that lovely voice of hers: 'O, I am still happy; I am God's creature still; He knows of me; I shall come to see how it was good and needful for me to suffer: of a surety I had something to learn by it. And am I not already happy in this trust, and in all the love that I feel and meet with?'

felt herself easier than for long before, and expressed an irresistible desire to be new dressed. As she could not be persuaded from it, this was done, though with the utmost precaution. She herself was busily helpful in it, and signified great contentment that she had got it accomplished. She felt so well she expected to sleep. She wished me good-night, and bade me also go and sleep. Even the maid, Dora, was to go and sleep; however, she did not.

་

"It might be about midnight, and I was still awake, when Dora called me: 'I was to come, she was much worse.' Instead of sleep, Rahel had found only suffering, one distress added to another; and now all had combined into decided spasm of the breast. I found her in a state little short of that she had passed six days® ago. The medicines left for such an occurrence (regarded as possible, not probable) were tried; but this time with little effect. The frightful struggle continued; and the beloved sufferer, writhing in Dora's arms, cried, several times, This pressure against her breast was not to be borne, was pushing her heart out:' the breathing, too, was painfully difficult. She complained that it was getting into her head now, that she felt like a cloud there;' she leaned back with that. A deceptive hope of some alleviation gleamed on us for a moment, and then went out for ever; the eyes were dimmed, the mouth distorted, the limbs lamed! In this state the doctors found her; their remedies were all bootless. An unconscious hour and half, during which the breast still occasionally struggled in spasmodic efforts-and this noble life breathed out its last. The look I got then, kneeling almost lifeless at her bed, stamped itself, glowing, for ever into my heart."

So died Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, born Levin, a singular biographic phenomenon of this century; a woman of genius, of true depth and worth, whose secluded life, as one cannot but see, had in it a greatness far beyond what has many times fixed the public admiration of the whole world; a woman equal to the highest thoughts of her century; in whom it was not arrogance, we do believe, but

"In this manner she spoke, one day, among other things, with joyful heartiness, of a dream which always from childhood she had remembered and taken comfort from. In my seventh year,' said she, 'I dreamt that I saw God quite near me; he stood expanded above me, and his mantle was the whole sky; on a corner of this mantle I had leave to rest, and lay there in peaceable felicity till I awoke. Ever since, through my whole life, this dream has returned on me, and in the worst times was present also in my waking moments, and a heavenly comfort to me. I had leave to throw myself at God's feet, on a corner of his mantle, and he screened me from all sorrow there: He permitted it.' The following words, which I felt called to write down exactly as she spoke them on the 2d of March, are also remarkable: What a history!' cried she with deep emotion: A fugitive from Egypt and Palestine am I here; and find help, love, and kind care among you. To thee, dear August, was I sent by this guiding of God, and thou to me; from afar, from the old times of Jacob and the Patriarchs! With a sacred joy I think of this my origin, of all this wide web of pre-a just self-consciousness, to feel that "the arrangement. How the oldest remembrances of mankind are united with the newest reality of things, and the most distant times and places are brought together. What for so long a period of my life I considered as the worst ignominy, the sorest sorrow and misfortune, that I was born a Jewess, this I would not part with now for any price. Will it not be even so with these pains of sickness? Shall I not one day mount joyfully aloft on them, too; feel that I could not want them for any price? O August, this is just, this is true; we will try to go on thus! Thereupon she said, with many tears, 'Dear August, my heart is refreshed to its inmost; I have thought of Jesus, and wept over his sorrows; I have felt, for the first time felt, that he is my Brother. And Mary, what must she have suffered! She saw her beloved Son in agony, and did not sink; she stood at the Cross. That I could not have done; I am not strong enough for that. Forgive me, God, I confess how weak I am.'

"At nightfall, on the 6th of March, Rahel

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highest philosopher, or poet, or artist was not above her, but of a like element and rank with her." That such a woman should have lived unknown and, as it were, silent to the world, is peculiar in this time.

We say not that she was equal to De Staël, nor the contrary; neither that she might have written De Staël's books, nor even that she might not have written far better books. She has ideas unequalled in De Staël; a sincerity, a pure tenderness and genuineness which that celebrated person had not, or had lost. But what then? The subjunctive, the optative are vague moods: there is no tense one can found on but the preterite of the indicative. Enough for us, Rahel did not write. She sat imprisoned, or it might be sheltered and fosteringly embowered, in those circumstances of hers; she "was not appointed to write or to act, but only to live." Call her not unhappy on that account, call her not useless; nay, perhaps, call her happier and usefuller. Blessed are the humble, are they that are not known. It is written, "Seek

2 z 2

under ground, secretly making the ground green; it flows and flows, it joins itself with other veins and veinlets; one day it will start forth as a visible perennial well. Ten dumb centuries had made the speaking Dante; a well he of many veinlets. William Burnes, or Burns, was a poor peasant; could not prosper in his "seven acres of nursery-ground," nor any enterprise of trade and toil; had to "thole a factor's snash," and read attorney letters, in his poor hut," which threw us all into tears;" a man of no money-capital at all, of no account at all; yet a brave man, a wise and just, in evil fortune faithful, unconquerable to the death. And there wept withal among the others a boy named Robert, with a heart of melting pity, of greatness and fiery wrath; and

est thou great things, seek them not;" live where thou art, only live wisely, live diligently. Rahel's life was not an idle one for herself or for others: how many souls may "the sparkles showering from that light-fountain" have kindled and illuminated; whose new virtue goes on propagating itself, increasing itself, under incalculable combinations, and will be found in far places, after many days! She left no stamp of herself on paper; but in other ways, doubt it not, the virtue of her working in this world will survive all paper. For the working of the good and brave, seen or unseen, endures literally for ever, and cannot die. Is a thing nothing because the morning papers have not mentioned it? Or can a nothing be made something, by ever so much babbling of it there? Far better, probably, that no morning or even-his voice, fashioned here by this poor father, ing paper mentioned it; that the right hand knew not what the left was doing! Rahel might have written books, celebrated books. And yet, what of books? Hast thou not already a bible to write, and publish in print, that is eternal; namely, a Life to lead? Silence, too, is great; there should be great silent ones, too.

Beautiful it is to see and understand that no worth, known or unknown, can die even in this earth. The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden

does it not already reach, like a great elegy, like a stern prophecy, to the ends of the world? "Let me make the songs, and you shall make the laws!" What chancellor, king, senator, begirt with never such sumptuosity, dyed vel vet, blaring, and celebrity, could you have named in England that was so momentous as that William Burns? Courage!

We take leave of Varnhagen with true goodwill, and heartily thank him for the pleasure and instruction he has given us.

PETITION ON THE COPY-RIGHT BILL.

[THE (LONDON) EXAMINER, 1839.]

To the Honourable the Commons of England in Parliament assembled, the Petition of Thomas Carlyle, a Writer of Books,

Humbly showeth,

That your petitioner has written certain books, being incited thereto by various innocent or laudable considerations, chiefly by the thought that said books might in the end be found to be worth something.

That your petitioner had not the happiness to receive from Mr. Thomas Tegg, or any Publisher, Republisher, Printer, Bookseller, Bookbuyer, or other the like man or body of men, any encouragement or countenance in writing of said books, or to discern any chance of receiving such; but wrote them by effort of his own and the favour of Heaven.

That all useful labour is worthy of recompense; that all honest labour is worthy of the chance of recompense; that the giving and assuring to each man what recompense his labour has actually merited, may be said to be the business of all Legislation, Polity, Government, and Social Arrangement whatsoever among men ;—a business indispensable to attempt, impossible to accomplish accurately, difficult to accomplish without inaccuracies that become enormous, unsupportable, and the parent of Social Confusions which never altogether end.

That your petitioner does not undertake to

say what recompense in money this labour of his may deserve; whether it deserve any recompense in money, or whether money in any quantity could hire him to do the like.

That this his labour has found hitherto, in money or money's worth, small recompense or none; that he is by no means sure of its ever finding recompense, but thinks, that, if so, it will be at a distant time, when he, the laborer, will probably no longer be in need of money, and those dear to him will still be in need of it.

That the law does at least protect all persons in selling the production of their labour at what they can get for it, in all market places, to all lengths of time. Much more than this the law does to many, but so much it does to all, and less than this to none.

That your petitioner cannot discover himself to have done unlawfully in this his said labour of writing books, or to have become criminal, or have forfeited the law's protection thereby. Contrariwise your petitioner believes firmly that he is innocent in said labour; that if he be found in the long run to have written a genuine enduring book, his merit therein, and desert towards England and English and other men, will be considerable, not easily esti mable in money; that on the other hand, if his book prove false and ephemeral, he and it will be abolished and forgotten, and no harm done.