WHAT WOULD REVOLUTIONISING GERMANY BE AT?

Many a confirmed wanderer upon Continental highways and byways may have been long since wearied by the conceitedly-vulgar airs in which old Father Rhine has indulged himself in latter years, and heartily tired of his bald vineyards, his melodramatic old ruins, and the make-believe majesty of his so-called mountains. But still there remained a sort of spurious halo about his very name; some kindly reminiscence of the time when, as an enthusiastic youth just escaped from the supposed commonplace of England, one gazed for the first time upon this famed show-stream of the Continent, and wondered, and admired, and poetised in spite of one’s-self, may have cast a charm of early memory upon its overrated allurements; and, of a surety, there must have been brought a comfortable glow of pleasure to the heart of any one, except that nearly-exploded animal, the exclusive exquisite, either male or female, in witnessing the happy gaping faces of the touristic hordes, who paddled up and down the well-known old banks—a feeling of ease, comfort, and even homeishness, in the modern luxuries of the hundred palace-hotels of the Rhenish towns and villages, in the contented aspect of the thriving landlord, welcoming the guests who brought him wealth, and in the ready alertness of the active and obsequious waiters. Well, Germany has taken into its head to follow in the lead which distracted France gave, when it madly beckoned with frantic finger to all the Continent to follow in its wild dance. Germany has caught the St Vitus of revolution, and danced off, if not as distractedly, at all events in less connected step, and less defined figure, than its neighbour: and in this revolutionary frenzy Germany has assumed so ungenial an aspect—a manner so doubtful, so unpromising, so uncertain, as regards the next step it may be inclined to take in the jerkings of its abrupt and unregulated dance—that the gentle tourist-seekers of ease and pleasure have turned away in disgust from this heavy Meg Merrilees, who has forgotten even her scraps of song, and her long-pretended spirit of romance, and declined to visit her until she shall have somewhat recovered from her drunken fit of revolution, and become more decently behaved. The Rhine, then, has lost the last charm of foreign bustle and movement, with which he decked his old head, as with a crown of wild flowers, not unbecoming his gray hairs. He looks sad, sober, discontented, disappointed, mourning his lost old joys, and his lost glories, of which young Germany, in its revolutionary excitement, has despoiled him. His hotels are empty; landlords, too, have a forlorn air, and take to rattling their last groschen in their pockets; and unhappy waiters get fat upon their inactivity, but, at the same time, pale with ill-humour at their diminished trinkgelder, and apprehension of losing their places altogether. Travellers’ visits have grown, like those of angels, “few and far between;” and as angels do the poor scanty tourists appear to be regarded—as munificent beings, in fact, from whom too much cannot be demanded and expected; for the Rhenish hotel-keepers, in pursuance of the system adopted by Parisian shopkeepers, in these days of revolutionary scarcity and destitution, seem determined to make those unhappy beings, who fall into their clutches, redeem the debt they appear to consider due to them from those absent tourists, who have not come to enjoy all the splendours prepared for them. Since Germany, with its newborn cry for imperial unity, has appeared inclined to turn back again, in new revolutionary spirit, to old feudal times, the Rhenish hotel-keepers seem to think that they ought to appear in the characters of the old robber-knights. This consideration, perfectly personal to a poor tourist, who has lately paid his löse-geld at many a modern robber’s stronghold on the Rhine, brings him round, however, to the question which he has been putting to himself, at every step he has been taking in Germany—“What would revolutionising Germany be at?”

What would revolutionising Germany be at? It is a question easily put, but very difficult to answer. The old joke, lately “freshed-up” to be applied to the French—namely, that “they don’t know what they want, and won’t be easy till they get it,” may, with still deeper truth, be applied to the Germans. In spite of much inquiring conversation with all men of all ranks, and in all positions of life, it has been quite impossible for an unimaginative English understanding to discover exactly, in the midst of all the vague rhapsody, florid discourse, and poetical politics with which it has been assailed, “what they want.” To judge by the fermenting spirit every where prevalent, the bombastic and unpractical dreams—for plans they are not—formed as regards the future, it would be difficult also not to suppose that “they won’t be easy till they get it.”

What would revolutionising Germany be at? In spite of all one sees and hears, or rather does not hear, it is impossible not to recur to the question again and again; for, after all, in Germany we are among thinking men, and, children as they may be in political life, thinking men they are; and, surely, thinking men must have some definite end and aim to which their thoughts, their hopes, their aspirations, and their efforts are directed. All the Utopian schemes, all the unpractical theories of all parties, who put themselves forward in the revolutionary movement, be their tendencies monarchic, constitutional, or republican, aspire, then, to the setting up of the ill-defined idol of modern German political fancies—“German unity”—“One great and powerful united Germany”—“One great united German Empire”—or whatever name, designation, or varied shade of name the idol, whose pedestal is “Union,” may bear. This was the great fancied panacea for all evils, for which men clamoured, when, in imitation of that distracted city of Paris—so worthy of imitation, forsooth!—they got up revolutions, and tried their hands at building barricades. This has been, in truth, long since the watchword of the German student, when, in the recesses of his beer-cellar at the university, he collected a set of fellow fancied enthusiasts around the beer-jugs, imagined this species of club to be a wonderful conspiracy, because he designated it by the forbidden name of “Burschenschaft,” and deemed himself a notable and formidable conspirator, because he drank off his krug of beer to the cry of “Perish all Princes—es lebe hoch das Deutsche Vaterland!” The princes, by the way, were highly complimentary to such conspirators, in considering them dangerous, and forbidding the existence of the Burschenschaften, which were pretty safety-valves enough to let off the exuberance of studentic steam. Whether the cry for a “United Germany” first proceeded again from the mouths of these fantastic enthusiasts, who, when they found out, to their surprise, that the parts they had been acting in their mimic dramas of the beer-cellars might be acted to the life and under the open sky of heaven, became in most parts of Germany the leaders of the mobs, or the heroes of the barricades, matters but little; nothing is more like a flock of sheep—although the term of “a pack of wolves” might often appear more applicable—than the general herd of men in moments of revolutionary excitement; whatever conclusion, however far-fetched and fantastic, any old revolutionary bell-wether may jump at, the flock is sure to follow and jump after him. It matters, then, but little how or by whom the cry of “United Germany” was first raised—the whole revolutionary flock immediately set up the same “baa!” and in each convulsion of each German State, great or small, in which a revolution may be said to have taken place, among the grievances which mobs, deputations, or delegates laid before German princes, as necessary to be forthwith amended and rectified, was the immediate and indispensable want of a “United Germany.” A somewhat more decided and definite step towards the possible realisation of this tolerably vague and indefinite desideratum, in the amendment of people’s wrongs, was taken by the call for the meeting of one united German parliament, for the purpose of considering and regulating the affairs of all Germany in this revolutionary crisis; but more especially of effecting that union in 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 Ausschuss, 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 actions—and 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 life—and 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, soi-disant-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—gray-beard, 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 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, anti-popular 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 opinion—you 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 southern 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 Baden—the 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 scarcely 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 malicious 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 half-ruined 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 plague-blast over the land: he feels that his hand must soon fall powerless before the neglect, or even ill-will of the newborn 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 upon 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 ultra-revolutionary 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 well-being of the country at large—without, then, painting to ourselves a well-known 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 old-maidish 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 their studs; 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 declares himself unable conscientiously to meet, the present king puts in practice those measures of retrenching economy, which add to the gloom of his capital and the disconsolate look of the court-attached and commercial portion of his subjects. It is scarcely possible, however, to suppose that the King of Wurtemberg can seriously think of abdicating in favour of a son whose youthful actions have always rendered him highly unpopular, all the more so as he is married to a Russian archduchess, whose birth must render her suspecte to the liberals of the day. Another cause, which contributes to the melancholy and deserted air of these capitals of the smaller German courts, is the retirement of the ambassadors and diplomatic agents of the other German courts, who, if not already recalled from their posts, will probably shortly be so, to meet the views of German unity, which needs but one representative in common. This unhappy look of the little German capitals is one of the most melancholy signs of the times in these smaller states. In Hanover and Brunswick the apparent resolution of their present rulers, to resist the power of the new Central Government of would-be united Germany, occasions agitation, uncertainty, and fear, which make themselves as fully apparent in outward symptoms as elsewhere. Bavaria alone appears to preserve an exceptional position. Bavaria also has had her revolution, to be sure; but, strange to say, the revolution was occasioned by the manœuvres of the anti-liberal, or, in that country, Jesuitical party, against the liberal tendencies of a wild woman’s influence over the mind of the king; and, singular as was the nature and cause of this revolution, singular has remained the situation of Bavaria, quiet, unagitated, and seemingly contented, in the midst of the convulsive hurly-burly passing every where around it.

After this cursory survey of the outward aspect of a great part of Germany, let us turn our eyes to Frankfort, the present central point of all interest and attention; for there sits the General National Assembly; there is to be brewed, by whatever recipe, or in whatever manner it may be, that fancied panacea for all evils, the Union of Germany: there, then, we may probably best learn what revolutionising Germany would be at, or, at all events, best see the means employed to arrive at something like a consummation. Let us first look at the cooks at their work; and then taste the nature of the brew, as far as their political culinary efforts have gone to “make the medley slab and good.”

Let us enter, then, that plain, dry, and harsh-looking circular building, which is the Lutheran Church of St Paul; it is there the Assembly holds its sittings. The interior arrangement has been fashioned entirely upon the plan of the French Chambers. The President’s tribune, the lower tribune of the orator before it, the gradually rising and diverging amphitheatre of seats for the members, are all entirely French in their plan. Completely French also, and with similar designation, is the political shading of the members according to their seats; the Droit, the Centre in its variety of progressing nuances, and the Gauche and Extreme Gauche have the same signification in the German Assembly as in the French. Nor does the resemblance cease here; the constitution of the Assembly, in its various elements, has a strong affinity to that of the present French National Assembly. The majority of the members are evidently concentrated in the different shades of the Centre. The old conservatives of the right have but little influence, except as a make-weight against the ultra-liberals. The centre consists chiefly of the old liberals, and opposition leaders in the different chambers of such of the German states as possessed constitutions of one modification or another—men who have now, in turn, in their position towards the ultra-revolutionary spirits, that tendency which may be called liberal conservative: they are the men of progress, who, in the present hurricane of revolutionary ideas, endeavour to guide the helm so as to avoid the very rocks they have had so great a hand in raising, and to restrain the very waves which their own breath has so greatly contributed to lash into fury! They are the Odillon Barrots, and suchlike old liberals of Germany. They find that the task before them is one of far ruder difficulty than in their theoretical fancies they had first imagined; and many of them there may be, who cannot but acknowledge to themselves, however little they may be inclined to acknowledge it to the world, that the business of a vast nation is not to be conducted by inexperienced heads, however talented, however well they may have conducted the business of a counting-house, or taught theories from a professor’s chair—in fact, that theory and practice will not walk hand in hand without a long process of amalgamating experience. The left is occupied by the men of revolutionary utopics and crude subversive opinions; and in its extreme by the ardent republicans and tribunes of the people, whom the revolution has caused to spring out of the political soil like mushrooms. These are the men who complain, in speech or in journal, that the Assembly is wasting its time in vain vapid disputations—an accusation, by the way, by no means unfounded—and yet themselves, when ever they mount into the tribune, indulge, more than any others, in declamatory would-be poetical phrases, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” and containing not one practical idea, or feasible proposal. They seem to think that, by ringing the changes upon certain pet words, such as “patriotism” and “nationality,” they have said great things and done great deeds for the good of the country; and, as far as such clap-trap efforts to gain popular applause go, they may fairly be said to obtain their ends. In this again they have a strong “cousin-german” resemblance with the French ultras in a similar position—and no less so in their endeavours to overawe and browbeat the majority of the Assembly by noisy exclamations, and even uproarious riot. The German ultras, however, have succeeded, to a great extent, in a manœuvre in which their French brethren have failed, although supported in it, at first, by a certain reckless member of the Provisional Government—that is to say, in packing the public galleries with acolytes, said to be paid, who, while they applaud all ultra-revolutionary speeches “to the echo,” endeavour to put down the conservative orators by tumult, or violent hissings, and are of course vaunted forth in the ultra-liberal journals as “the expression of the will of the nation.” Be it said, at the same time, en passant, that this manner of applauding by the clapping of hands, and expressing disapproval by hissing, has been borrowed from a habit of the members of the Assembly themselves, which has certainly a very unparliamentary appearance and sound to English eyes and ears. This use of the public galleries, which, in spite of the regulations of the Assembly, it has been found impossible altogether to put down, has assuredly a certain influence in overawing and intimidating some of the members of the majority. Two causes, however, have contributed to preserve the Assembly from utter anarchy and confusion. The first of these, a negative one, consists in the fact that Frankfort is not a great noisy stirring capital of a great country, where a mob is always at hand to be used as a tyrannical influence by the leaders of the people, and that there are no suburbs filled with a working population, whence, as in Paris, an insurgent army may be suddenly recruited to work mischief, when it may have no other work to do. The second, a direct and active one, arises from the personality of the President of the Assembly; and certainly it is in the personal qualities and physical advantages of the Herr von Gagern, as much as in his position, and from the esteem in which he is held, that his power to dominate, control, and will to order, very greatly consists.

The President Gagern, long known as the most talented and leading opposition member of the Darmstadt Chamber, has passed his life in his energetic attempts to further those constitutional liberties, which he would now check with powerful hand, that they may not go too far. Disappointed and disgusted with his fruitless efforts to promote what he considered the interests of his country, the Herr von Gagern had retired, for some time past, into private life, when, upon the breaking forth of the revolutionary storm, he was called upon by his prince to take the helm of affairs, and, as minister, to steer the bark along the current by which he might avoid the Scylla of ultra-democracy as much as the Charybdis of resistance to the progress of the age. In this new character he again appeared upon the stage of the political world; and he has only retired from his post, as he has since refused to accept office as minister of the new central executive power of all Germany, in order to maintain the position, to which he was raised by acclamation, as the controlling head of that Assembly which was to decide the destinies of the country, and from the councils of which he himself had fondly hoped to see emanate the welfare of united Germany.

Tall and stout, with a face which possesses a decision and firmness of character, much aided by a pair of very broad black brows, Herr von Gagern has, at the same time, a bold dignity of manner and gesture, which is well calculated to rule an Assembly, and a powerful voice, which knows how to make itself heard in a storm: a ready and simple eloquence, and a clear good sense, which fastens upon the right point at the right moment, are combined with these advantages of exterior appearance; and as he rises, in cases of emergency, to display a vigour of energy, rather than that system of conciliation so fatally used in France, and so impracticable amidst all the clashing party opinions of a revolutionary Assembly, he shows himself to be the man of the moment, and of the place. He may be said to be the saviour of the German National Assembly, inasmuch as his personal influence may be considered to have rescued it from that state of anarchy and confusion which now disgraces the French chamber, and into which the German Assembly, with its conflicting elements, and its still greater inexperience, seemed at first about to fall.

As it is, the German National Assembly can by no means be looked upon as a model of parliamentary order: it is still noisy, ill-regulated, and uncertain in its movements. It cannot be denied, at the same time, that sufficient individual talent may be found among its members. Among the rising men of the day, the orators of Prussia and the smaller northern states, (for Southern Germany has as yet produced but little striking talent,)—along with those young, ardent, and energetic men who, the conspirators and insurgents of a few months ago, have gone over to the liberal conservative majority, and the people’s orators, who aim at being the O’Connells of Germany, as their phraseology goes, and who, in spite of the impracticable nature of their tenets, and the frequently vapid nature of their declamation, have a certain, rude ready eloquence, that strives to be poetical—there are also a few practised statesmen, a few wary old men of action, and several well-known authors and poets, such as old Uhland, whose democratic ardour still keeps, him upon the benches of the left, and the Count Auersperg, well known under the name of Anastatius Grün, whom disappointments in his position, in society are supposed also to have driven into the ultra-democratic ranks. But there seems to be an utter want of purpose in most of the speeches which emanate from the lips of these men of talent. Proverbially vague in their philosophical theories, even when they make most pretensions to clearness, the Germans show themselves still more so in their political views. The speeches not only of the ultra-liberals, but of the would-be statesmen of the centre, appear mere compilations of “words, words, words,” without any tangible argument or practical proposal: it is rarely that it is possible to sift from the readily flowing, but generally most muddy stream, a sand of gold, that may be used as one of sterling worth in the crown of unity which the hands of the Assembly would be forging. In all that emanates from the Assembly, either in debate or in decree, there is generally a lamentable want of correctly defined purpose: and, in fact, to return to the point from which we have started, it is as difficult to discover from the vague, wavering, boggling proceedings of the Assembly, as from any other quarter, or from any other movement, precisely what revolutionising Germany would be at. Up to the present time, like the Provisional Government of France, it has rather attempted to rule aristocratically itself, than to prepare the way, as was its object, for the future definitive constitution of Germany. The only definite step it has yet taken towards that vague desideratum, a “United Germany,” has been in the appointment of a Provisional Executive Head, and of a cabinet of ministers at its direction.

Except in as far as regards the jealousy of Prussia, disappointed in its hopes of itself giving the head to the Imperial government, and inclined in consequence to quarrel with the dictates of that central power, for which it clamoured, and which it at least accepted not ungraciously, as long as it thought, with true Prussian conceit, that the head must necessarily emanate from itself—a jealousy to which reference will be made further on—the choice of the Austrian Archduke John, as Administrator or Protector of the Government of United Germany, whatever his charge may be called, (for the German term “Reichs Verweser” expresses in itself both these attributive designations,) cannot be looked upon as one of any political weight. As a prince, enjoying for many years past a certain popularity, more perhaps from a feeling of opposition, because he was considered as living upon ill terms with the Imperial court of Austria, than from any personal attachment to himself, the Archduke John may be considered to be well selected as a popular and generally accepted head of Germany: whether he possesses either the talent or the energy to fill so strange and awfully responsible a post in the present disturbed state of Germany is another question, which only those who have known him in the retirement of private life can answer. The political writer who designated him as the Duke of Sussex of Austria, made a happy hit in thus classifying him. The Archduke John has rendered himself popular by his patronage and furtherance of scientific institutions: but he has been too little known, otherwise than as the discarded and disgraced of the Imperial family, to be called in any way “the man of the people.” The marriage, which was the cause of his disgrace, was thus, likewise, the cause of his popularity, such as it was: the union of an Imperial prince with a girl of comparatively humble birth—a union about the origin of which so many absurdly fabulous tales have been told—flattered the instincts of the middle and lower classes. The Archduchess, however, who now finds herself elevated still more, to a pinnacle to which her wildest dreams could scarcely have led her, and who is now flattered, caressed, and done homage to, as she was before set aside, is said to reveal nothing of any humble origin, and to be as lady-like as sensible in manner. Upon the whole, then, it is not in the wholly provisional and most unstable appointment of the Archduke John as “Reichs Verweser” that we shall find any solution to the inquiry as to the more certain revolutionary tendencies of Germany.

Assuredly more ought to be gathered from the appointment of the new central cabinet, and more especially of its Minister for Foreign Affairs and leading member, Prince Leiningen: and naturally we look to the recent manifesto of the prince as a document from which we may best learn “what revolutionising Germany would be at.” Sensible and clear, or at all events as little confused as is possible in the present confused state of all theories, plans, and reasonings in Germany, the manifesto, in doing no more than pointing out two methods towards effecting the reconstruction of Germany, leaves every thing as regards the future in as vague and uncertain a state as before. It only states a dilemma—it does not attempt to resolve it. It puts Germany in a cleft stick, or rather, at the division of two paths, the greater merit or practicability of either of which it does not attempt to show very decisively, by its concluding words, “Entweder, Oder! choose!” In fact, it does no more than ask with ourselves, “What would revolutionising Germany be at?”

It may be surmised, certainly, from the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, that he himself is really inclined towards the going forward in the uncertain course of doing something towards the effectuation of the desired union, although he by no means pretends to recommend how this is to be done. He seems—and his acceptation of office would in itself appear to confirm the fact—a partisan of what he defines somewhat confusedly as “an actual union of all the component parts of the whole, in such a manner as to avert the possibility of any dispute between the whole and the parts;” for he adds, “If any other course be pursued, not singleness or unity, but discord and separation will be established.” But in the alternative which he places before Germany, of either returning to the past, or of realising the uncertain and as yet undefined desideratum of a great union for the future, it would seem, whatever be the prince’s own meaning, or whatever may be supposed to be the means used by the Assembly to produce a united whole, that he only places before it at the same time the alternative of a civil war, at which he himself hints, or a republican constitution, which must appear to be the result of the progress in its present sense, of revolutionising Germany.

When we hear that “to retrograde to a confederation of states, or to establish a weak federal state, by a powerfully impressed independence of the individual states, would only be to create a mournful period of transition to fresh catastrophes and new revolutions;” that from such a course of proceeding would result the danger “of harbouring in Germany revolutionary movements, or perchance civil war, for a series of years;” that the nation would arrive at “the most undesirable consummation of rendering itself ridiculous for ever by trumpeting to the world German unity and German power, and presenting in reality a spectacle the very reverse”—when we hear that “no dynastic interests can be taken into consideration if the nation wills unity;” that “to construct a new empire, and at the same time to permit an organisation tending to an inevitable contest for the supreme sovereignty between the individual states, would be to sow disunion instead of unity, to create weakness instead of power;” and that, consequently, “the imperial power must, in a degree, absorb in itself the sovereignty of the individual states, abolish the diplomatic intercourse of the individual states at home and abroad, and concentrate it in its own hands, appropriate to itself the unconditional disposal of the national forces, and not allow governments or their constituent State Assemblies to occupy themselves with affairs appertaining to the National Assembly alone, since a perfectly established central state, in which other perfectly established states are encased, would be virtually a monstrosity,”—when we hear all these things, and weigh the tendency of their views, we can see in them no other result than the abasement of the individual sovereigns, an absorption of their power, which would leave them no more than useless and ridiculous puppets, and, consequently, their inevitable overthrow in the course of time, and the establishment of republican institutions, whatever the name given to the new form of republic, whatever the title bestowed upon its head, be it even Emperor, or Reichs Verweser, Regent, Protector, Administrator, or President.

On the other hand, when we are told—although “jealousies between individual states, and revilings of the northern by the southern parts of the empire” are stigmatised as “criminal absurdities”—that, “if the many collateral and coexistent interests are too preponderant to be sacrificed to German unity, if the old spirit of discord and separation is still too powerfully at work, if the jealousy between race and race, between north and south, is still too strongly felt, the nation must convince itself of the fact, and return to the old federal system,” already hinted at as impossible without fresh revolutions or long civil wars; and when we know, at the same time, that these jealousies between state and state not only do exist, but continue to increase and ferment still more in the present state of things,—that in fact, the old spirit of discord and separation is still more powerfully at work than ever,—what can we look forward to? Only the other alternative to which we have alluded—those civil wars which the manifesto of Prince Leiningen itself hints at so cautiously.

Since, from the very first commencement of the revolution in Germany, the jealous spirit between the northern and southern states broke out in a decided form, it has only increased instead of diminishing. When the vacillating but ambitious King of Prussia, desirous of coming forward as the “man of Germany” of the day, but “infirm of purpose,” attempted to direct the revolutionary movement in his own states by accepting the call for a United German Empire, and by placing himself, although unavowedly, at its head, the Austrian Official Gazette immediately fulminated a severe, damning, and, under the circumstances, almost cruel manifesto against the ambitious Prussian monarch; in Bavaria, the young men of the upper classes burnt his majesty in effigy in the public market-place of Munich; at Stuttgardt, the picture of the offending sovereign was as publicly hung by the neck to a gallows. Southern Germany was indignant at the thought that an upstart King of Prussia should attempt to lead the movement for a new United Empire of Germany, and presume even to dream of being its future emperor. But when, in the course of events, the provisional head of the newly constituted central power was chosen by the assembly from among the princes of Southern Germany, it was the turn of Prussia to exhibit its spite and anger: its jealousy was not to be concealed. The result of the disappointed ambition of Prussia was exhibited, as already alluded to, in a reactionary feeling against that central power, which it would have accepted probably with acclamation, and been the first to applaud and support, had it emanated from its own country. The exhibition of this feeling in some violent outbreak was so much dreaded upon the occasion of the military homage appointed to be shown to the Reichs Verweser at Berlin, that the ceremony, as is well known, was obliged to be countermanded. The feeling is now still continuing to be shown in a constant exhibition of mistrust on the part of Prussia towards the National Assembly, and as well as in the counter-accusation of that new and vaguely defined political crime “reaction,” laid by the journals of the moderate party, as well as by the ultra-liberals, to the charge of Prussia. With all these conflicting elements at work between the various parts of Germany, and again between these various parts and the central power, placed in the hands of the Assembly, it is very difficult to look clearly as yet towards any possible constitution of that unity which would appear to be the most vague end and aim of the revolution in Germany. To those who attempt to look into the mist of the future, and see visions, and dream dreams—for, in the present state of the cloudy and wavering political horizon, it would seem that all political foresight can pretend to no better name than that—the nearer of the two alternatives to be deduced from Prince Leiningen’s manifesto, would appear to be the disunion, the total rupture, the civil war.

The other alternative, however, seems not without its chances; for, although the old liberals of republican tendencies, the suspected and imprisoned, have now been brought round, for the most part, into the ranks of the moderately progressive party, in the natural course of revolutionary changes, or even been called to the councils of the kings and princes who rejected and persecuted them; yet, on the other hand, the exertions of the moderate party, in spite of the clog that they would now put upon the too rapid course of ultra-democracy, appear to tend, in the efforts made, and the views entertained respecting the unity of Germany, towards the very republican institutions which they disavow, and suppose themselves endeavouring to avoid. The real republicans, at the same time, although without any present weight among the political spirits of the day, are yet composed, as elsewhere, of the young, hot-headed, reckless, active, stirring elements of the time, and are always ready to make up, by violence and headlong precipitation, for what they want in importance and experience. They are aided also in their views by a certain party of the liberal press, which is always preaching the imitation of French institutions and the conduct of the present leading men in France,—as if France and the French did not hold up a lesson and a warning instead of models for imitation—and consoling Germany with the idea, that although it does not possess such enviable men or measures, the men must shortly rise upon the political surface, and that the measures will follow behind them. By a great portion of the press, even that of the moderate party also, a continual irritation of suspicion and mistrust is being kept up against the still reigning sovereigns of Germany; and the cry of that very vague accusation “reaction,” the name of which alone, however, is considered sufficiently damning, is constantly raised upon every movement, of whatever nature it may be, which those sovereigns may make. The moderate party may be acquitted of republican tendencies in their hearts; but they seem to ignore the old proverb, “give a dog a bad name,” and the consequences; and they will make “sad dogs” out of the sovereigns, until at last the consequences will threaten more and more nearly.

Between these two alternatives, however, Germany seems to think that it may find a middle course, and establish its theoretical and vaunted unity without exciting civil dissension, or plunging into the depths of republicanism. May it prove right in its as yet uncertain hopes; but certainly the means by which this desired consummation is to be arrived at, are not in the least degree visible: it remains as yet the vaguest of vague fancies—the how, the where, the when, and even the why, are as yet matters of doubt: not only deeds but principles, not only principles but plans, to this intent, are as yet utterly absent. In fact our question, after all, remains unanswered; and, beyond the main point of “unity,” to be effected somehow or other, revolutionising Germany seems utterly unable to tell us, as we vainly endeavour to find out definitively, “what it would be at?”

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.

[1]. See our No. for March 1848.

[2]. Hide—from cacher.

[3]. Carrion.

[4]. In Frémont’s expedition to California, on a somewhat similar occasion, two mountaineers, one the celebrated Kit Carson, the other a St Louis Frenchman named Godey, and both old trappers, performed a feat surpassing the one described above, inasmuch as they were but two, who charged into an Indian village to rescue some stolen horses, and avenge the slaughter of two New Mexicans who had been butchered by the Indians; both which objects they effected, returning to camp with the lost animals and a couple of propitiatory scalps.

[5]. The Mexicans call the Indians living near the Missions and engaged in agriculture, mansos, or mansitos, tame.

[6]. From a manuscript obtained in Santa Fé of New Mexico, describing the labours of the missionaries Fray Augustin Ruiz, Venabides, and Macos, in the year 1585.

[7]. “Some were so barbarous as to eat their own species.” The sentence refers to the Scythians, and is in Strabo. I mention the authority, for Strabo is not an author that any man engaged on a less work than the History of Human Error is expected to have by heart.

[8]. Memoirs of the Reign of George II., from his Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline. By John Lord Hervey. Edited, from the original MSS. at Ickworth, by the Right Hon. J. W. Croker. 2 vols. Murray, London: 1848.

[9]. “Upon the evening of this long day’s march, the imperial column approaching Gjatz was surprised to find upon the road the bodies of Russians quite recently slain, all with their heads cloven in the same manner, and with their brains scattered around. It was known that two thousand prisoners preceded the column, escorted by Spaniards, Portuguese, and Poles. Various opinions were emitted; some were indignant, others approved or remained indifferent, according to the character of each. Around the Emperor these different impressions found no voice, until Caulaincourt burst out and exclaimed, ‘that it was an atrocious cruelty. This, then, is the civilisation we bring to Russia! What effect would this barbarity have upon the enemy? Did we not leave him our wounded and a host of prisoners? Would he lack the opportunity of horrible reprisals?’ Napoleon maintained a gloomy silence, but upon the morrow these murders had ceased. The unfortunate prisoners were allowed to die of hunger in the enclosures into which, at night, they were huddled like cattle. Doubtless it was still a barbarity; but what could be done? Exchange them? The enemy refused. Set them free? They would have hastened to proclaim our destitution, and soon they would have returned with their companions to harass our march. In this unsparing war, to have given them life would have been to sacrifice ourselves. We were cruel from necessity. The fault was, to have ever placed ourselves in so terrible an alternative.

“On the other hand, during our march into the interior of Russia, our captive soldiers were not treated more humanely, although the Russians had not imperious necessity for an excuse.”—Ségur, vol. ii. p. 149.

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