Pope Ganganelli compared the Italians with the fire, the French with the air, the English with the water, and us Germans with the earth, omne simile claudicat. The German is not so nimble, brisk, and witty as the Frenchman; the latter gallops ventre à terre, whilst the German at the utmost trots, but holds out longer. The German is not so proud, humoursome, and dry as the Englishman; not so indolent, bigoted, and niggardly as the Italian; but a plain, faithful, modest fellow, indefatigable, staid, quiet, intelligent and brave, yet almost always misknown, purely from his constitution. The words of Tacitus still are true: "nullos mortalium armis aut fide ante Germanos." Should you class the four most cultivated nations of Europe, according to the temperaments, the German would be Phlegma; and as such, I, a German, in German modesty, which foreign countries should duly acknowledge, can assign it only the fourth rank. Among the English, whims are mixed in every thing; amongst the French, gallantry; among the Spaniards, bigotry; among the Germans, when things can go halfway, eating, drinking, and smoking; and the last is the true support of Phlegma. Genius with the Germans, tends to the root, with the French to the blossom, with the British to the fruit. The Italians are imagination; the French, wit; the English, understanding; the Germans, memory. In colonies, Spaniards commence by building a church and cloister; Englishmen a tavern; Frenchmen a fort, where, however, the dancing-floor must not be wanting; the Germans by grubbing the field. A riding-master distinguished them even by their modes of riding; the English hop, the French ride like tailors, the Italian sits on his steed like a frog in the air-pump, the Spaniards sleep there, the Russians wind the upper part of their bodies like puppets, and the German alone sits still like a man—man and horse are one as with the Hungarians.
The royal oak, the favourite tree of our fathers, requires centuries for its full developement, and so long do we also require. The oak is a fairer symbol of the German nation than the German postboy, from which original most foreigners appear to judge of us. A postilion in the north, however, is the true representative of Phlegma. Bad or good roads, bad or good weather, bad or good horses and coach, curses or flattery from the traveller—nothing moves him if his pipe-stump be but smoking, and his schnaps paid.
The hereditary enemy of our neighbours is levity, ours heaviness. In the ancient bass-fiddle, Europe, the thickest string is the German, with deep tone and heavy vibration; but once in vibration, it hums as if it would go on humming for an eternity. Our primitive ancestors deliberated on every thing twice—in drunkenness, and in sobriety; and then they acted. But we, with the most honest and slowest spirit of order—which might, without danger, be spared many reglemens—we lost all elasticity, and sank dismembered into a stupid spirit of slavery, which originated in our passion for imitation, our faintheartedness, and our uncommonly low opinion of ourselves, which often looks like true dog humility. This humility the French have in view, when if naughtily treated by their superiors, by the police, &c., they cry out "Est ce qu'on me prend pour un Allemand?" The Englishman is fond of being represented as a John Bull, but John Bull pushes about him. We, however, are personified by the German Michel, who puts up with a touch on the posterior, and still asks, "What's your pleasure?"
Voltaire sang of the Marechal de Saxe:—
"Et ce fier Saxon que lion croit nè parmè nous,"
exactly like a Maitre d'Hôtel, who, whenever he wished to flatter me, used to say, "Vous savez, Monsieur, je vous regarde presque comme Français." Voltaire was not ashamed at Berlin, when the Prussian soldiers did not enact the Roman legions to his mind, to exclaim in the midst of German princesses, "F——j'ai demandé des hommes, et on me donne des Allemands!" Marechal Schomberg, to whom the impertinent steward, on committing a fault, said, "Parbleu, on me prendra pour un Allemand!" would long ago have set them to rights with his answer, "On a tort, on devrait vous prendra pour un sot!"
To be, not to seem, is still the fairest feature in the character of my—I had almost said nation—of my quiet, thrifty, contented, diligent, honest countrymen. The German, at first glance, appears rarely what he is, and strikes the stranger as awkward and heavy. Yet, behind this plain quiet outside, there often dwells a cultivated mind, reflection, and deep feeling of duty, honour, diligence, and domestic virtue. In our father-land, honesty is universally at home; and during the night, you are safer on the highways and in the forests, than in the streets of Paris or London. "When in foreign countries," says an old author, "I fall in with a man too helpless for a Frenchman, too ceremonious for an Englishman, too pliable for a Spaniard, too lively for a Dutchman, too cordial for an Italian, too modest for a Russian—a man pressing towards me with oblique bows, and doing homage with ineffable self-denial to all that seems of rank; then my heart, and the blood in my face, says, 'that is thy countryman.'" How true! and how often have I lighted on such countrymen.
North Germany commences as soon as you leave behind you Nurenberg and Cassel. Cassel, in comparison with Hamburg resembles an Italian town. The Thuringian Forest separates north and south. The north is a coast-land, commerce its destination; the south inland: hence agriculture and industry are more suitable. The spirit of the South German is more directed to what is domestic: a fruitful soil rewards his labour, and alleviates it by the juice of the grape. The mouths of his rivers and his harbours allure the North German into foreign lands; his father-land is there, where he finds what he seeks, and what his own country has denied him. The South German must hence be more self-dependent, for he has a father-land at home full of blessing and beauty;—the North German has to seek one elsewhere; and this makes him more pliant, more polished, more active; but also more ostentatious, less to be confided in, more adventurous. This distinction is primeval. The North Germans mingled themselves with the Britons, Gauls, Italians, and Slavonians; the Alemanni and Bavarians remained in their native country.
The southern sky draws forth a vegetable world more luxuriant, fierier, spicier; the northern, a much duller, waterier, colder, and the men are so too, except where government and education have powerfully encroached. In the north the people have evidently less fancy and feeling, less genialness and versatility, even flatter, duller physiognomies, but also evidently greater intelligence, more consideration, seriousness, and constancy. The wastes, storms, and floods, the unthankful, sandy, moory country, must of themselves make the people more serious, more enterprising, more capable of contentment than in the south, where Nature is not so like a step-mother, nay, has flattered her favourites, thereby rendering them light-minded, indolent, and desirous of enjoying. Here the flesh triumphs over the spirit; there the spirit over the flesh, "nos besoins sont nos forces!"