Two very bulky octavos (the cumbrous title-page of which we have copied below) have just been published by a person styling himself Thomas Hodgskin, Esquire, whose labours we do not consider likely to increase in any remarkable degree the quantum of general information concerning the present state of Germany, either as to politics, or literature, or manners. The author of these tomes is a man of no small self-conceit. He talks of himself throughout, as a person able and willing to illuminate the public mind in regard to almost every branch of human knowledge. He discusses with equal authoritativeness every sort of topic-from the amours of waitingmaids to those of princesses-from postages and turnpike-posts to the ceremonial of the Chapel Royal at Dresden-splendid hotels and hedge-side post-houses-Grand-dukes and viceroys, and applewomen, and deserters -and professors, and students, and poets and critics-and itinerant fiddlers and journeymen taylors-with all he is equally acquainted, and on all he comments and philosophizes in the same tone of intelligent superiority. A book of travels in Germany, written in a spirit of so much communicativeness, by one who had really enjoyed opportunities of making himself thoroughly acquainted with that highly interesting country, would, we have no difficulty in saying, be a most valuable and acceptable present to the British public. But we cannot help regretting extremely, that the demand, which certainly does exist among us for such a book, should have been answered by nobody of more competent attainments and capacity than this Thomas Hodgskin, Esquire.

We know not on what feasible pretence such a person as this can be encouraged, by the most partial of his friends, to lay his travelling journal before the public, more particularly in so elaborate and expensive a form. Destitute, as his style of language alone sufficiently testifies him to be, of all elegant education, and no less

manifestly a stranger to elegant so ciety, either foreign or domestic-profoundly ignorant of history, both ancient and modern-possessing merely a sort of common-place imperfect smattering of the doctrines of political economy, and a plentiful measure of vulgar assurance, Mr Hodgskin walks forth to survey the condition of the great kingdoms of Christendom; and he returns in a few months to pronounce his opinion concerning them, in a style of confidence which could scarcely have been pardoned in an Englishman of fifty times his acquirements, after a residence of many laborious years in countries everywhere so different from his own. Mr Hodg skin enters Dresden in September 1817, and in little more than twelve months we find him safely restored to the soil of Great Britain. When he goes to Germany he professes himself to have been ignorant of her language; and yet, during this short space of time, he finds leisure to qua lify himself, in the first place, for holding familiar conversation with every condition of German men and women; and, in the second place, to collect information concerning the governments, the philosophy, the literature of Germany, which his own extravagant arrogance leads him to embody in some thousand well-covered pages of wirewove-beautifully printed by Mr Ramsay, and imprudently published by Mr Constable.

It is only the interesting nature of the subject professed to be discussed, which could have induced us to take even the smallest notice of such an author as the present; but, perhaps, the wicked nature of the true object for which he has written may also deserve to be pointed out. Those who consult Mr Hodgskin's pages in hopes of becoming better acquainted with Germany, or any subject connected with the present condition of Germany, will be wofully disappointed; for knowing nothing, and being incapable of feeling any thing really worthy of being known or felt, in regard to the

mighty region he has traversed, he has, of course, written nothing that can be read either with improvement or with pleasure by people of intelligence and education. But it is not for such people Mr Hodgskin has written. He is a literary Esquire, of the same class with some political Esquires, whose names have attained greater celebrity than his is ever likely to reach; in other words, he is a radical traveller and a Cockney philosopher -and if he finds readers at all, it must be either of the enlightened followers of Henry Hunt, Esquire, or among the still more enlightened admirers of Leigh Hunt, Esquire. He professes to write criticisms on the different governments of North Germany; and without doubt these governments lie, in many respects, very open to criticism. But his true purpose is not to criticsie the faults of the German governments, but to abuse and vilify, in the lump, all governments whatever that do or ever did exist upon the surface of the earth. "The time is come," this is the perpetual burden of his song, "when all these old forms are about to be tumbled out, and men will acknowledge no lord but pure reason.'

Truly the changes which several politicians, of the same class with Mr Hodgskin, appear to consider as so near at hand, are neither few nor small; but we rather think our German traveller has carried his notions a little farther than even the illustrious John Cam Hobhouse, Esquire, himself.According to this sublime intellect, the division of mankind, into different nations and governments, is merely an artful contrivance of tyrants, and there is nothing (now-a-days that all the world is enlightened with the principles of true wisdom,) to prevent these fictitious barriers from being at once swept away. Their removal, as he sensibly remarks, would be attended with no difficulty whatever, and with innumerable advantages. The world would be saved the trouble and expense of a multitude of courts and armies. Courts there would be none; and one very inconsiderable army to prevent robberies would be all that would be necessary. The present gradations of rank would also be entirely abolished; for Mr Hodgskin assumes throughout, that the only really honourable classes are those who subsist VOL. VI.

by the sweat of their brows--which scriptural phrase he sagaciously interprets as applicable to those only who exist by their physical labour or mechanical ingenuity. The husbandmen having fairly got rid of their landlords, would everywhere live in comfort and plenty; priests of all religions, being stripped of their gowns, tithes would cease to be paid by the children of men; and religion itself being turned out of doors, with all other old wives' fables-mankind would seek their only guide to propriety and happiness in the dictates of " pure reason. plain words, the world would be turned upside down all over, and the great Thomas Hodgskin, proudly following the equalizing tide of thought, would cease to write himself an Esquire.

In

Taking into view the magnificence of tone in which Mr Hodgskin promulgates these beautiful doctrines, one cannot help feeling mortified that a person of so much importance should have been under the necessity of travelling over Germany on foot. Pedestrianism is the finest of all things in a beautiful and romantic country; but in regions thinly peopled, and covered with deep and sterile sands-such as are the most of those he describes in Prussia and Hanover-we are afraid that primitive method of conveyance is seldom a matter of election. Neither are the Germans at all accustomed to the thing: and it is no wonder-although Mr Hodgskin evidently thinks otherwisethat he who performed his journies in company with journeymen tradesmen, and common soldiers and their wives, should have found some difficulty in gaining access to the higher orders of German society in the great cities he visited. The accuracy of the information he must have picked up from the conversation of those with whom he travelled may easily be estimatedbut really it is rather too good a joke to hear a British Esquire talking of his own superior opportunities," after having passed through a variety of scenes such as the following.

66

"The wind was behind me, my um. brella protected me, and blew me, running, along. I went merrily forward, and got sweet greetings and smiles from some fine than they were likely to have in open carwomen, to whom I wished a better journey riages, exposed to the snow. It is a pity women do not always know the power which bright eyes and cheerful smiles have on men, or they might lead them to acquire many a 3 Y

gentle accomplishment, to do many a gentle deed, that would promote the happiness of both. When I now turn back on my peregrinations, I know nothing that leaves a stronger feeling of regret than the recollection of many of those sweet faces, that smiled on me for a moment, and have never been seen any more. This is one of the most painful of all the feelings of the traveller. He catches a momentary view of beings he thinks time would make him love, and then he loses them for ever. They seem to him like the angels of the world, and he is only consoled for their loss by reflecting, that it is that itself which makes him so regard them, and that, possibly, he would have ceased to adore had he known them better.

"I reached Berlin at four o'clock, and took up my quarters at the Golden Angel. For some part of my walk I had an elderly woman, carrying a large loaded basket, for a companion; she was to carry it, in all, ten miles. She complained very bitterly of the sovereign, who she called a complete Buonaparte. She had been the mother of twelve children, and seven of these had been soldiers. Surely her labour was hard enough, yet she said she could not get enough to feed her well, and keep her warm. When absolute idleness wallows in riches, and industry has nothing, there is surely something wrong in the social regulations."

*

"The weather was warmer to-day; it thawed, which made the track, for the new road was not yet completed, rather dirty; I reached Magdeburg at five o'clock, somewhat tantalized by a winding, and fatigued by a heavy road. The country was partly cultivated, much of it was forest, and near Magdeburg, much of it was marshy and morass; yet there were more villages and more large houses in this day's walk than I had seen since leaving Saxony. I had scarcely entered the town before I was accosted by two or three lads, with offers to shew me a good inn, or if I wanted any thing else; they then whispered to me, hübsches Mädel, pretty girl, and they were ready to introduce me to some of their acquaintances. They were not quite so impertinent, intrusive, and disgusting as the Italians, who profess the same trade, but equally ready to serve. This was not the first time I had been so accosted in German towns. I found my way to an inn without their assistance. It was not one of the large houses that are numerous and good in Magdeburg, but a middling sort of inn, where I supped with some German travellers, and with the landlord and his wife. In the same room where we supped was a billiard table, and through a window, at the farther end, spirits were sold to whoever demanded them. After supper, the landlord introduced his little grand-daughter, to display her knowledge of geography, and her skill in recitation.She called forth from the other guests many such exclamations as, Ach du lieber Gott,

ein charmantes Kind.' Ah! Good God! A charming child!

"Magdeburg was distinguished in the tenth century by the peculiar favour of the Emperor Otto the Great, from the partiality which his wife Edgid, an English Princess, is said to have borne it for its resemblance to her native London. Little or no resemblance is now to be traced further than that, like London, it stands on the banks of a river. It has one long good looking street, called the Broad Street, a name indeed it merits; which, terminating with a church at both ends, has no despicable appearance. The large square has undergone the usual transformation in its name, and marks tolerably well the change which has taken place in society. It was the cathedral square, it is now the parade Platz. Where the clergy formerly solitarily meditated under the trees, or discussed, as the rosy wine mantled in their cheeks, the mysteries of theology, there soldiers now wheel and march, and thrust forward, first the right shoulder, then the left, with all possible activity and noise. There was as much bustle as if the days of the Great Frederick were returned, when this lover of cudgel discipline and long queues, rose with the sun to su perintend the noble labours of soldier-drilling. I leave it to others to decide whether the dominion of the sword, which this change marks, be more or less beneficial than the dominion of the crozier."

"I reached the little town of Otterndorf, in Land Hadeln, towards evening, and, taught by the experience of the former night, I was cautious in what manner I asked for a bed. I had been recommended to an inn; it was all full with herrn Officiere.' The woman civilly directed me to another, where I was welcomed in a hearty, but ridiculous manner. A tall stately man, with a long brown coat, looking altogether very much like a Quaker, received me with a

On

shake of the hand, and repeated very of ten, in a solemn tone, and with sundry shakes of the head, Walk in, Sir, walk in,Treten sie naher mein Herr, treten sie nalier. Then calling to his wife, with very tender words, but in a most peevish tone, asked her, could she get the gentleman some coffee. This was his mode of commanding. Up stairs was a billiard-room, and a place to play skittles,Kegel Bahn,—with newspapers, cards, and other amusements. going to my room, I was surprised to be met at the head of the stairs by a young man, who, with the peculiar voice and manner of the landlord, shook me also by the hand, and repeated the same words of welcome. It was a perfect farce, but I was restrained from indulging in laughter from supposing he was an impudent waiter, who was mocking his principal. He was, however, the eldest son, and, having never been from home, had acquired precisely his father's peculiar manner of address, and the solemn

singing tone with which he uttered Treten sie naher mein Herr, treten sie naher.

"Otterndorf is a clean little town, in which there are more workers in gold and silver than booksellers; a sign that the opulence of the people is employed more to ornament their bodies than their minds. The only bookseller's shop was kept by a widow, who dealt principally in psalm and prayer books, and also in matches and birch brooms. Nothing was to be learnt in her shop so curious as the strange mixture of her wares.Two or three trifles gave me a favourable idea of the good sense of the inhabitants. The steeple of the church scarcely rose above the roof. Nothing but the whim of ignorance, endeavouring to excite wonder, could have erected immense piles of bricks and stones till they almost reached the heav ens."

"Pleased as I was with the appearance of the people and their houses, the first communication I had with them was by no means calculated to give me a favourable idea of their politeness. They are visited by no persons but those who have commercial dealings with them, and they are perfectly unacquainted with any other travellers on foot than pedlars, beggars, and vagrants. They live in affluence, and necessarily despise what looks like poverty.Pedestrians are always poor, and when I asked at a respectable inn at the village of Drochterson for a bed, I was very rudely refused. I became angry, and remonstrated in a manner to which the landlord was not accustomed, and he shut his door against A different manner of addressing him than that I had adopted would probably

me.

have obtained me all I wished, and I had myself partly to blame for his rudeness. Much of the civility or incivility of strangers depends on our own manners. Those who are constantly haughty and rude will find only grinning servility, which pays itself for its baseness by cheating, or neglect and rudeness from spirits somewhat like their own, which disdain to be insulted. We often make ourselves that character we ascribe to

neath him. He must buy civility and attention by complaisance and politeness."

The following is a more interesting scene. It occurs on the way from Wiener to Papenburg in Friezland.

"The roads are very often made on the top of the dikes, which exposes the traveller to all the fury of the tempest. In the midst of a very heavy shower, and when the wind was so strong that it was with difficulty I could keep my umbrella spread, and nothing was heard but the rain blowing against it, I was surprised by a voice close to my ear, and, turning my head rather frightened, was still more surprised to see close to my shoulder a pair of bright eyes and rosy cheeks, speaking health, animation, and the pleasure of exertion. It was a lovely looking young woman, who, laughing, told me we might go together. I embraced the offer with great pleasure, as I measured a tall and graceful form; and, clasping my arm round her that I might shelter her better, I blessed the storm that had forced so handsome a companion to seek the shelter of my cotton roof. We walked two miles together, and before we parted, the rain, which had driven every other person within doors, had made us quite intimate. She was well dressed, as the Friezlanders generally are, and full of animation as a French woman. I have seen nothing in the character of a countrywoman half so amiable in all Germany, and I was sorry when she arrived at the farm-house to which she was going, and when I was again obliged to pursue my walk alone."

In walking through these dreary lengths of sand by which the Prussian capital is separated from the fertile and thriving provinces of that country, our traveller expresses great astonishment at the badness of the inns. Nothing can be more fair than that a traveller should speak his mind about inns wherever he meets with them; for if that check were removed, we could have no security against a universal corruption among an order of

either in their own feelings, or in their regard for the feelings of others; but it is a little too much to hear this gentleman, who absuses governments every where for needless interference with the concerns of their subjects, complaining, because, forsooth, the inns scattered over a bleak and desolate district of a country, where it is the custom to travel by night as well as by day, are not quite so comfortable as the middling ones he frequented in the cities of Magdeburg and Berlin.

"What I experienced for these two nights, and on my road, where I could not procure a bed, and scarcely any thing to eat, may serve as a specimen of the wealth, or rather poverty, in which his majesty of Prussia's subjects live. The reader will remember, that I was not more than seventy miles from Berlin, that I was on a high road, and that houses of public entertainment had neither beds nor any thing to eat. Such is the state of the dominions of the great Frederick. With such a degree of poverty, and thinly scattered as these people are, it is in vain to hope for any improvement but by enriching them, and by letting their numbers increase; and it is quite certain these objects can never be accomplished by the glories of the monarch, nor by those multiplied governments and governors, who produce poverty in proportion as they are numerous.'

There is scarcely, we imagine, in the whole world a scene calculated to

make, on any sound and feeling mind, a deeper or graver impression than the burial-place of the princes of the house

of Brunswick. Beneath the floor of a lofty and venerable cathedral, in the centre of whose choir the simple tombstone of Henry the Lion recalls all the noblest recollections of the days of chivalry, an immense vaulted apartment is shewn to the traveller, filled with long rows of ponderous coffins, wherein sleep the remains of twenty generations of that hero's descendants. In this chamber of the dead, lamps are kept perpetually lighted, whose beams, shewing, in faint and fainter perspective, the innumerable sculptured and molten monuments around the extremities, fall full and bright in the centre, upon the military trophies, which have not yet been removed from the pall of that much-lamented prince, who fell, a noble sacrifice for the cause of Europe and mankind, on the great day of Waterloo. On this solemn scene, these are the comments of our pedestrian philosopher.

"The tombs of the sovereigns, and a sta tue of their renowned ancestor, Henry the Lion, are placed in the principal church of the town, and are objects of general curiosity. But the clerk, or Cantor, who is the showman, was also a teacher of music, and as he was employed in the forenoon giving lessons, it was necessary, to gratify my curiosity, that I should return after dinner. There can be no doubt that the reflections made on visiting the abodes of the dead depend entirely on previous associations. When we look on sovereigns as something more than men, which seems to be very natural, for even their bodies are preserved for veneration, we are apt to feel great sympathy

for their misfortunes, and almost to regret that these objects of admiration should be. subject to death. The pomp of their life seems to follow them to the tomb, and we may be as awe-struck by the stately shew of glittering coffins, as by the ceremonies of an introduction to kiss the hand of living majesty. There was something, however, either in the vanity of thus making a shew of frail dust, or in the circumstance, that several of these princes had fallen as soldiers in a foreign service, which deprived me of all particular respect for the illustrious bones I was amongst. Even the superb coffin of the last duke, who fell at Waterloo, pure and heroic as his conduct is sometimes described to have been, could not restore this feeling. I considered him more like a soldier of fortune than a generous prince sacrificing his life for his people.

"No less than ten of this royal family have been slain in battle; nine are deposit

ed at Brunswick, and one sleeps at Ottensen, near Altona. Had they been killed in

defending any of the sacred rights of men, any of the principles of morality, or any hallowed truths, they might have been justly admired and honoured; but one had been a major-general in the Austrian service, and another in the Prussian service, and, however they might for a moment have been ornamented by the wreaths of victory, sound philosophy, sound morality, and sound feeling, can only regard them as having sold

their lives for a title or a star.

"The younger branches of the nobility of Germany, whether belonging to a sovereign family or any other, can find no other situations to fill than the higher ones of the army or the priesthood, and there are no offices in the Protestant church that are worwill not allow them to be advocates, physithy their acceptance. Their own opinions cians, agriculturists, or merchants, and

whenever they are not so rich as they wish to be, they unfortunately can only become richer by selling themselves for soldiers to the highest bidder. The life of man ought to be sacred. Perhaps all the reasons which under any circumstances, are false and inhave been urged to justify taking it away, conclusive. Every good man shudders at the necessity of doing it, and he can never honour those who make doing it a trade, whether they are titled soldiers or common executioners. The statue of Henry the Lion is a rude memorial of the time in which it was executed, the twelfth century, and resembles the figures seen on the top of the oldest tombs of some of our kings."

Another specimen of extreme ignorance, combined with a great want of natural good-feeling, occurs in page

181 of the same volume.

"Something may be learnt of the character of a people from their common phrases. The schoolmaster described an old woman of his parish, who was obliged to have some