walks of letters and human culture, are at length attracting the attention and study of all earnest and inquiring minds. Let us, therefore, endeavor to view a little more closely these, our Teutonic kindred. Nations and races, like individuals and families, have their peculiar features-their strong and prevailing characteristics. These will be found to be most marked and striking in those least mixed in their origin, and who have longest remained a distinct and unconquered people. That the Germans are a primitive, unmixed race, might be shown from their language alone. Unlike the English, which is made up chiefly of Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French, with very copious additions from numerous other sources; unlike the languages of the south of Europe, (as the Spanish, French and Italian,) which may be regarded as a corruption of Latin by a large intermixture of the several native dialects-the German is a quite primitive tongue; and, as usual, we find a strong resemblance between the people and the language they speak. Notwithstanding the long periods of foreign domination, and the almost unbounded influence of the French, the Germans have nevertheless maintained their own genuine characteristics and peculiar traits. The basis of the German character is a hearty honesty, naturalness and simplicity, loyalty and respect towards superiors, and a genuine fidelity and thoroughness in whatever they undertake; whilst a deep tinge of meditative enthusiasm colors all their thoughts and actions. We may call them by nature a religious people; reverence for what is above them, piety towards God, and in all the relations of life, are virtues deeply engraven on the German heart. It was not by accident that Luther and the Protestant Reformation sprung up among them. Providence ever selects the fit instrument to perform his work. To the ancient Jews were committed the oracles of God, because of all nations they possessed most those qualities calculated to guard and scrupulously preserve them; a cohesive, indomitable and persevering race, zealous for the least tittle of their law. Perhaps the Germans were not less fitted for the great work laid upon them: a patient, unobtrusive, calmly earnest people; but capable of an enthusiasm in spiritual things, unknown to the feebler minds of the South, or the more worldly and practical English. It was here, therefore, and by them, that the great battles of Protestantism were fought. This was the one cause nearest and dearest to their hearts, which could call forth all their enthusiasm, to which all their virtues were happily subservient. For this they fought through a Thirty-Years' War; for this Gustavus Adolphus fell covered with wounds, and died-but died victorious, on the bloody plains of Lützen. Many of the characteristics which might be enumerated as belonging to the Germans, are shared by them with most of the nations inhabiting the North of Europe. Of several of these, we have delightful pictures in those living, truthful, domestic sketches of Frederica Bremer. Still there are many points of difference between the Germans, properly so called, and the inhabitants of the extreme North. The German imagination is, in general, less odd, grotesque and gloomy; there is among them somewhat less of that mystic melancholy pervading many a sad tale and mournful legend of those far Northern lands-less also of that wild and strange humor, once so colossal and wonderful, which sported with the creation of worlds, and figured the powers of nature as huge Odin giants, tossing in wild glee the chaotic elements of land and sea. and Thor, and the Jötuns of Fire, Frost and Tempest, are creations of the Icelandic and Norwegian imagination; the first rude thoughts of a strong, earnest people, dwelling familiarly amid the sublimities and terrors of those Arctic regions; "a wild land of barrenness and lava; swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming beauty in summer-time; towering up there stern and grim in the Northern Ocean; with its snow Jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur pools and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire." If we compare the three great nations of modern Europe, we shall find in each its own peculiar virtues, fitted to accomplish some special work. The English are great as a practical and commercial people. Bonaparte called them a nation of shop-keepers; he afterwards learned to recognize something of that stern and inflexible virtue which has well-nigh rendered them what the ancient Roman's were so often called— terrarum dominos-lords of the earth. It is undoubtedly their mission to subdue and colonize a great part of the still unsettled earth. Witness our own sweeping progress. Perhaps it is not without significance that we English colonies called ourselves Americans, as if the whole continent were our own! In politics, in jurisprudence, in everything that requires practical understanding, the English mind is superior to all others. It is theirs, therefore, to give to the world a lesson in subduing, governing, and rightly enjoying this fertile earth The French are less easily characterized; volatile and changeful, with many of the noblest qualities that ever adorned human nature, yet stained with crimes deep and dark, at which humanity veils her face, and weeping, turns away; and now, that all among them is again subject to the edying whirl of revolution-of mad and stormy passion-it is still more difficult to assign the precise part which they are destined to act in the world's great drama. Men of the world and of society, it is theirs to round the polished phrase, and cover with grace and beauty all common and homely acts. Masters of manner and etiquette, it is they who mould and fashion the intercourse and external relations of men to more pleasing forms, imparting to their coarser and less mercurial neighbors something of their own vivacity and courteous delicacy of expression. Whether their warm and generous sympathies, and that beautiful enthusiasm and courageous spirit of self-sacrifice of late so conspicuous among them, may not indicate that higher and more important work yet remains for them to accomplish, the result of the present revo lution will perhaps enable us to determine. In that some Of the Germans, the first impression is less favorable. what heavy countenance-in those less expressive blue eyes, we discover neither the vigorous, common sense of the English, nor the vivacity and easy grace of the French. But as we look more closely, an intelligence and calm enthusiasm lights up those earnest features, and we discern traces of a diviner and more spiritual nature struggling to express itself through an organization and material not quite pliant and yielding to its ethereal touch. Lacking the genial influences of more * Of course we make no comparison between the English and ourselves, since we are speaking of races, and we consider this nation as but a modification of the English; though the difference will probably widen as we approach the maturer development of our inherent characteristics and tendencies. favored climes, they cannot boast that faultless symmetry of feature and happy harmony of spirit and form,—a grace rarely bestowed upon powerful and original characters. As a people, the Germans have mingled little in political affairs and the so-called reforms and social improvements of the day. But shut out from politics and many other species of practical activity-deprived of the influence of a beautiful external nature, they have nevertheless won for themselves a domain more enduring than earthly conquests, brighter and more lovely than the green lawns of merry England, or the fair fields of France and sunny Italy. It is the noble realm of the IDEAL, the conquest of thought and intellect, of creative imagination, won not for themselves alone, at the expense and sufferings of others, but for all who will to share and enjoy it with them. Were poetry, religion and philosophy banished from the earth, we might almost trust to the Germans to re-create and restore them. These appear to be pre-eminently their lot and portion on the earth. Others may find in letters and philosophy a delight and solace, an ornament to their varied existence; to the German they are as the bread of life. An Englishman knows not how to live without his comforts; without liberty and free scope for his practical activity. The French must have their gay society and sparkling conversation;-even De Staël considers a banishment, forty leagues from Paris, as the most terrible of calamities; but grant the German the dear privilege of reading, writing and printing books, and he will submit to whatever else you will. Others make learning and liberal culture a means of gratifying their ambition, of compassing wealth and worldly fortune; the German pursues them for what he considers their own intrinsic worth, from a pure love of the objects themselves. We may call them a nation of students, and their country the land of books and libraries, which are easily accessible to all. Hence we find persons in even the humbler walks of life extensively read in all ancient and modern literatures, able to speak familiarly of things known elsewhere only to the learned few. If we consider the characteristics of the Germans, with reference to ourselves, we shall perceive that there is no people, the study of whose literature would be more likely to correct our less happy tendencies. Our most prominent faults are an impatient and all-consuming haste, a want of thorough and profound learning, and a too eager desire of worldly prosperity-often making.our higher culture subservient to these lower aims. The Germans are proverbially rather a slow and conservative people, remarkable for the careful preparation and study with which they enter upon even the less important duties, and for their lofty views of art and all liberal pursuits. On this latter point we may cite the opinion of a distinguished critic, who is generally allowed to be the best authority in all things pertaining to the Germans. "In their system, art is to be loved, not because of its effects, but because of itself; not because it is useful for spiritual pleasure, or even for moral culture, but because it is art, and the highest in man, and the soul of all beauty. To inquire after its utility, would be like inquiring after the utility of a God, or, what to the Germans would sound stranger than it does to us, the utility of virtue and religion." In conclusion, we add, that the literature of the Germans is a rich, living literature. It sympathizes with the joys and sorrows, the hopes and wants of man in our own day. We are not transported by it to any fabulous golden age, or required to impose on ourselves a quasi-belief in absolute divinities, and old worn out symbols of faith. These, it is clearly understood, belong not to time. "The intelligible forms of ancient poets, That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished, But deep within the heart of man still dwells the true creative power, ever potent to evoke new forms of beauty, and weave its spells to bind all human minds. It is on this that the German relies, and not on distance of time or space, to render his productions poetical. Then metaphysicians battle with the problems that vex our own time. KANT and FICHTE, and SCHELLING and HEGEL, with their hosts of followers, have given themselves to the investigation of the mysteries in which our life is still shrouded. If the earnest student of our time will turn to the writings of these men, he will find those questions which have ever agitated the thoughtful and reflective, therein treated as they have rarely been since the days of Aristotle and the godlike' Plato. In other regions, he will meet with a Herder, a Novalis, and the Jacobi's, who knew to clothe their thoughts in more attractive garb, adorning their high speculations with the graces of the imagination, and combined with the deepest feelings of the heart. In others, still he encounter the Schlegels, the most learned of critics, familiar with the literatures of all lands and times; a Lessing, with an intellect clear, noble, and profound, whose master-piece of German tragedy the readers of this journal are having an opportunity of judging; a Jean Paul, humorous, fantastic, a very Diogenes in letters, yet rich, genial, and full of unknown and original beauties, like the wild luxuriance of our western prairies; and Schiller, the pure and lofty-minded, dwelling in his own fair ideal, ever striving after higher and higher excellence, conceiving and executing amidst sickness and constant bodily suffering, the immortal scenes of Wallenstein and Wilhelm Tell. But of Goethe, how shall we dare speak-the consummate Artist, Poet, Thinker-with a genius inferior only to Shakspeare among all modern men; in culture and experience richer and more universal than any known of ancient or modern times; in temper, calm and serenely earnest, like a star, unhasting, yet unresting;' master of a style that even in translation vies with the models of other languages; flinging from his prolific pen productions the most dissimilar and varied, now a wild, apocalyptic,' Faust, with its fearful insight into the abysses of human nature and perdition, and anon a lovesong, sweet and touching as was ever sung by maiden wrapt in moon-lit bower. We had intended to conclude this article by some remarks upon Goethe's WILHELM MEISTER, but must defer them to some succeeding number. THE DEATH OF PERICLES.* BULIS TO SPERTHIES. THE spell is dissolved-the wand of the mighty magician is broken! PERICLES is no more. Despair broods over our beautiful city, and the deep well of tears which the plague, with all its sorrows, could not exhaust, is now a gushing fountain. He has left us like the oak of the mountain, gradually stripped of its branches, and bravely contending against frost and snow until it sinks, a shattered trunk-awakening with its solitary fall the slumbering echoes of the forest. Disease invaded his noble frame, as a skilful enemy besieges a city-its outposts were destroyed ere the citadel was attacked; and when he surrendered, we all wondered that he could not conquer death. Athens will die with him, is the complaint of our citizens, and none have fortitude enough to separate his death from the extinction of the state. Alas! the freedom of Athens is dead. That noble spirit which pointed the swords of Harmodius and Aristogiton, and which beamed in glory over the plains of Marathon, now sleeps in luxury, or is destroyed by the foul embrace of corruption. It is the Athens of Pericles! not the Athens of our forefathers; and each beautiful temple which gems the city, stands out the inglorious grave-stone of our freedom. On yesterday I passed his house, and saw suspended from the door the green branches which indicate that sickness was within. I had been with him, as you well know, in the glorious conflict at Samos, and had felt with him, before the walls of Epidaurus, the power of that fearful pestilence which, borne on the breeze or sleeping in the stream, had routed our gallant army, and snatched from its grasp the laurels of victory. I did not feel as an intruder, and, forcing a passage through the anxious crowd which filled the street, I entered the house. Many of our principal citizens were standing around a couch, on which I discovered the languid form of Pericles. As I approached, he awoke from a fitful slumber. Kneeling, I kissed his cheek, and he desired me to seat myself near his pillow. He had recovered from the plague, which ravaged our city two years ago, with a shattered frame, and a mind so much impaired, that he had worn an amu * Among my uncle's ragged congregation of tattered ballads, old books, and worm-eaten parchments, this letter was found, carefully enveloped in green silk, and secured by a mass of sealing wax, on which was impressed the rude outline of the W. arms. It was labelled the death of Pericles, and in the same hand-writing a copious commentary, after the manner of the old scholiasts, ran along its margin. From this discourse it appeared that when the Venetians, at the close of the seventeenth century, invaded Greece, and expelled, for a short time, the Turks from Athens, the MS. was found by a Venetian sailor among the ruins of the Acropolis, who sold it to an English soldier of fortune who accompanied the expedition. From him it passed through many hands, its authenticity denied, and its arguments questioned. until the keen eye of my uncle discovered it in an obscure book-stal in London. It was written in a curiously old-fashioned hand--many sentences were almost illegible, and the parchment was yellow with antiquity. These defects made it a rare jewel to my uncle, and he soon became its possessor. I do not know that he placed implicit confidence in its details, for his criticism on it was alike brief and ambiguous. "History (said he) forgets, in the triumphs of war and the splendor of architecture, the sufferings of a community. Thucydides (what a fine translation is that of old Hobbes of Malmesbury!) declares that Pericles obtained power by "bribes manifestly the most incorrupt;" the comic poe's hated him too bitterly to tell the truth, while Plutarch is a gossip and a flatterer. Bulis, apparently, is a faithful historian. |