and felicitous accidents which give truth and individuality to a scene, the German makes us feel the immediate union, of which he is conscious, between external objects and his own inmost being. He invests them with a soul, or rather with an emanation from that Great Soul which animates the whole, and of which himself also is a part; he feels drawn by a mysterious affinity to this or that object; he sees a meaning, he hears a language, in the unorganic and the mute; and not, as in the voluptuous and figurative East, a language of similes and emblems and plays of the fancy, but immediate and solemn. We will not deny that the attempt to give utterance to this language often degenerates into the forced and the fantastic, especially in the tribe of imitators whose business it everywhere is to caricature and distort. Goethe's 'Fischer' will occur to everybody who knows anything of German poetry. Tieck's forest scenery seems written under the influence of a kindred spell. Carove's little Märchen ohne Ende,' fabricated of such slight external materials, owes its charm to this sentiment, of which it is one continued expression. We have not the smallest intention of exalting either over the other: we are far from lamenting that every tree in the forest is not the oak or the beech, and are thankful to the exhaustless bounty "which gave us all things richly to enjoy ;" and among the rest, and not the least, varieties in the human race. But nations are got to that pitch of reasonableness, that not only each must have every conceivable perfection, but must have the monopoly of it; so that really one is more afraid to admire a grace or a merit than in a circle of women. Indeed, though we would not do the fair creatures the injury of calling them by so hard a name as reasonable, we doubt whether each of them would claim to be not only a beauty, a wit, an heiress, a philosopher, a poet, a heroine, a leader of fashion, but the only wit, the only beauty, and the like. Yet this, and no less, is the pretension of nations; and our beloved Germans are going to try to out-fanfaronner the French and out-bully the English. God send them a complete failure, and a speedy return to their cosmopolitan largeness and fairness of mind, and their placid, dreamy, enviable contentedness with natural and simple pleasures, most refreshing and soothing after the excitement, the tension, the

gigantic and impetuous movement of England. We are sorry to see a tendency among some of them to renounce this their prerogative, and we think the change, if it were possible, unwise. But greatness and glory and wealth are dazzling, and energy and success in action are imposing, whatever be their objects, whatever their remote results; and in contemplating these, men grow impatient of tranquil pursuits and obscure enjoyments.

We come back to the rocks and waves. We have seen how the latter affected our author; let us now see him subjected to the stern and menacing aspect of rudimental earth.

"I ascended Falgefouden, that great everlasting plain of snow which forms pyramidal glaciers in the steep gorges. I lost myself in the mountain solitude; and if, in my early youth, I had found joy and cheerfulness in a rich and smiling vegetation, I here encountered the overwhelming power of masses. It was a wondrous feeling, made up of horror and pleasure, which seized me when I looked from the dazzling plain over the wide expanse, and saw other mountain-tops apparently close to me; when in other places, above the highest hut, I left behind me the last trace of vegetation, and saw nothing around me but naked, jaggy rocks, dreary, unsheltered mountain lakes, rolling their dark melancholy waters amidst their stony banks, and here and there huge spots of snow. In such moments I' learned the mighty spell of elemental earth. It has a spell like that of water, but darker and more terrible."

Or this:

"The mountain formation astonished me. It was that coarse-grained Labrador sienite, one of the grandest of mountain masses, which gives so sublime a character to the west coast of Norway. The tears rushed to my eyes it was as if earth had opened to me her most secret workshop; as if the fruitful soil, with all its flowers and woods, were but a light and beautiful covering, hiding unfathomable treasures; as if this covering were stripped off, and I were drawn into the wondrous abyss that it disclosed. The impression was a thoroughly fantastic one; and it was perhaps my lively description of it that inspired Tieck with the idea of his novel, 'The Runenberg,' the hero of which, driven by a mysterious longing after the hidden secrets of the wild mountains, leaves the fruitful plains, and under the influence of this 'dämonisch' fascination, insanely imagines he has discovered great treasures, while he wearily drags about a sack of worthless stones. Tieck confessed that he had me in his mind.

"The district between Bergen and Samnanger-fiord presents a picture of the most fearful chaotic confusion. It haunts me as the most frightful that I ever saw. The primitive strata wind in labyrinthine intricacy; perpendicular strata, falling in totally opposite directions, form terrific chasms;

gigantic masses of rock are piled about the bare mountain; wild torrents hide beneath them, and again rush foaming forth the whole scene forms a terrific mixture of stark chaos and wild distraction. Every trace of coherence seems vanished from the lifeless chaos; and the inhabitants, accustomed as they are to the terrors of the mountains, call a spot in the centre of it the Schrakenthal-the valley of terrors."

He speaks of the 'unseligen Reiz' which this region had for him, in the language of one who felt himself subjected to the spells of gnomes.

Steffens was dissatisfied with the result of his researches: in a fit of despondency he resolved not to return to Copenhagen, but to go to Germany, where he hoped to arrive at a solution of many problems that perplexed him. He determined to send his collections to Copenhagen, with a report upon them. Without money or friends, without the smallest prospect of employment, he embarked on board a vessel bound from Bergen to Hamburgh in company with five shipwrecked English sailors. After a wretched voyage, in which they were driven about for a fortnight off the Orkney islands, and were at length shipwrecked off Heligoland, he reached Hamburgh, but with the loss of all evidence of his labours; his collections had perished.

At Hamburgh he had to encounter poverty, sickness and loneliness. His father had in the meantime been removed to Rendsburg, a small and melancholy fortified town on the frontier; and under his roof the son of whom he had entertained such brilliant hopes had now to solicit shelter. "I knew my father," says he; says he; "the reproaches which I felt I had deserved were spared me." "I will share my last bit of bread with you," said he in his answer: "hasten hither; I long to see you." He was now regarded by his friends as having completely disappointed their expectations, and nothing could be less cheering than his prospects; but the father's love and hope did not desert him, and he continued to study assiduously.

In a subsequent part of the book he mentions that he had the consolation of casting a ray of joy over the last days of his father's gloomy and troubled life, and at length of closing his eyes.

"When I sent my father my doctor's diploma, and shortly afterwards

my German work, he forgot his troubles, and in the midst of his own poverty felt cheerful and happy. He had borne my mortifications with me at Rendsburg. Never did I hear a reproach; the tender forbearance with which he treated me, the silence in which he bore his own distresses, the touching love with which he seized on every circumstance, however slight, that could encourage me, I can never forget. Common adversity binds hearts so intimately united as those of father and son (where all good is not extinguished) more closely than prosperity."

In 1796 he was invited to give private instruction in natural history in Kiel; thither he repaired with five dollars in his pocket. This was the turning-point of his fortunes. He had letters of introduction to several professors of the university, among whom Fabricius was one of the most distinguished. The following singular portrait will, if we mistake not, be still recognised by some in England.

"When I called on Fabricius to announce myself for examination, I witnessed a scene which I shall never forget. In a corner of the room there was a lady sitting on a stool: her dress was extremely neglected, her head bare and her long hair hanging over her shoulders; she was pale, with an expressive physiognomy. She had a journal before her, and was so absorbed in reading, that when I came in she did not appear to notice my entrance, and did not raise her eyes when the professor spoke. Around her lay a huge heap of journals. It happened that the day before a lady had been thrown from her horse and much hurt; I made some remarks on her imprudence; in a moment the pile of journals flew in all directions, and the lady stood exasperated before me. Women,' said she, ' are always to blame accidents which when they happen to men excite pity, call forth only censure when they befall women.' A torrent of eloquence followed, and really in an elevated tone; the subject was the oppression of women by men. What is now the topic of the day I then heard broached for the first time in the most surprising manner. I confess I was alarmed, and did not know how to behave. Fabricius saw my perplexity and rose quietly: 'Never mind,' said he softly, turning to me,-spoke a few words to appease his wife, and I was now presented to the Frau Professorin, for she it was. I had not heard that he had a wife. Both are dead, and their peculiarities were so well known throughout Holstein, that I may tell what I saw without offence. Madame Fabricius had read a great deal in all languages, and was the companion of her husband in his travels. Fabricius left the management of his house and his children entirely to her, and they were certainly not in the best hands. Both were celebrated for boundless absence of mind. It was to be expected from this state of things that the professor's own toilet was greatly neglected. It was said, that when they went a journey her clothes and his were thrown into one trunk; the lady stamped them down with her feet and locked it. On one occasion they had guests who staid till midnight, when a travelling carriage drove to the door, the

trunks were packed, and the servants dismissed; the guests departed, the professor locked the door and put the key in his pocket; he and his wife stepped into the carriage and drove off. At the end of a year, when they returned from Paris, they found the table with the plates and glasses, and the putrified remains of the provisions they had left."

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We offer this to our readers as an authentic specimen of a blue stocking, according to the old and received conception of the race. It is becoming so extremely rare in England, that one must refresh one's memory in order to preserve alive that wholesome terror of learned ladies, which it is the duty of every sound-thinking man who loves his country to cherish. Our author's life in Kiel was now an agreeable one. passed a brilliant examination, gave lectures to numerous and satisfied audiences, and made enough to live on. Here he published his first German work, Ueber die Mineralogie,' and shortly after went to visit his friends in Copenhagen. There is a long account of the philosophical and poetical influences which determined the direction of the author's mind. Foremost among the former were the works of Spinoza. Among the latter we meet with the writers of our own country, who seem to have formed the obligé English reading of all Germans of that age, as Byron and Bulwer do of this: the Vicar of Wakefield, the Sentimental Journey, Young's Night Thoughts, and lactly Shakspeare.

We cannot enter upon the long chapter of the literary and philosophical movement then going on in Germany: this is a subject that requires to be treated by and for itself. The reader who cares anything about it will find in this work notices, personal and literary, of most of the great leaders, of whom so few remain. He will also see the relation in which these men stood to society, the condition of professors in German universities, and many other particulars intimately connected with the national life and character.

In 1798 Steffens went to Jena, at that time unquestionably the most remarkable focus of intellectual light in Europe. An authentic and impartial history of that university during the most active and productive period in the lives of the remarkable men who revolutionized the taste and opinion of their own country, and produced a vast though gradual change in that of all Europe, would be among the most interesting books

VOL. XIII. No. XXVI.

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