one empire, under one head, or under one form of government, which appeared to be the great desire of those who now put themselves forward as the expression of the will of all the German nation, either as a whole, or in its parts; and which seemed to be considered as the great unknown remedy for all evils, real or imaginary. The meeting of the first illegal and self-constituted body, which, in its impatience to be ruling the destinies of the nation, assembled at Frankfort under the name of a Vor-Parlement, or preliminary parliament, and, although originally only emanating from a club of revolutionary spirits at Heidelberg, contrived to impose itself upon Germany and its princes, and sway the destinies of the land, in opposition to the old German Diet assembled in the same place- the proceedings of the Ausschuss, or select committee, which the members of this Vor-Parlement left behind them, to follow up their assumed authority, when they themselves dispersed,-the constitution of the present National Assembly, sanctioned by most of the German princes, and acknowledged as fully legal and supreme in its authority, its members being elected by universal suffrage,-and its meeting in time to put a stop to the wild democratic tendencies and reckless proceedings of the Auschuss, are all matters of newspaper history, and need here no further detail; they are mentioned only to show what revolutionising Germany fancies and pretends it would be at, as far as any idea can be formed from its actionsand the means it would employ to arrive at its ends. We have got thus far, then, in the solution of our question. Revolutionising Germany desires, above all things, one great and powerful union of all its several parts, -the how, when, where, &c., being as yet very indefinite and unintelligible; and the General National Assembly is there to settle those important preliminaries. Let us content ourselves awhile with this very vague and uncertain answer, and return to old Father Rhine and his neighbourhood, to have some further idea of the physiognomy of the country under the present revolutionary auspices, and with the soothing hopes

of the realisation of the grand desideratum of union before the country's eyes. After taking this superficial survey of the "outward man," and judging as far as we can of his character and temper therefrom, we may then speculate, perhaps, a little upon his tendencies in his present course; and even go so far as to attempt to take his hand, and try a trick or two of palmistry in fortune-telling-not pretending, however, in true gipsy spirit, to infallibility in foretelling the future, however knowingly and mysteriously we may shake our heads in so doing.

Although the Germans cannot be said to have the capabilities of acting any new part, that they may pretend to take upon themselves, to the lifeand even to the death-with all that reality and energy for which the French have such an inborn talent, yet they may be looked up to as a still more symbol-loving people than the latter; and although perhaps not quite so much "up to" correctness of costume, at least quite as fond of parading the dress of the new part upon all occasions. The first thing, consequently, that strikes the tourist, on entering the Germany of 1848, is the ostentatious display of the new-old imperial, so-called national cockade, the red, black, and gold colours of the old German empire. It is not only upon the caps of vapouring students, who begin to consider themselves more or less the masters of the world, or upon the hats of hot-headed, soidisant - enthusiastic, poetico-political young men that the new cockade is now to be seen; it stares you in the face from the head and breast of almost every man you meet-graybeard, middle-aged, or youngster. It is generally from the centre of the cap or hat, and thus just upon the forehead, that it glares upon you, like the dark, red, gleaming eye of a new race of Cyclops: almost every male individual looks like a political Polyphemus. The soldiers are, one and all, adorned with two cockades, the one of the colours of the individual country they serve, the other of those of Imperial United Germany. They have thus two staring, distorted, and unmatched eyes, one over the other, in the centre of their foreheads. With their two eyes they ought, one would

རི

suppose, to see farther in the mist of the political storm than other people. The military, however, influenced perhaps by the example of their aristocratic young officers, have shown themselves, generally speaking, and markedly so in Prussia, where the revolutionary movement has been the most decided, recalcitrant towards the so-called progress of the day, antipopular in their sympathies, attached only to the king and individual country they serve, disdainful of the new central power, the authority of which they do not and will not comprehend, and of its representatives, whom they regard as a herd of insolent schwätzer, or chatterers-in fact, anti-revolutionary, or, as it is called in the pet political phrases of the day, which the Germans have, now more than ever, shown themselves so foolishly eager to borrow of the French-retrograd and reactionär. This position of the military, which appears, generally speaking, to be the same all over the country, is, to say the best, a very ticklish and equivocal one, and promises but little for the future internal peace of United Germany. Orders, however, have been given by such authorities as still are, -and in the first instance by weak, uncertain, vacillating, and now disappointed Prussia,-that the military should do their homage to the ideas of the day, by wearing the imperial cockade, if not in lieu of, at all events in addition to, that which they had heretofore considered as their national symbol: and the double Polyphemus eye of the soldier is one of the most striking and startling evidences of the unsteady and contending spirit of the times, that meet the eye of the tourist in Germany of to-day. Even more than the students-who are still, however, sufficiently remarkable both in costume and manner in these days of unrestricted movement and opinionyou will find a certain set of men, whose physiognomy of race is so strongly marked by some indescribable peculiarity of type, whatever be their colour or form of feature, as to render them unmistakeable, and who make the most flaring display of the imperial national colours, now so strangely converted into the symbol of a revolutionary spirit, be it in

cockade, or band, or button-hole decoration. These are the Jews. They are positively lavish in their display of ribbon. Ever since the revolution has begun its dubious and unsteady course throughout Germany, it has been, invariably and everywhere, the Jews who have displayed the strongest revolutionary spirit, the most decided republican tendencies, the most acrimonious hatred against the "powers that be," and the most virulent efforts towards the subversion of the existing state of things. What may have been the cause of the outburst of this spirit in an essentially trading and money-getting people, whose commercial advantages, in whatever branch they may lie, must be so completely compromised, if not altogether ruined, by revolutionary movements and their consequences, it would be difficult in a superficial sketch to say: it may be conjectured to have arisen simply from a spirit of revenge against the exclusive upper classes of Germany, who have so long treated their sect, proud of its wealth, and seeking influence from its power, with cutting repulsion and contempt. The fact, however, is as stated; the most active revolutionary spirits engaged in the task of pulling down and destroying, as far as was possible, have been every where the Jews; the avowed republicans may chiefly be found among men of their persuasion; the clamour, the attack, and the denunciation, chiefly still proceed from Jewish mouths and Jewish pens. Those who now march forward, then, the most boldly, hand in hand in strange conjunction, along the precipitous path of revolutionary movement, are the students and the Jews. If you unwisely allow one of the latter to lay hold of an unlucky button of your coat in a steamboat, he will be sure to endeavour, with his peculiar twang, to insinuate into you all the wildest ultra-revolutionary doctrines: the former will keep more apart from you, and herd in knots; but, when they get drunk, instead of vapouring vague, incomprehensible, soi-disant Kantian philosophy, as of yore, they will bellow still more vague and incomprehensible political theories about United Germany. It is these two classes of beings, then, who make the

most ostentatious parade of the national cockades that flash across our eyesight.

The fate of this cockade has been a very strange one, by the way, in latter years. The red, black, and gold combination was long formally proscribed in universities, as deleterious and dangerous, and typical of the forbidden Burschenschaften: it was worn only in secret and by stealth, by recalcitrant would-be revolutionary students. All on a sudden it has been raised on high in flag and banner, waving not only in revolutionary procession, but from palace walls, and tops of public buildings. The cockade has not only been authorised, but enjoined; and in a late reactionary movement in Berlin, -when, out of jealousy and spite towards a central power, that had chosen its executive head from south ern and not northern Germany, a considerable public feeling was exhibited against the imperial national flag, and in favour of the Prussian colours exclusively-the government, or rather the king himself, was obliged, for fear of an outbreak of the students, to command the resumption of those colours in flag and cockade, which, but a little while ago, he himself had proscribed. The pride of the young soi-disant heroes at being openly able to parade that symbol which they cherished only heretofore as fancied conspirators, may be easily conceived: and, now these boy-men find that they can dictate to the princes of the earth, not only upon the matter of flags and cockades, but upon matters of far graver note, there is no knowing to what height of presumption this pride may not still further lead them.

If, now, we look around us to note the general physiognomy of the people, we shall find many other little traits, that mark these revolutionary times in Germany. The common people, more especially upon the Rhine, and in many parts of the duchy of Badenthe common people, formerly so smiling, so ready, so civil, perhaps only too obsequious in their signs of respect, have grown insolent and rude: ask them a question, and they will scarely deign to bestow upon you an answer: in many instances they will shrug their shoulders, laugh in your face, and then

turn their back upon you. On the contrary the public officials, the government beamten, have considerably lowered that arrogance of tone for which they formerly possessed a not unmerited evil repute, and will answer your inquiries with civil words and smiling faces. Such, however, is the natural see-saw movement of manners in revolutionary times, in the lower and lower-middle classes; and as far as regards the latter effect of revolutionary movement, no tourist in Germany will be disposed to complain of the change.

Over the middle and upper classes, at the same time, there has fallen a very visible gloom. That uncertainty of the future, which is proverbially far more difficult for moral strength to bear than any certain evil, has had the very evident effect, to the least observant eye, of depressing the spirits of "all manner of men." The hope appears to exist only in the theoretical fancies of the excited liberal politician, the enthusiasm only in the wild dreams of the declaiming student. The prevailing impression is one of all the dulness of doubt and the stupor of apprehension. Talk to people of the state of the country, and they will either shake their heads with a grunt, or openly express their fears about the future: and those fears are none the less active because they are so vague -none the less depressing because they wear the mysterious, visionary, and consequently awful form which the dim distance of complete uncertainty imparts.

Another change, again, in the manners of the people, is in the politicising spirit, so uncongenial in times gone by to the Germans, which, in most great towns, seems now to have so completely absorbed them. It is to be found not only in the low clubs, and in the insensate pothouse debates, but in the eagerness to crowd round the revolutionary addresses, which are posted by ultra-liberals at street corners, in the anxiety to read the last revolutionary disquisition of the new radical journal, in all its glory of large sheet and full columns, which has taken the place of the innocent and patriarchal little Volks-blatt, that was before the study and delight of the humble burgher; and in the mali

cious enjoyment with which the political caricature, railing at prince or men in power, is studied at the shop window, and the feverish importance that is attached to it.

All these characteristic signs and changes will meet the eye of the tourist if he even go no farther than the confines of the Rhine, and the old city of Cologne. There at once is that depression visible to which allusion has already been made. It is visible in the aspect of the fallen halfruined shopkeeper, of the disconsolate master of the hotel, and, above all, of the anxious labourer upon the progress of that mighty work, the completion of which evil times seem again to render an impossible task-the Cologne cathedral. Funds for the further progress of the great undertaking already begin to fail; and these are not times to seek them from the munificence either of states or private individuals. The Baumeister, who has spent the greater part of a life upon the wonderful task of working out the completion of this miracle of Gothic art,-whose whole soul has been concentrated upon this one object, -the breath of whose very existence seems to depend upon the growth of this foster-child of his fancy, for which alone he has lived,-now shakes his head, like the consumptive man whose presentiments tell him that his last hour is nigh, and who despairs of escaping his doom. The revolutionary wind has blown like the plagueblast over the land: he feels that his hand must soon fall powerless before the neglect, or even ill-will of the new-born age of revolutionary liberty, and that he must disperse abroad that band of artist-workmen whom he has fashioned and educated to the noble work, and whom, in their completeness of artistic intelligence, none perhaps, in future years, may be able again to collect together. The cathedral, however, has proceeded to a certain point, at which the whole interior may be enclosed; and there, in all probability, the progress of the works will be checked for the present. The consecration of the new part of the building, in this state, has already taken place; but, even in these ceremonies, the revolutionary modern spirit of Germany has not forgotten to assert its influence: the deputation

sent to them by the Prussian Assembly refused to join to itself a Catholic ecclesiastic; and yet it was seriously proposed at the same time, by the arrangers of the ceremonial programme, that the monarchs who were expected to be present upon the occasion should mount upon the roof of the cathedral, and there take an oath to preserve the unity of Germany, which oath was to be blessed and ratified by the Pope, who was to be invited to come over to Cologne for the purpose. The Pope has had other deeds and other revolutionary tendencies to bless or to ban in his own dominions; but this little trait, culled from the first programme of the consecration of the Cologne cathedral, may be taken, at the same time, as a slight specimen of the wild poetico-political freaks of theoretically revolutionising Germany.

Let us wend our way a little farther. Without attempting to take any precise survey of Prussia and Austria, the continued fermenting and agitated state of which countries is the topic of every-day newspaper notice, and consequently without venturing upon any description of the poisonous and ulcerating sores continually breaking out npon the face of the fair and once healthy cities of Berlin and Vienna, the ignorant tumult of the parliamentary meetings assembled in them, the noisy fermentation of the ultrarevolutionary and republican_clubs, the symbolical but dangerous demonstrations of hot-headed students and other unripe and unquiet spirits, the continual struggle and clash of parties accusing each other reciprocally of utterly subversive or counter-revolutionary and reactionary tendencies, and the constantly threatened danger of fresh convulsions, with further ruin to trade, and consequently to the wellbeing of the country at large-without, then, painting to ourselves a wellknown and notorious picture, let us cast our eyes over the outward aspect of some of the smaller states.

Nothing, in the first place, can be more uneasy and disquieting than the appearance of the Duchy of Baden. In Heidelberg, ultra-revolutionary students have come to a total schism with their moderately and vaguely revolutionary professors; and it is at present difficult to see how any understanding is to be effected between

teacher and scholar, so as to render the university a seat of learning of any other kind than that of subversive principles. In this part of Germany the revolutionary fermentation appears far more active, and is far more visible in the manner, attitude, and language of the lower classes, than even in those hotbeds of revolutionary movement, Austria and Prussia. To this state of things the confinity with agitated France, and consequently a more active affinity with its ideas, caught like a fever from a next-door neighbour's house, the agency of the emissaries from the ultra-republican Parisian clubs, who find an easier access across the frontiers-not without the cognisance, and, it would now seem, as was long suspected, with the aid also of certain influential members of the Provisional Government of France -and the fact also that the unhappy duchy has been, if not the native country, at least the scene of action of the republican insurgents Hecker and Struve-have all combined to contribute. It is impossible to enter the duchy and converse with the peasant population, formerly and proverbially so peacefully disposed in patriarchal Germany, without finding the poison of these various influences gathering and festering in all their ideas, words, and actions. The prostration of spirit, generally speaking, among the middle and trading classes, the discouragement, the uncertain fear, are even still more apparent here than on the lower Rhine; and the gloom appears the greater, from all we see and hear, the higher we mount upon the social ladder. The proud and exclusive German nobility, who have so long slept cradled in the pride and exclusiveness of their courtly prerogatives and privileges, now waken to see an abyss before and behind them, a precipice at every step. How far they may have merited the terrors of utter ruin to their fortunes as well as their position, by their long contemptuous exclusion from their intercourse and society of all who had not the magic key to secure admission to them, in the shape of the privileged particle denoting nobility, whatever was the talent and the worth of the despised unprivileged-and to this state of things, even up to the present day,

there have been very few exceptions at German courts, and much less in German high society-how far they have themselves prepared the way for their present position, by their wilful blindness to the progress of ideas in the world, are not questions to be discussed here. Their present apprehension and consternation are very apparent in every word and action, however much the younger generation, and especially those of it who may be military men, may bluster and talk big, and defy: they fly away to their country houses, if they have them, economise, retrench, and pinch, in preparation for that change in circumstances and position which seems to be approaching them like a spectre. The little capitals of Carlsruhe and Stuttgardt, with their small ducal and royal courts, certainly never exhibited any picture of great animation or bustle even in their most flourishing times; but the gloom that now hangs over them is assuredly very different from the peaceful, although somewhat torpid quietude in which they heretofore reposed their dulness has become utter dreariness; their lady-like oldmaidish decent listlessness a sort of melancholy bordering upon despair. Princes and people look askance at one another: people suffer; and princes think right to retrench. The theatres of these little capitals are about to be closed, because they are considered to be too expensive popular luxuries in the present state of things, and onerous appendages to court charges. Sovereigns cut down their households and theirstuds; and queens shut themselves close up in their summer residences, declaring themselves too poor to visit German watering-places, and support the expenses of regal toilette. In Stuttgardt these symptoms are all peculiarly visible. Spite of the long-acquired popularity of the King of Wurtemberg, as a liberal, well-judging, and rightly-minded monarch towards his subjects, the wind of revolution, that has blown in such heavy gusts in other parts of Germany, has not wholly spared that kingdom; and before accomplishing the intention attributed to him of retiring, in order to avoid those revolutionary demands which, in spite of his best intentions, he de