“‘Two hundred cannon, according to this,’ was his first exclamation, in tones of heartfelt delight and satisfaction.
“I followed his majesty into the town. The newly instituted assembly of Saxon States was convoked, and the king made a speech announcing the victory. And truly I never heard such speaking before or since. I was ordered to go on to Berlin with my good news. This was in fact unnecessary, for a courier had already been despatched, but the king knew that my family, from which I had been two years separated, was at Berlin, and he wished to procure me the pleasure of seeing it. For that noble and excellent monarch was also the kindest and best of men.”
Soon after Waterloo, Baron von Rahden appears to have left the service; for he informs us, that between 1816 and 1830 he made long residences in Russia, Holland, and England. Perhaps he found garrison life an unendurable change from the stir and activity of campaigns, and travelled to seek excitement. Be that as it may, fifteen years’ repose did not extinguish his martial ardour. The echoes awakened by the tramp of a French army marching upon Antwerp, were, to the veteran of Leipzig, like trumpet-sound to trained charger, and he hurried to exchange another shot with his old enemies. Having once more brought hand and hilt acquainted, he grieved to sever them, and when the brief struggle in Belgium terminated, he looked about for a fresh field of action. Spain was the only place where bullets were just then flying, and thither the Baron betook himself, to defend the cause of legitimacy under Cabrera’s blood-stained banner. Concerning his travels, and his later campaigns, he promises his readers a second and a third volume; and the favourable reception the first has met with in Germany, will doubtless encourage him to redeem his pledge.
LAPPENBERG’S ANGLO-SAXONS.
THE HEPTARCHY.
We are willing to acknowledge, without blindly exaggerating, our obligations to the men of learning of Germany, in several branches of art and science. We owe them something in criticism, something in philosophy, and a great deal in philology. But in no department have they deserved better of the commonwealth of letters, than in the important province of antiquarian history, where their erudition, their research, their patience, their impartiality, are invaluable. Whatever subject they select is made their own, and is so thoroughly studied in all its circumstantial details and collateral bearings, that new and original views of the truth are sure to be unfolded, as the fixed gaze of an unwearied eye will at last elicit light and order out of apparent darkness and confusion.
The writer, whose chief work is now before us, cannot and would not, we know, prefer a claim to the foremost place among those who have thus distinguished themselves. That honour is conceded by all to the name of Niebuhr, a master mind who stands unrivalled in his own domain, and whose discoveries, promulgated with no advantage of style or manner, and in opposition to prejudices long and deeply cherished, have wrought a revolution in the study of ancient history to which there is scarcely a parallel. But among those who are next in rank, Dr. Lappenberg is entitled to a high position. His present work is one of the very best of a series of European histories of great merit and utility. He has given fresh interest to a theme that seemed worn out and exhausted. He has brought forward new facts, and evolved new conclusions that had eluded the observation and sagacity of able and industrious predecessors. He has treated the history of a country, not his own, with as much care and correctness, and with as true a feeling of national character and destinies as if he had been a native; while he has brought to his task a calmness of judgment, and freedom from prejudice, as well as a range of illustration from extraneous sources, which a native could scarcely be expected to command. It must now, we think, be granted, that the best history of Saxon England—the most complete, the most judicious, the most unbiassed, and the most profound, is the work of a foreigner. It must, at the same time, be said that Lappenberg’s history could not have exhibited this high degree of excellence, without the ample assistance afforded by the labours of our countrymen who had gone before him, and of which their successor has freely taken the use and frankly acknowledged the value.
The history and character of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, have employed the pen of the most illustrious among our native writers. One of our greatest poets, and one of our greatest masters of prose,—Milton and Burke—have felt the attraction and importance of the subject, at the same time that they have given evidence to its obscurity and difficulty. In later times men of less genius, but of more acquaintance with the times and topics involved in the inquiry, have added greatly to our knowledge of those important events and institutions in which the germs of our present government and national disposition are to be found. But Saxon England can only be thoroughly understood by means of aids and appliances, which have been seldom possessed in any eminent degree by the general run of our antiquarian writers. A thorough familiarity with the Anglo-Saxon language and literature is obviously the first requisite: yet this attainment was scarcely to be met with till within a few years back, and even now, we fear that it is confined to a narrow circle, and that the able men who have made progress in this arduous path, lament that they have so slender and so scattered a train of followers. If we can suppose inquirers studying Roman history, without being able to conjugate a Latin verb, or to gather more than a dim suspicion of a Latin author’s meaning, we shall have a case nearly analogous to the condition and achievements of our Saxon scholars in the last, and even in part of the present century. Another qualification for the successful cultivation of this field of study, is an intimate acquaintance with the analogous customs and traditions of kindred countries, an accomplishment which few Englishmen could till lately pretend to possess, but without which, a great deal of what occurs in our own early history must seem senseless and unintelligible. The key to many apparent mysteries in English antiquities, is often to be found in something which has been more clearly developed elsewhere, and which may even yet survive in a Danish song or saga, or a German proverb or superstition.
In these respects, our kinsmen across the water have undoubtedly the advantage of us; and to most of them the subject of English history cannot be alien in interest or barren of attraction. It is impossible for an enlightened native or neighbour of continental Saxony, to tread the southern shore of the North Sea, and think of the handful of his countrymen who, fourteen centuries ago, embarked for Britain from that very strand, without feeling the great results involved in that simple incident, and owning the sacred sympathies which unite him with men of English blood. He may well remember with wonder that the few exiles or emigrants who thus went forth on an obscure and uncertain enterprise carried in their bark the destinies of a mighty moral empire, which was one day to fill the world with the glory of the Saxon name, and to revive the valour and virtue of Greece and Rome, with a new admixture of Teutonic honour and Christian purity. He may well kindle with pride to admire the eminence to which that adventurous colony has attained from such small beginnings, and to consider how much the old Germanic virtues of truth and honesty, and home-bred kindliness, have conduced to that marvellous result; while perhaps the less pleasing thought may at times overshadow his mind, that his country, great as she is, has in some things been outstripped by her descendant, and that the best excellencies and institutions of ancient Germany may have been less faithfully preserved and less nobly matured in their native soil than in the favoured island to which some shoots of them were then transplanted.
If some such feelings prompted or encouraged the writer of these volumes to engage in his work, Dr. Lappenberg had other facilities to aid him in the task. He had been sent to Scotland in early life, and had studied at our metropolitan university where he is still kindly remembered by some who will be among the first to peruse those pages. His residence in this ancient city of the Angles, and his visits to the most interesting portions of the island, must have formed a familiarity and sympathy with our language, manners, and institutions which would afford additional inducements and qualifications to undertake a history of England. He has distinguished himself by other valuable compositions of a historical and antiquarian character, and particularly by some connected with the mediæval jurisprudence and history of his native city of Hamburgh. But his reputation will probably be most widely diffused, and most permanently preserved, by the admirable work which is the subject of our present remarks.