upon the animal spirits, that we had a thousand times rather see our fellow-creatures transformed into good-humoured pedants, each supremely intent upon one thing, however insignificant, than be surrounded by a crowd of beings who have not the fewer cares because they are almost without pleasures. The bustling housewife, her heart and soul intent upon pickles and preserves, Mrs. Battle devoted to her rubber at whist,-grammarians, intent upon the formation of past participles,-antiquarians, looking with ineffable disdain on the living, and for ever communing with the dead, entomologists, speculating on the wings of a fly,-we like them all-they are all happy beings. Each loves at least one thing. There may be a vast difference in the comparative value of their several undertakings. The benevolent ardour of a Howard, the Christian fervour of a missionary, may wonderfully overshadow the value of such pursuits as we have mentioned; but still the principle of exertion, to whatever object directed, is to be hailed as an omen of goodgood to the individual himself, and, in general, eventually so to the community. Good-humour, that sweetener of our real cares, that best preventative against imaginary ones, is at least fostered by this active turn of mind; and that is but a short-sighted officiousness which would rob the bustler of his joys, in order to shew him their unreasonableness. Any thing-we repeat it -any thing is better than the dull, melancholy, morose apathy of human creatures, who are born and educated, and live and die without desiring or shunning one thing more than another, without love or hatred, without fear or hope. For this reason chiefly, when we review the character of the present age, we take heart and are comforted, amid the consciousness of finding much folly, in the belief that a great deal of powerful feeling is abroad, that sluggishness is not the reigning evil of our time; but that we are on the whole an active, stirring, busy nation. Our ladies too have caught the spirit of the age. We meet them, not merely at balls, prettily equipped for the sprightly dance, nor in a morning weaving with indefatigable fingers their evening robe; but at our public meetings, at our committees, in our schools, and in our prisons, we find them occupying no subordinate station in the ranks of the busy labourers in the cause of humanity. It has been whispered that on such occasions they have of late years been, indeed, rather too active; and this is likely enough. But yet we cannot help believing, on our own principles, that the good-humour of their domestic circles is on the whole increased by the life and spirits which these exertions produce and promote. It is true, that the same period which produces a nation of great doers, will almost unavoidably bring forth a people of talkers. Energy of one sort calls out energy of another. High-sounding expressions, violent admira

tion and abuse of people and things, is inseparable from a state of strong mental and bodily excitement. Hence the sharpness of our controversies, the unreasonable warmth of our language on subjects purely literary, the vehemence of our passionate poetry. We have carried all these things a great deal too far; and people of the good old school look upon us sometimes with wonder and contempt. We appear in their eyes to be fighting with prodigious vehemence about straws. Looking forward, however, some twenty or thirty years, we see great reason to hope that we shall be much the better by and by, in spite of our present excesses. Things will be called by their right names, one time or other; and the sober severity of truth will adorn our characters, when some of the glow of enthusiasm in her cause has passed away. Even now, few of the members of contending literary parties dislike each other half so much as their words literally taken would imply; and few of the busy actors in political or religious matters appear, in their own private circles, such zealots as we are apt to fancy. When a man has gained reputation by ardour in one particular cause, we cannot give him credit for being ardent in any thing else; though in many cases mere accident has coupled his name with one pursuit, and he may have been all the while to the full as eager in quest of some other. At any rate there is no stagnation in a mind like this. It is carried away, indeed, rather too rapidly; but time, experience, and the inflexible application of its powers in that direction to which man's better wisdom points, will finally preserve it from destruction.

Even decidedly light, irreligious, volatile spirits are more hopeful subjects of speculation than the apathetic beings from whom no power can extract a tear of sympathy, or a burst of generous feeling. Quiet dulness often calls itself religious; but of conscience it has none. It keeps under regulation the already sober passions; but as to rousing the active principle within us, towards this it does nothing.

Religious principle is of little value indeed, if it merely keep us in the slavish fear of going notoriously wrong, without spurring us on to right action. It was not for an end so poor and circumscribed that the Divine Being created us, and stamped upon our minds his own image. It was not for this that he has called us to the hope of a better inheritance. It was to rouse us to act with him and for him; to translate us from the dominion of fear to the empire of hope; from passive submission to active service; from awe to love, and from death to life: up to this beautiful idea should we endeavour always to lift our minds. We may faint and fall short; but our motives and principles are stronger than ourselves.

We are getting out of our depth; and, having begun in a

light mood, are in danger of ending in too serious a one. Examples, bright examples, of tempered and well-directed enthusiasm crowd upon our minds as we write; and if we dared, we could mention some which would illustrate and confirm the bright view we are disposed to take of this error of noble minds. Here and there an individual may put our cheerful faith to the test; for what can be more annoying than to meet with the follies of youth in an aged breast, which possesses not one merit but that of having retained its childishness through a long life! In general, however we are satisfied that enthusiasm is a blessing to individuals, and a blessing to society; and from the bottom of our hearts we say, "Long may it dwell amongst us!" E.T.

THE NORTH GERMAN PEASANTRY.

OUR acquaintance with all parts of the European continent has of late years been gradually improving both in extent and accuracy, and the various stages of society which its different nations exhibit have, since the French revolution, attracted a far deeper scrutiny than at any former period. The public gaze has indeed been chiefly directed towards its southern inhabitants-the French, the Spaniards, the Italians, and the Portuguese. The sense of deficient administration which these nations have manifested, and that germ of splendid results and permanent amelioration which in some of them has broken forth, have undoubtedly a pre-eminent claim upon our attention. But there are yet countries in the North of the Continent, which, though destitute of any striking and sudden efforts of awakened man, such as those which the South has witnessed, present matter highly instructive and interesting to an observer of human society. The northern parts of Germany, bordering upon the Baltic, as they are outlying provinces, not inhabited by any court or sovereign, and possessing no attractions of climate or scenery, have been comparatively but little noticed. They have been hardly visited at all by English or French travellers; and the German language is so slenderly diffused in this country, that the native accounts of them are inaccessible to all but a few. For this reason it may not be unacceptablé to lay before the English reader a short sketch of the state of society there, and principally of the condition of the peasantry-to deliver an abridged summary of the changes which have influenced the hap piness of the numerous classes in that country, interspersing some reflections on their general progress throughout other more advanced European kingdoms. The principal facts relative to the present state of the labouring classes in that country, may be found in a "View of Villenage in Pomerania and Rugen," written by Arndt, an author whose liberal spirit has rendered him deservedly popular among all the friends of German liberty and improvement.

If human happiness be the only true and legitimate end of history, and indeed of all knowledge, a minute acquaintance with those causes which either promote or obstruct the well-being of the most numerous portion of every society, must be deemed the most valuable

of all acquisitions. Yet, if we inspect nearly every historical record extant, how rarely is this proposed as the object of research! History, so warm on meaner themes, COWPER.

Is cold on this."

We listen to a minute detail of the most insignificant quarrels, amours, and enjoyments of kings and nobles, while the condition and progress of the people is usually postponed to the appendix, or occupies a paragraph at the end of a reign, of much about the same length as the description of the king's person. It is at best treated as a curious accessary, which it would be improper wholly to pass over, like the animal and vegetable productions of the country. Reflections upon this grievous distortion of the historical pen might be pushed to some extent, and not without advantage; but on the present occasion it will be sufficient to vindicate what might wear the aspect of minute detail, by a reference to that grand purpose towards which all scientific research should be made subservient.

That great recoinage (refonte) of the human race, (to use the eloquent expression of Sismondi) which Europe has witnessed since the Christian era, traces its origin to the incorporation of the Gothic tribes with the declining Roman empire in the South, to the Gothic tribes alone in the middle, and to their admixture with the Slavi or Sclavonians in the North of Europe. Russia and Poland, inhabited only by Sclavonians, may be considered as situated without the pale of this classification, as their influence upon the frame of European society is but of recent date.

At the period when the Gothic tribes had acquired firm possession of the Roman territories in the South, the northern and eastern parts of Europe (including Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Lusatia, Silesia, Bohemia, and Hungary) were peopled by Slavi. From the 9th to the 13th century, the Gothic and Saxon tribes extended their inroads into all these countries, and incorporated themselves with the inhabitants, partly by way of conquest, partly by way of settlement. In some, however, they appear to have settled in much greater number, and to have acquired a far greater supremacy, than in others, and the current language affords an incontestable standard by which their comparative superiority may be measured. In Holstein, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania, the almost complete introduction of the German language attests the entire predominance of the new settlers over the old inhabitants, whom indeed the meagre accounts which remain describe as equally rude and thinly scattered. Previous to the year 1200, when Henry the Lion was Duke of Saxony, and when the English were just conquering Ireland, this settlement was firmly made, but not without much contest and bloodshed. It was by no means however effected wholly by conquest; for Pome. rania was governed by her native princes, of Sclavonian family, until the country was divided by the extinction of that race, in the time of the thirty years war. The Germans owed their predominance partly to the superiority which they possessed in arts and cultivation, and partly to the influence of Christianity which they introduced into the country.

The scanty accounts which we possess of Pomerania from the 12th to the 16th century exhibit the same comfortless and unattractive features which mark at the same period the more southern countries of Europe. We observe an utter absence of all sense of union, and of that respect for public authority which is the visible sign of this feeling. The kings of Pomerania possessed little more than a nominal authority over their refractory nobles. The country was split into a variety of separate associations, consisting either of territorial lordships, or of the different town-corporations and their demesnes. Between these there existed interminable warfare, and these petty feuds seem to have spread constant desolation throughout the whole land. It is indeed scarcely possible to imagine the distress which must have frequently reigned in a country where we hear the price of corn recorded as higher by six-fold one year than it had been in the preceding, in consequence of which many persons died of absolute hunger.

About the 16th century, however, we begin to be more accurately informed as to the state of Pomerania and Rugen. The chronicler Kanzow lived at this period; and there is extant a curious compilation of the country customs and laws (land-gebrauche) of the isle of Rugen, made about the year 1550 by Matthias von Normann,——a man who was originally scribe in the judicial court of Bergen, and afterwards administered justice there himself in the capacity of provincial judge (Landvogt.)

From both these accounts the condition of the peasants in Pomerania and Rugen appears in the 16th century to have been tolerably free and comfortable. Like the villeins in England, their tenures were different. Some possessed an hereditary tenure upon their farms, on condition of performing certain fixed services upon the manor-farm of the lord, and in some cases of paying a fixed money-tribute. Others, again, had only a life-tenure, and were subject to indeterminate services. But, in Rugen particularly, nearly all the peasants appear to have stood upon a fixed annual tribute, and to have possessed an hereditary tenure in their farms. They are described as rich, spirited, and warlike, as unwilling to yield in point of precedence to the poorer members of the noblesse, among whom their daughters are said to have frequently intermarried. They went almost always armed, even to feasts and to church. They were fond of hunting, and kept good dogs for the purpose. They might sell their farms whenever they pleased, and remove, on condition of delivering to the lord a tenth part of the purchase-money, together with an heriot and other small burthens. The lord could not turn them out except upon some specific and satisfactory ground, and even then the peasant was permitted to sell the whole of his farming-stock, and to carry away the proceeds free. Occasional fees due to the lord, such as wardship, relief, &c. are defined with considerable precision by Normann.

But even during the time of the latter, this moderate and easy tenure appears to have been gradually declining. Normann concludes his compilation with a complaint, that the lords were daily becoming more harsh and oppressive in their exactions, and that the