and pursued another. The poor Portuguese shepherd stood like a statue, not knowing well what to do. At last, when he found himself relieved from all his charge, he went away, lamenting and muttering curses on the 'ladrones Englese,' to make his complaint to the general." which they wear suspended round the neck as a charm against danger and disease. These are prepared by the priest, and sold by him at the price of two or three tenpennies. It is considered sacrilege in the purchaser to part with them at any time; and it is moreover believed that the charm proves of no efficacy to any but the individual for whose particular benefit the priest has blessed it. 9.-Letters from the Irish High- One of them I have been shown lands. "The priest is often called in to perform a sort of exorcism on those whose disorders are supposed to arise from spiritual agency; and, with respect to such possession, our people entertain very wild and wonderful notions.-They have an idea of seeing what they call their 'fetch,' some aërial being or other, who appears to give them warning of their approaching death. Such an apparition, you may readily conceive, often precedes an attack of illness, of which, however, it may happily prove to have been the worst symptom. I remember hearing a story of the kind from a poor man, whose son, while working in the field, conceited' that he beheld some indescribable being, who called to him, and taking up a little stone, threw it at his head. The boy set off instantly, ran home without stopping, and 'took sick from that hour.' Whatever was the cause of the boy's complaint, I had the satisfaction of knowing that a simple dose of medicine had effected his cure. "One of the most deplorable of these superstitious fancies is, their credulity with respect to the Gospels,' as they are called, as a rarity, which seldom indeed finds its way into heretical hands. I will describe, as minutely as possible, both its forms and contents: it was a small cloth bag, marked on one side with the letters I. H. S., enclosing a written scrap of dirty paper, of which the following is an exact copy, orthographical errors not excepted: " In the name of God Amen. When our Saviour saw the cross whereon he was To Be Crucified his body trembiled and shook the Jews asked Iff he had the faver or the ague he said that he had neither the faver or the ague. Whosoever shall keep these words in mind or in righting shall never have the faver or ague. Be the hearers Blessed. Be the Believers Blessed. Be the name of our Lord god Amen. CY. TOOLE. "On the other side of the paper is written the Lord's prayer in as curious a style of spelling; and after it a great number of initial letters, apparently all by the same hand, and probably essential to the charm. Instead of being edified, you are, I doubt not, as much grieved and disgusted with the description as I was with the actual appearance of this pious cheat. Yet, may we not hope that, by exposing such in the broad day light of reason, we lend a helping hand towards their gradual extirpation? If the dread of ridicule has already driven them into the remotest corners of the land, is it not to be hoped that better motives may, ere long, still more effectually destroy the influence of all such false and dangerous deceit." 10.-A Tour in Germany, and some of the Southern Provinces of the Austrian Empire, in the Years 1820, 1821, & 1822. Manheim "being the residence of the Margravine Dowager, there is something of the parade and elegance of a court. Many of the sojourners are persons of literary habits, and the coteries of Manheim have gradually been acquiring a character for information and bon ton. There is a considerable number of Russians, particularly Livonians. The subjects of the Autocrat of all the Russias seem to have a natural fondness for nestling in every warmer climate, or more civilized country, than their own. From Palermo to Brussels you find them, not travelling, but fixed, so long as they are allowed. These were the circumstances which made Kotzebue choose Manheim for his residence, when the notice excited by the surreptitious publication of his unfortunate bulletin induced him to quit Weimar, and it was here, in a small house towards the Rhine, that he fell a victim to the fanaticism of Sand, I found the murderer, who had been executed shortly before, still the subject of general conversation. Though his deed, besides its moral turpitude, has done Germany much political mischief, the public feeling seemed to treat his memory with much indulgence. Most people, except the students, were liberal enough to acknowledge that Sand had done wrong in committing assassination, but they did not at all regard him with disrespect, much less with the abhorrence due to a murderer. The ladies were implacable in their resentment at his execution. forgive the necessity of cutting off They could easily his head, but they could not pardon the barbarity of cutting off, to prepare him for the block, the long dark locks which curled down over his shoulders, after the academical fashion. People found many things in his conduct and situation which conspired to make them regard him as an object of pity, sometimes of admiration, rather than of blame. Nobody regrets Kotzebue. To deny him, as many have done, all claims to talent and literary merit, argues sheer ignorance or stupidity; but his talent could not redeem the imprudence of his conduct, and no man ever possessed, in greater perfection, the art of making enemies wherever he was placed. Every body believed too, that Sand, however frightfully erroneous his ideas might be, acted from what he took to be a principle of public duty, and not to gratify any private interest. This feeling, joined to the patience and resolution with which he bore up under fourteen months of grievous bodily suffering, the kindliness of temper which he manifested towards every one else, and the intrepidity with which he submitted to the punishment of his crime, naturally procured him in Germany much sympathy and indulgence. Such pal liating liating feelings towards the perpetrator of such a deed are, no doubt, abundantly dangerous. If they pass the boundary by a single hair's-breadth, they become downright defenders of assassination, yet one cannot entirely rid himself of them. It is one of the greatest mischiefs of such an example, that it seduces weak heads and heated fancies into a ruinous coquetry with principles which make every man his neighbour's executioner. Still, it would be untrue to say that it was only his brother students who regarded Sand with these indulgent eyes. To them, of course, he appeared a martyr in a common cause. I would not have told him to do it,' said a student of Heidelberg to me, but I would cheerfully have shaken hands with him after he did it.' Even in the more grave and orderly classes of society, although his crime was never justified or applauded, I could seldom trace any inclination to speak of him with much rigour. When the executioner had struck, the crowd rushed upon the scaffold, every one anxious to pick up a few scattered hairs, or dip a ribbon, a handkerchief, or a scrap of paper, in his blood. Splinters were chipped from the reeking block, and worn in medallions as his hair was in rings, kept and revered as the reliques of a saint. To the students of Heidelberg was ascribed the attempt to sow with Forget-me-not the field on which he was beheaded; and which they have baptized by the name of Sand's Ascension Meadow. Though punished as an homicide, he was laid in consecrated ground; and, till measures were taken by the police to prevent it, fresh flowers -1824. and branches of weeping willow were nightly strewed, by unknown hands, on the murderer's grave." The horrors of the last German campaigns are alluded to:-" Till the thunder-clouds which collected at Leipzig had rolled themselves beyond the Rhine, this tranquil abode of the Muses witnessed nothing but the horrors of war in all their merciless perfection. "It was precisely by its sympathy, its active humanity, and self-denial amid these horrors, that the reigning family fixed itself so deeply in the affections of the people. Every source of courtly expense was limited, or cut off, to meet the miseries of the ruined peasantry, and rebuild the villages which had been laid in ashes. In the short space of a month, the murders of the soldiery, and epidemic disease, produced by living in filth and starvation, among the ruins of the villages, threw five hundred orphans on the country. Nine were found out of one family, without a rag to defend them against the chilling damps of an autumn night, cowering round the embers of their burned cottage, watching by the corpses of their father and mother. The ducal family, assisted by a share of the money which was raised in this country for the suffering Germans, adopted these orphans. They have all been educated in Weimar, instructed in a profession, and put in the way of exercising it. In the summer of 1821, they finished a small chapel dedicated to the Providence that had led their childhood safe through so much misfortune, of which not only the walls, but all the furniture and ornaments, are the work of their own hands, each in the profession to which he was educated." After describing the course of study at Jena, our author draws the following picture of the Students: "Once outside of the classroom, the Burschen show themselves a much less orderly race; if they submit to be ruled one hour daily by a professor, they rule him, and every other person, during all the rest of the four and twenty. The duels of the day are generally fought out early in the morning; the spare hours of the forenoon and afternoon are spent in fencing, in renowning-that is, in doing things which make people stare at them, and in providing duels for the morrow. In the evening, the various clans assemble in their commerz-houses, to besot themselves with beer and tobacco; and it is long after midnight before the last strains of the last songs die away upon the streets. Wine is not the staple beverage, for Jena is not in a wine country, and the students have learned to place a sort of pride in drinking beer. Yet, with a very natural contradiction, over their pots of beer they vociferate songs in praise of the grape, and swing their jugs with as much glee as a Bursche of Heidelberg brandishes his römer of Rhenish. 66 -- A band of these young men, thus assembled in an ale-house in the evening, presents as strange a contrast as can well be imagined to all correct ideas, not only of studious academical tranquillity, but even of respectable conduct, yet, in refraining from the nightly observances, they would think themselves guilty of a less pardonable dereliction of their academic character, and a more direct treason against the independence of Germany, than if they subscribed to the Austrian Observer, or never attended for a single hour the lectures for which they paid. Step into the public room of that inn, on the opposite side of the market-place, for it is the most respectable in the town. On opening the door, you must use your ears, not your eyes, for nothing is yet visible except a dense mass of smoke, occupying space, concealing every thing in it and beyond it, illuminated with a dusky light, you know not how, and sending forth from its bowels all the varied sounds of mirth and revelry. As the eye gradually accustoms itself to the atmosphere, human visages are seen dimly dawning through the lurid cloud; then pewter jugs begin to glimmer faintly in their neighbourhood; and, as the smoke from the phial gradually shaped itself into the friendly Asmodeus, the man and his jug slowly assume a defined and corporeal form. You can now totter along between the two long tables which have sprung up, as if by enchantment; by the time you have reached the huge stove at the farther end, you have before you the paradise of a German Burschen, destitute only of its Houris; every man with his bonnet on his head, a pot of beer in his hand, a pipe or segar in his mouth, and a song upon his lips, never doubting but that he and his companions are training themselves to be the regenerators of Europe, that they are the true representatives of the manliness and independence of the German character, and the only models of a free, generous, and high-minded youth. They lay their hands upon their jugs, and vow the liberation of Germany: Germany; they stop a second pipe, or light a second segar, and swear that the Holy Alliance is an unclean thing. "The songs of these studious revellers often bear a particular character. They are, indeed, mostly convivial, but many of them contain a peculiar train of feeling, springing from their own peculiar modes of thinking, hazy aspirations after patriotism and liberty, of neither of which they have any idea, except that every devout Bursche is bound to adore them, and mystical allusions to some unknown chivalry that dwells in a fencing bout, or in the cabalistical ceremony, with which the tournament concludes, of running the weapon through a hat. -Thus, their innumerable hymns to the rapier, or on the moral, intellectual, and political effects of climbing up poles and tossing the bar, would be unintelligible to all who do not know their way of thinking, and must appear ridiculous to every one who cannot enter into their belief, that these chivalrous exercises constitute the essence of manly honour; but they themselves chant these tournament songs (Tournier-lieder) with an enthusiastic solemnity which, to a third party, is irresistibly ludicrous. The period when they took arms against France was as fertile in songs as in deeds of valour. Many of the former are excellent in their way, though there was scarcely a professional poet in their band, except young Körner. These, with the more deep and intense strains of Arndt, will always be favourites, because they were the productions of times, and of a public feeling unique in the history of Germany. "But, worse than idly as no small portion of time is spent by the great body of the academic youth in these nightly debauches, this is only one, and by no means the most distinguishing or troublesome, of their peculiarities; it is the unconquerable spirit of clanship, prevalent among them, which has given birth to their violence and insubordination; for it at once cherishes the spirit of opposition to all regular discipline, and constitutes an united body to give that opposition effect. The house of Hanover did not find more difficulty in reducing to tranquillity the clans of the Highlands of Scotland than the Grand Duke of Weimar would encounter in eradicating the Landsmannschaften from among the four hundred students of Jena, and inducing them to conduct themselves like orderly, well-bred young men. The Landsmannschaften themselves are by no means a modern invention, though it is believed, that the secret organization which they give to the students all over Germany has, of late years, been used to new purposes. The name is entirely descriptive of the thing, a Countrymanship, an association of persons from the same country, or the same province of a country. They do not arise from the constitution of the university, nor are they acknowledged by it; on the contrary, they are proscribed both by the laws of the university and the government of the country. They do not exist for any academical purpose, for the young men have no voice in any thing connected with the university; to be a member of one is an academical misdemeanor, yet there are few students who do not belong to one |