der an acceptable service to our readers by picking the plums out of the cake, for palates accustomed to more stimulating fare than as a whole it would afford.

Steffens's reputation rests on various grounds; this is not in his favour in Germany, where the division of intellectual labour is marked out with a somewhat pedantic precision and rigour, and where acquirements are far more valued for their depth than their extension. His earliest tastes and pursuits lay entirely in the domain of physical science; at a later period he was seized with a passion for philosophy, and devoted himself to the study of it with the greatest ardour. This indeed must be regarded as his Fach (to use a word for which we have no equivalent), since he fills the chair in the univer sity of Berlin lately occupied by Hegel. The services he may have rendered to physical or moral science we are neither disposed nor competent to discuss. To the unlearned world he is better known as the author of several admired novels, the scene of which is laid in the wild and romantic regions of his native land. 'Malcolm,' the Four Norwegians,' Walseth and Leith,' are all pictures of Scandinavian life and manners; these, as well as the chaotic rocks, the enchanted vallies, the deep fiords, the wild seas and tempest-beaten shores, are painted, not out of books, nor from hasty observation, but from the vivid recollections of one who has lived under the mysterious spell of the primordial elements,-the unclothed ribs of earth, and the trackless, restless waves of ocean. Even now, at the close of his long life, he says,

"The faintest resemblance to the neighbourhood of Copenhagen calls up recollections which enhance the beauty even of the most beautiful spots. The noble beech-woods, the green meadows beckon to me. The older I grow, the stronger is my longing after the pleasant places of my youth. There are moments in which a Heimweh for the sea seizes me as painfully as that of a mountaineer for his mountains. I hear the waves plash upon the shore; stormy nights transport me to the wide bosom of the deep and amidst its foamy billows. When I wake,—when the present asserts its right, everything appears to me arid and parched; I feel as if possessed by an unquenchable thirst."

Henry Steffens was born in the year 1773 at Stavanger, one of the oldest towns in Norway, where his father, a Dane, was settled as district-surgeon. When he was three years

old the family removed to Trondheim, once the seat of vernment of Hakon Jarl. Here is that most remarkable cathedral in which repose the ashes of St. Olaf, and in which the Norwegian kings were crowned. In our author's seventh year his father was again removed to Helsingör; and here the history of his childhood properly begins. We trace with deep interest the various and indeed antagonist influences under which his character was formed; the rough and irascible, though affectionate father, vexed by pecuniary cares, and irritated by a sense of his subordinate station in society; the gentle, pious, sensitive mother, suffering and resigned; the antiquated discipline of the grammar-school of Helsingör, and the free and hardy sports shared with the fisher-boys on the wild shores of the Northern Ocean.

"Before our house was a place where the fishermen dried their nets and hauled up their boats. The wild fisher-boys were our playfellows. My mother did not wish this, but my father seemed to like it. It was the time at which a hardy training in the fresh air, bathing and swimming, serious fights between boys, and even the democratical tendency of children not to recognize distinctions of rank, began to be in fashion."

is

The father was an admirer of Rousseau, thought that boys must fight their own battles, and would listen to no grievances. The sufferings of the anxious, tender and fragile mother, spectator of a training she could neither approve nor prevent, were a part of that life of martyrdom, or rather that protracted death, to which women of her temperament are so frequently doomed. Her portrait, as drawn by her son, full of melancholy beauty. The lovely and darling daughter of one of the most distinguished families of Denmark, she had married for love a man without fortune or prospects, whose naturally violent temper was embittered by the struggle with difficulties. Thus subdued in spirit, and broken in health by frequent child-bearing, she sank into a slow but incurable decline.

"As far back as my recollection reaches," says her son, "I knew her only as a pale, emaciated, feeble woman; but the most delicate feminine features I ever beheld,—the calm, melancholy, and still undimmed cyes, full of gentleness and patience, float before my mind like a holy dream of my youth..........We wild boys approached her with quiet tenderness, and the gentlest rebuke from her had a more powerful effect upon us than the severest punishment from my father."

We have all the details of the author's school-days at Helsingör. The method and matter of instruction were not much more empty, dry and formal than in all other parts of Europe at that time. Latin grammar, the catechism, and a skeleton of bible history, committed to memory, formed nearly the whole course of study. "There was no attempt at a remark "or an explanation; the use which the boys were to make of "what they had learnt was left entirely to themselves." Even here Steffens's passion for study began to display itself.

But we turn with more interest to the sublime lessons which nature wrote upon his heart. The sea-the most exciting, the most awful, the most exhaustless object in nature -must, in all ages and forms of society, affect the character of those who dwell on its shores, and are witnesses of its changeful moods. The author brings vividly before us the countless incidents with which it feeds the imagination and stimulates the curiosity of the boy.

"The wild Kattegat lay before us with its roaring waves; near the shore nothing was to be seen but fishing-boats. The stillness near the land, the restless expanse of waters beyond, the ships which came in sight from the far north, and were soon lost in the Sound, and, in the misty distance, Kullen, the lofty Swedish headland which projects boldly into the Kattegat, were impressed with a character of solitary, silent grandeur.

"Helsingör at that time had no harbour, so that vessels were obliged to anchor in the open roadstead. The Sound is only half a mile (German) broad, and on the Swedish side so shallow, that the ships which pass through are obliged to keep close to the shore of Siaelland. Here they lay at anchor; while behind them rose the coast of Sweden. On the southwest lay the island of Hween, the residence of Tycho Brahe, with the ruins of the castle and the observatory of Marienburg.

'On a fine calm summer day our windows commanded a delightful view. The sun arose over the Swedish mountains. Helsingborg lay still in shadow, although the houses were discernible. The sunbeams played on the lightly agitated waves, while directly before us the royal frigate, the guard-ship, lay anchored in majestic repose, her long pennant floating in the breeze, and the Danish colours at her mast. We could see the sailors moving on her deck. Around her lay, tranquil on the placid water, vessels of every size and nation, and the transparent morning mist threw a light veil over the whole. Gradually all the crews were in motion. There was a silence, a pregnant quiet, which held all this varied life as it were spellbound. Then the bells in all the vessels sounded the hour, and the guns of the frigate thundered the morning salute; we saw the flash which preceded it, and watched the rings of smoke rise circling in the air. The scene

was one of such grandeur and such beauty, such quiet yet such activity, such unity yet such variety,-it was like the morning of the nations who arose to take their pleasure on the sunlit waves. In later years I never saw the sun rise from a high ground over a plain, without fancying that I descried the masts through the mist; I heard the bells, I listened for the gun.

"The whole day long everything on board the vessels was in motion ; boats were coming and going, and on our way to school we met people of every country and clime walking in the streets. According to the wind, ships came and went; sometimes, with all their canvas spread to the breeze, we saw them nearing the Sound; sometimes we could hear the measured cry of the sailors as they heaved anchor,-we saw the sails set-the vessel was in motion-she disappeared on her way to the Kattegat. Sometimes, though not often, large ships of war passed, or small squadrons, Russian, Swedish, Danish, English, very rarely French. The king's frigate, which struck us with such admiration, appeared by the side of the two- and three-deckers small and insignificant. As they sailed by, they saluted the forts, which answered. The various nations passed before our eyes thus nobly represented; generally engaged in the beneficent character of interchangers of all that conduces to the comfort and refinement of life, more rarely under a warlike aspect.

"Towards evening Hween glittered in the clear sunset. The Swedish coast rose before us, and we could distinguish the houses in Helsingborg which lay close to the shore. The sun gilded the tips of the masts, and as he sank below the horizon the ships' bells sounded in the breeze, the evening gun boomed over the water, the rings of smoke curled upwards, and all sank into darkness and repose.

"We boys had a chart of the various flags, and knew those of every nation. But we soon strove which should first know the vessels of the several countries by their build, as well as the class they belonged to. Thus we lived in a sort of intercourse with every trading port in the world. Maps lay on the table, and when we had determined a ship's country we traced her course. While I had vainly toiled at school to learn by heart the nine circles of Germany, and the innumerable electorates, bishoprics, duchies and counties, fancy thus transported me into every region of the earth: I visited every port, I saw the crowd of vessels, 1 traversed the ocean. Books of travels were of course our favourite reading. I had the most vivid conception of the living presence of all nations, near enough to be perfectly distinct, distant enough to be viewed on a large scale. Every ship has its own peculiar history and fortune: it is an individual, animated being, and the men by whom it is guided and governed constitute an individual. This flies from place to place. In harbour, the parts of this great individual separate and disperse, led by desires and motives which have no common centre; but the moment the soul of these souls is called upon for common action, the dispersion is over, and the scattered parts once more assume the unity of an individual.

"Sometimes we were allowed to go on board a vessel. We learned

whence she came and whither she was bound; we knew all the parts of a ship, her sails and rigging, and could call them by their names. The sailors were pleased at the interest we showed, and I had the most eager desire to converse with these men, who came and vanished like a dream. In imagination I sailed with them, and inquired what ports they would visit: I learned the nature of their cargoes, for what place bound, and for what exchanged. Thus I acquired a most lively conception of commerce, which connects all the countries of the earth,--a poetical idea of the manner in which the several wants of men cross each other,-drawn in large and free outlines, without those details which might have obscured the grandeur and beauty of the picture.

"I listened eagerly to all the sailors' stories, and, I remember, soon learned, from the tone and manner, to distinguish truth from fiction. All the dangers, the adventures, and the superstitions of the sea, were incorporated with our quiet domestic life."

In looking over the numerous German memoirs, reminiscences, etc., to which we alluded at the beginning of this article, we are struck with unanimity on one point,—the mighty impression made on all minds by the American war. This event seems to have startled Europe to its remotest bounds and its obscurest recesses. All these writers, however distant the places of their birth, however different the circumstances under which they lived, refer to this as one of the most vivid and indelible impressions of their childhood. What Goethe says of it must be familiar to many of our readers. He, however, was a native of a great and much frequented commercial city: but in the remote and tranquil seclusion of a small town of Norway, or (as we learn from Madame Pickler) even in the gay, contented and loyal Vienna, the hearts of men were stirred with strange hopes and lofty aspirations for their race. We must not stop to ask how these have been fulfilled, in the land whither freedom and justice were to retreat from oppressed and corrupted Europe. To those who estimate human progress by miles of railroad and bales of cotton the result may be satisfactory; but those who wish to retain any hope of the moral improvement of mankind,—of their emancipation from the tyranny of base prejudices and evil passions, their elevation above sordid and short-sighted interests, their obedience to justice, reason, honour and humanity, had better not turn their eyes that way at the present moment. If a people neither coerced by foreign domination nor by internal tyranny, neither cramped by nature