It is really no paradox, therefore, to say that an insight into domestic manners in Germany, will be best acquired in public—where all classes, high, middle, and lower orders “live and move and have their being!”
12. Women.—Perhaps in no country of Europe (as indeed the preceding section would indicate) are the barriers around female honour more feebly raised, or less vigilantly guarded;—yet in no country is female virtue more free from stain. “Here the temperament of woman is cast in a happy mould. Gentle, kind, unambitious, unaffected, she is less intent upon adorning herself, than in administering to the happiness of those around her. She is fenced round with few artificial restraints; and, in society, she often meets with too much laxity of opinion and usage. Her full and confiding heart requires a helpmate on whom to lean through life. This support granted to her, she generally exhibits all the domestic virtues in their vernal bloom.”
To this it has been objected that, the number of children born out of wedlock in Germany, is infinitely greater than in England. Thus, in the great city of Prague, more than a third of the children born annually are illegitimate. But mistresses may be virtuous without being married—and they may be married without being virtuous. In many countries marriage is only a civil, and not a religious rite. The neglect of that ceremony, therefore, in such countries, involves neither sin, nor crime, nor disgrace. The slender liaison of affection is often stronger and more durable than the massive chains of matrimony. The frequency of these liaisons, therefore, is to be attributed to the influence of public sentiment, rather than to depravity of the female heart. The facilities, indeed, of effecting divorce in many Protestant States of Germany render the tie of marriage little more than a nominal bond that can be conveniently cancelled, when passions cool, tempers clash, or interests predominate!
13. Morality.—Although there can scarcely be genuine religion without morality; yet there may be great display of morality without religion. Germany affords a proof and illustration. In no other country is there less of religion—in none is there less of crime. The apparent paradox is easily solved. Crime is punishable by the laws of man, in this world;—irreligion is punishable by the laws of God, in another. In a country where little or no religion prevails, and consequently where there is little or no belief in future rewards and punishments, it may readily be supposed that the fear of the magistrate is much more efficient than the fear of the Lord.
14. Socialism.—Smoking is not so sociable an affair in Faderland as in some other countries. In this respect, indulgence in tobacco presents a great contrast to that in tea. If you visit a cigar divan in London, or an estaminet in Paris, you will find “the flow of soul,” if not the “feast of reason,” in conjunction with the fumes of the “cursed weed.” Not so beyond the Rhine. The German shrinks within the cloudy atmosphere of his pipe, like a snail within its shell, and there remains imperturbable, immoveable, and insensible to the external world. Meanwhile the soul retires to some remote nook or corner of the brain—probably the pineal gland—and there taking its metaphysical siesta, dreams of all imaginable and unimaginable things! This appears to be the real explanation of the idealism, mysticism, and transcendentalism of the German character.
15. Time.—By half the world or more—by all who have much to do, whether by the head, the hands, or the feet—time is regarded next to health, as the most valuable article: by the other half—or a large portion of it—time is looked upon as little better than a drug, and readily bartered away for the merest trifles!—Nay, it is often voted to be a great bore, and a thousand ways and means are invented to kill the bore. In Germany time is not over-rated, on the one hand, nor despised or hated, on the other. All Germans have something to do (for who is without his pipe), and few have very much work on hand. The German, therefore, takes everything leisurely and coolly—never permitting himself to be hurried or flurried—even by the sound of the dinner-bell, or the march to the table-d’hôte. It is seldom of any use to bribe the waiter or the postillion to increased velocity. The cook and the horses not being participators of the douceur, are not at all inclined to assist in the completion of the implied contract between the other parties. The German never attempts to “kill time,” well knowing that in such a conflict the enemy must be ultimately victorious. But he daily and hourly offers him a narcotic, by which his scythe may be blunted, and his ravages obscured.
Of all the mythological divinities, Time is most familiar to us, through the medium of his works:—for he himself is invisible, inaudible, intangible. Time is cloathed, on one side, with flesh and blood:—the other is a naked skeleton. In his right hand he holds a wand, by which he calls into existence, every instant, countless myriads of beings throughout the animal and vegetable world—leading them forward to maturity and age. His skeleton hand is clenched on a crooked falchion, with which he smites, destroys, and annihilates everything which he had previously created—thus realizing the fabled monster that eternally devours its own progeny![94] It is a melancholy spectacle—but it could not have been otherwise! It is possible that the Almighty could have created a single pair immortal—but the power of multiplying could not have been conferred without the penalty of death!
Tyrannical, inexorable, and pitiless, as he is, yet Time is not without some redeeming qualities. 1mo. He is strictly impartial. He slackens not his pace at the command of the monarch—he hurries not his steps at the prayer of the slave. 2do. Time mitigates every moral ill that is unattended with culpability or remorse: and although he too often aggravates physical maladies, yet he invariably diminishes our sensibility to pain, and thus tends to reconcile us to our lot of suffering. 3tio. He is sure to remove from the sphere of their operations all tyrants, oppressors, and evil-doers; thus giving the world a chance of better successors. 4to. Time is a great enemy to personal beauty, of feature or form—apparently deeming such qualities to be dangerous accompaniments to length of years. On the other hand, he is more favourable to virtue, honour, morality, and religion, of which time alone never deprives the individual till the curtain falls.
On time past, hallowed in memory and mellowed by distance, we look back as on an old and valued friend, whom we did not sufficiently appreciate while living, but who is now lost to us for ever.