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But we saw then what a power the "Geist " in their democracy gave them; and we set to work to make ourselves strong, not by a sort of wild fire-baptism of the mass, but in our steady German way, by culture, by forming our faculties of all kinds, by every man doing the very best he could with himself, by trusting, with an 66 Ernst der ins Ganze geht," to mind and not to clap-trap. Your "earnest Liberal" in England thinks culture all moonshine; he is for the spiritual development of your democracy by rioting in the parks, abolishing church-rates, and marrying a deceased wife's sister; and for leaving your narrow and vulgar middle class (of which I saw an incomparable specimen in a Reigate train when I was over in England) just as it is. On the other hand, Mr. Matthew Arnold writes me word that a club has just been formed among you to do honour to the memory of that great man, Richard Cobden; that this club has taken for its motto, "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform;" and that these words, by a special command from Mr. Cobden's ghost, are to bear the following interpretation:"Peace to our nonsense, retrenchment of our profligate expenditure of clap-trap, and reform of ourselves." Whether this is true, or merely a stroke of my poor friend's so-called playfulness (Heaven save the mark !), I do not feel quite sure; I hope for your sakes it is true, as this is the very thing you want, and nothing else can save you from certain decline.

Do not be astonished at the aristocratic prefix to

my name; I come of a family which has for three generations rubbed shoulders with philosophy. Your humble servant,

VON THUNDER-TEN-TRONCKH.

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

LETTER III.

I EXPOSTULATE WITH ARMINIUS ON HIS

SIR,

REVOLUTIONARY SENTIMENTS.

GRUB STREET, August 6, 1865.

I THOUGHT it was very odd I got no answer from Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh (he was christened Hermann, but I call him Arminius, because it is more in the grand style), when I so particularly begged him to write soon, and save what rags he could of his tissue of nonsense about "Geist," after my countrymen had riddled it, as I knew they were sure to do. I supposed he had taken service, like the rest of the German Liberals, under Bismarck, and was too busy pillaging the poor Frankfort people to think of intellectual matters; but I now see he has been writing direct to you, and wants to leave me out in the cold altogether. I do not in the least care for his coarse Prussian sneers, but I must say it is rather good that he should not be above sponging on me week after week in Grub Street, swilling beer (none of your Bavarian wash, but sound English Bass) at my expense, filling my garret (for I don't smoke myself) with the smell of his execrable tobacco,

getting the daily benefit of my Star and Telegraph (1 take the Star for wisdom and charity, and the Telegraph for taste and style), and keeping me up yawning till two o'clock every morning to listen to his rubbishy transcendentalism, and yet be too fine a gentleman to make me the depositary of his ideas for transmission to the English public. But Arminius has the ridiculous pride of his grandfather, who, though the family estate had all gone to the dogs, and he was ruined and turned priest, chose to set his stiff German face against Candide's marriage with his sister. He got shipped off to the Jesuits at Rome, as every one knows; but what is not so well known is,1 that when the French Revolution came, this precious priest, like Talleyrand, married, and my Arminius is his grandson. Arminius came over here to make acquaintance with Mr. Lowe, who he has found out is in some odd way descended from the philosopher Pangloss, a great friend of the Von Thunder-tenTronckh family; but ever since the sack of their château by the Bulgarians, the Von Thunder-tenTronckhs have not had a sixpence in the world except what they could get by their "Geist," and what Arminius gets by his is such beggar's allowance that

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1 It was necessarily unknown to Voltaire, who wrote the history of the Von T. family.-Ed.

2 It is my firm belief that this relationship, which had become a fixed idea with Arminius, never really existed. The optimism of Mr. Lowe's estimate of the British middle class and its House of Commons, in his celebrated speech on Reform, had, in my opinion, struck Arminius's fancy, and made him imagine a kinship in the flesh where there was in truth only s kinship in the spirit.-ED.

he is hardly presentable; well enough for Grub Street, but, as I told him, not at all the sort of company Mr. Lowe keeps.

"Fiddlesticks about our

I don't think Arminius has gained much by being his own expounder, for more vague declamatory trash than his letter I never read. The truth is, he cannot rise to an Englishman's conception of liberty, and understand how liberty, like virtue, is its own reward. "We go for self-government," I am always saying to him. “All right,” he says, "if it is government by your better self." better self!" answer I. "Who is to be the judge! No, the self every man chooses." "And what is the self the mass of mankind will choose," cries he, "when they are not told there is a better and a worse self, and shown what the better is like?" They will choose the worse, very likely," say I, "but that is just liberty." "And what is to bring good out of such liberty as that?" he asks. as that?" he asks. "The glorious and sanative qualities of our matchless Constitution," I reply; and that is always a stopper for him.

But what I grieve most to observe in Arminius's letter, and what will lead to my breaking with him in the long run, in spite of my love for intellect, is the bad revolutionary leaven which I see works stronger and stronger in him, and which he no doubt got from the worthless French company his grandfather kept. I noticed an instance of it while he

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1 This partially explains, no doubt, though it cannot alto gether excuse, the weak indulgence always cropping out in Arminius for France and its immoral people.-ED.

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