Parents unable to prove that they can give their children a competent education at home, are compelled to send them to school at the age of five years. Masters are obliged to give their servants and apprentices a suitable education between the seventh and fourteenth year. No child can be removed from the school till examined by the inspectors. Poor parents are furnished with the means of sending their children to school. The schools are supported by endowments—tax upon property—and contributions from the affluent. The schools are built in healthy places, with playgrounds, gymnasiums, &c. “The first law of every school is to train up the young so as to implant in their minds a knowledge of the relation of man to God—and to excite them to govern their lives according to the spirit and precepts of Christianity.” The daily occupations begin and end with a short prayer and some pious reflections. The New Testament shall be given to those who can read. The more advanced scholars shall have the Bible. “This book shall also be used for the religious instruction in all the classes of gymnasiums (or middle schools.)” “Clergymen are to seize every opportunity, whether at church or on visits of inspection, of reminding teachers of their high and holy mission, and the scholars of their duty towards the public instructors.” There are numerous “normal schools” for training up schoolmasters. Of all the children in Prussia, between the age of seven and fourteen years, it is calculated that thirteen out of every fifteen, are educated in the national schools.
9. Learning.—That depth of erudition should be a necessary sequence of cheap education may admit of question, or, at least of cavil; but one thing is certain, that, whether as a post hoc, or a propter hoc, this article is more abundant in Germany than in any other country. Germany is, in fact, the great European granary of learning—a granary sadly infested with rats and mice from poorer soils—whole shoals of these vermin being seen crossing the Rhine annually, with all the voracity evinced by their forefathers, when in pursuit of the Bishop of Maintz!
But Germany is also a vast minery, where thousands are digging in the dark, during the best years of their lives, extracting the most precious literary lore from the masses of rubbish in which it lies concealed. Around the mouths of these mines are always hovering certain birds of prey, of passage, and of furtive propensities, which, under cover of the night, commit depredations on the shining ore that is rescued from its grave by the laborious miner. Among these are the literary cormorant, the gull, the daw, and the magpie, who no sooner get crammed with the German spoils, than they fly off to their roosts and nests to exhibit them as the legitimate produce of their own industry. I have known more than one, two, or three of these daws who, having plumed themselves in German feathers, strutted as proudly as if their habiliments had been of genuine indigenous growth!
The German seems to court, and to cultivate learning for the sake of itself, rather than of its attendant advantages. He climbs the rugged steeps of science—wanders over the flowery fields of literature—or explores the dark and mysterious labyrinths of metaphysics—with little hope, and less prospect of reaping more than empty fame,—and that too often posthumous! Yet the German is as modest in the profession, as he is industrious in the pursuit of knowledge. In his patient researches, he is hardly ever led aside to the right or to the left, by ambition, vanity, or avarice. Truth is his object—accuracy, impartiality, and laborious research, are the channels through which he reaches it. Not that he is insensible to honours of all kinds. On the contrary, like the whole of his countrymen, a ribbon, a cross, or a star, is to him not only a symbol of distinction but an object of worship.
The German illuminati, whether literary, philosophic, or scientific, immersed in their libraries and laboratories, far removed from the excitement of politics, commerce, arts, or manufactures, not seldom lean to the speculative, rather than to the practical—to the mysterious, rather than to the obvious.—Hence the transcendental dreams and extravagant experiments, which daily rise, like meteors, from this land of ideality and metaphysics, soon to dissolve in air—thin air. Yet these eccentricities are not attributable to peculiarity of education, or idiosyncrasy of constitution; but to those extrinsic circumstances in which the German is placed.
10. The Press.—The freedom with which this powerful engine is wielded in the different states of Germany, varies very much. Between Vienna and Leipzig-liberty of the press, there is nearly as much difference as between Negro freedom in Virginia and London. But the censorship exists everywhere. The manuscript of volume, magazine, or newspaper must first undergo the revisal of the phlegmatic and inexorable Censor, who strikes out or alters every passage or paragraph which has any tendency to exercise the imagination, excite the feelings, or appeal to the passions. This at least, is the policy of Austria. Now it would require but little ingenuity to prove—or at least, persuade, that this is the very ne plus ultra of good government. What engines are so potent in the origination and propagation of evil as imagination, feeling, passion? How praiseworthy is it in the Austrian Emperor to stifle and suppress all combustible materials of this kind!—How beneficial would the Censorship prove in England! Take, for instance, the subject of libel—so well calculated to introduce all kinds of hatred and ill-will amongst Britons. The Age or the Satirist might, without the possibility of prevention, assert that “the Queen was—anything but a gentlewoman:”—and that “the Chancellor of the Exchequer was lately detected in picking the pocket of one of his neighbours on the treasury bench!!” Now if such paragraphs came before an Austrian Censor, that redoubtable official would either erase them entirely and cite the audacious editor before one of the tribunals, or substitute something like the following:—“From all parts of the country congratulatory addresses are pouring in upon her Majesty, in consequence of the recent happy event.” And in respect to the alleged pick-pocket, it would probably run thus:—“The recent financial measure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the imposition of a tax on rent-gatherers), has given universal satisfaction to all classes of the community—with the exception, perhaps, of Daniel O’Connel, M.P., who opposed the measure so stoutly in parliament.”
But the prevention of all sources of excitement and irritation amongst the community, so much preferable to the punishment of them afterwards, would not be the only advantage of a shackled, that is, a censored press. The great majority of writers, who, being defective in imagination, feeling, and passion—in other words, of genius—are now consigned to oblivion, would, under the paternal Austrian system, spring up in myriads, and greatly tend to render the Plumbean rule of authority a veritable wand of Mercury, soothing the great mass of society into soporific torpor, and silencing effectually those turbulent spirits of the age, who stir up men’s minds to mischief! Away then with those hot-headed enthusiasts who prefer a “libertas periculosa” to the Austro-patriarchal system of “servitudo quieta,” where the fiat of the sovereign is the fate of the subject!!
Then think of the incalculable benefit that would accrue to society from the suppression of those myriads of critical and political reviewers, trimestral, mestral, hebdomadal, and diurnal, who batten and fatten on the vitals of authors, scattering their quivering members to the winds, or flinging them about, like firebrands, to inflame the passions of the community! In fine, till princes muzzle the press, there will be no millennium between them and their people.
11. Domestic Manners.—A treatise on the domestic manners of the French and Germans, is like an essay on the rail-roads of the Alps in the days of Hannibal—or steam-navigation in the voyage of Nearchus—or the mariner’s compass in the Periplus of Hanno. Let us hear the testimony of one who resided long in Germany, and was intimate with their habits and language.
“The Germans are not so domestic as the English, yet perhaps more so than the French. The taste of the middle and lower classes carries them necessarily to public gardens, coffee-houses, the table-d’hôte, and the theatre. A large portion of the male population dine daily at the table-d’hôte, and here a considerable portion of their time is dissipated. The higher orders, in addition to the theatre, derive one of their chief gratifications from a Summer visit to some of the mineral springs; and here they live all together in a family manner—entire families at these bathe dine and sup, and even breakfast in public.”—Bisset Hawkins.