although they are not in this respect so abstemious as the Italians. The German character is distinguished by habits of reflection which frequently approach to a phlegmatic disposition. Sincerity and a highly upright mind have always been considered as leading features in the German character, which also usually exhibits a delicate feeling of honour. Even in prosecuting his resentments the German proceeds openly and without malice. The Germans are distinguished by an insatiable thirst for information, which their general acquaintance with the languages of Europe enables them to gratify more extensively, perhaps, than any other people. It has been alleged, indeed, by some of their own authors, that the Germans have so little national pride as to give an undue preference to every thing in the shape of foreign literature, but from such a charge we are fully disposed to acquit the general body of the nation. We shall give Madame de Stael's epitome of the German character, as it is concise, expressive, and, as far as we can discern, fair and just, "The Germans are a just, constant, and sincere people; with great powers of imagination and reflection; without brilliancy in society or address in affairs; slow, and easily intimidated in action; adventurous and fearless in speculation; often uniting enthusiasm for the Fine Arts, with little progress in the manners and refinements of life; more capable of being inflamed by opinions than by interests; obedient to authority, rather from an orderly and mechanical character than from servility, having learnt to value liberty neither by the enjoyment of it, nor by severe oppression; divested, by the nature of their governments, and the division of their territories, of patriotic pride; too prone, in the relations of domestic life, to substitute fancy and feeling for positive duty; not unfrequently combining a natural character with artificial manners, and much real feeling with affected enthusiasm; divided, by the sternness of feudal demarcation, into an unlettered nobility, unpolished scholars, and a depressed commonalty; and exposing themselves to derision, when, with their grave and clumsy honesty, they attempt to copy the lively and dexterous profligacy of their southern neighbours. In the plentiful provinces of southern Germany, where religion as well as government shackled the activity of speculation, the people have sunk into a sort of lethargic comfort and stupid enjoyment; it is a heavy and monotonous country, with no arts, except the national art of instrumental music,—no literature,-a rude utterance,-no society, or only crowded assemblies which seem to be brought together more for ceremony than for pleasure; an obsequious politeness towards an aristocracy without elegance. In Austria, more especially, we see a calm and languid mediocrity in sensations, emotions, and desires; a people mechanical in their very sports, whose existence is neither disturbed nor exalted by guilt or genius, by intolerance or enthusiasm ; a phlegmatic administration inflexibly adhering to its ancient course-repelling knowledge, on which the vigour of States must now depend; great societies of amiable and respectable persons;-which suggests the reflection that in retirement monotony composes the mind, but in the world it wearies the soul. In the rigorous climate and gloomy towns of Protestant Germany only, the national mind is displayed. There the whole literature and philosophy are assembled. Berlin is slowly rising to be the capital of Protestant Germany. The duchess of Saxe Weimar, who compelled Napoleon to respect her in the intoxication of victory, has changed her little capital into a seat of knowledge and elegance, under the auspices of Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland. No European palace ever assembled so refined a society since some of the small Italian courts of the sixteenth century. It is only by the Protestant provinces of the North that Germany is known as a lettered and philosophical country." The German though attached to his country, has much more of the Cosmopolitan about him than the Englishman. For many centuries Germans have been denizens in the midst of foreign and very different tribes, in Pannonia, Dacia, Sarmatia, and on the shores of the Baltic, and everywhere in their most remote descendants the Germans are to be recognized. The number of the inhabitants of Germany of the German race, will be about 24,700,000, or about five-sixths of the whole population. Besides these, the Gotschewerians, a tribe of 44,000 individuals settled in the Illyrian government of Laibach, undoubtedly belong to the German race. 2d. The Slavonians.] The second principal tribe of Germany, the Slavonians are settled on the eastern districts of the Elbe, and amount to about 5,040,000 individuals. They are divided into several tribes, each speaking its own dialect. The principal are: 1st, the Slawaikes to whom belong the Hannacks and Hosacks; they are settled in Moravia, and amount to about 1,150,000. 2d, The Tscheches in Bohemia and Moravia, amounting to 2,200,000 heads. 3d, The Poles in Silesia and Auschwitz, amounting to 820,000; 4th, the Wendes and Sorabes, settled partly in Illyria, partly in the kingdom of Saxony, in Brandenburg, and in the Silesian districts of Liegnitz, and amounting to 790,000. 4th, The Casubes in Pomerania, estimated at 56,000; 5th, the Usckochs, with some Croats, Raizes, &c. in Illyria, amounting to above 22,000. The Slavonians are far behind the Germans in civilization; they are however an industrious and laborious people. Besides these two principal races, there are about 175,000 Italians in the Italian Tyrol, Frivoul, and Trieste; about 20,000, or 25,000 French, Walloons, and Waldenses, partly in the west of Germany, particularly around Landau and Saarlouis, and partly in colonies and in families spread over the whole of Germany; and also 250,000 Jews extended over the whole of the country. Religion.] With respect to religion, the great mass of the inhabitants of Germany are divided into Catholics and Protestants. Till 1517, universal Germany professed Roman Catholicism, but since that time a considerable part of the nation have professed the doctrines of the Reformation. All those not adhering to the Catholic church, the Lutheran, or the Reformed church, are comprehended under the general name of the Evangelical or Protestant church. 1st. The Catholics form the majority of the inhabitants in the Austrian States, in Bavaria, Baden, Luneburg, Hohenzollern and Liechtenstein, there is also a large number of them in the Prussian States, Wirtemberg, Hessen, and Hanover, and smaller numbers in the other States; they may, on the whole, amount to 18,016,000 individuals. We shall notice the different church-establishments under the heads of the different States. 2d. The Protestants of the Lutheran and Reformed creed have in most States of Germany come so near to one another, that they have united in one and the same church; they amount to about 12,030,000 individuals, and form the majority in the Prussian States, in the royal and ducal Saxony, in Hanover, Wirtemberg, Hessen, Holstein, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Anhalt, Schwarzburg, Reuss, Leipsic, Waldeck and the free towns.25 Besides these there belong to the Protestant church about 28,000 Moravians, and Hussites. There are 5000 Mennonites, particularly in the Prussian States, in Hanover, and Hessen; some Greeks; and 250,000 Jews, with less or more restrictions in the different States, except in the Prussian countries where they are truly considered as citizens of the State, and invested with political rights. The utmost religious toleration is every where permitted in Germany, not only by the government, but also in social and individual intercourse and connexions. The Lutherans while they steadfastly adhere to their leader, in the doctrines of consubstantiation, and justification by faith, have generally deserted him in the more peculiar doctrines of Calvinism, in maintaining and asserting which, Luther used much stronger language than Calvin himself, as may be seen in his celebrated treatise against Erasmus, concerning free will. During the last century, a considerable change of religious sentiment took place in Protestant Germany, from an unhallowed rage of philosophizing, which had infected the German universities, and rendered them hotbeds of the most refined and romantic speculations. Socinianism has made great progress amongst the Lutheran and Calvinistic branches of the Protestant church, and has paved the way for what may be called Christian Deism, or Antisupernaturalism, as it is denominated by the Germans. Reason has been set up as the sovereign tribunal by which the Bible and its doctrines, with its recorded miracles, must be tried; and its authority is recognised or admitted only where it can be bent into a conformity with the uncertain science of metaphysics. In fact, both Calvinists and Lutherans, have undergone a mournful transformation in Germany, the Lutherans especially, who are divided into two parties, denominated the old and the new Lutherans, which last hardly retain any thing of Luther but the name. A frenzy for religious and political innovation had prevailed greatly in Germany long before the French revolution, and passed under the names of Illumination and Philanthropism. The chiefs of this new religious school were Steinbardt, Semler, Bahrdt, Basedow, Eberhard, Eichhorn, Damm, Teller, Nicolai, and Jerusalem. To the new apostles of 25 The Allgemeine Kirchen Zeitung of 4th September, 1827, contains the following statement of the number of Protestants living in Germany under Catholic Princes, and of Catholics under Protestant Princes: I.-PROTESTANTS UNDER CATHOLIC Wirtemberg 470,000 Germany may be added, the infamous Anacharsis Clootz, a Prussian by birth, who figured in the French revolution. "It is a common theory among the Germans," says an accomplished scholar and warm admirer of German philosophy and literature, "that every creed, every form of worship, is a form merely; the mortal and ever-changing body, in which the immortal and unchanging spirit of religion is, with more or less completeness, expressed to the material eye and made manifest and influential among the doings of men." Such are the melancholy fruits of German illumination. CHAP. V.-LANGUAGE-LITERATURE. Language.] CORRESPONDING to the two principal branches of population, there are also in Germany two principal languages, totally different from one another, and subdivided into various dialects. 1st. The German.] The German, which is a branch of the ancient language of the Germans, is divided into three principal branches. The Northern, the present German language called Deutsch by the natives, and the Mösiac. To the northern branch belong the Scandinavian languages, or the Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. To the German or Deutsch tongue belong the Franconian and Alemannian, from which are derived the Suabian of the middle ages, the High German, the Cimbrian, the Saxon-the parent of the Anglo-Saxon, the root of the English,the Low Saxon, Low German, and the Dutch. From the Mösiac and Mösogothic arises the language of the Uhlans in the Crimea. The German language presented in very early times two primitive dialects, the southern and the northern, each of which are now subdivided into various dialects. Although the words and grammatical forms of these two dialects differ in many respects, they are essentially the same language, and follow the same rules. Nothing certain is known about the origin of the German language. Some derive it from the Indian, others from the Persian, and others assign to it a common origin with the Greek. Morhof even derives the Greek from the most ancient German. That the German is an unmixed mother-tongue, that is, one which has not been essentially formed upon the basis of any other, is clear from a comparison of it with other languages, and also from Adelung's observation that in every genuine German word the accent lies on the root. Unfortunately we have only isolated words of the ancient German remaining, which for the most part are proper names; but even these few are sufficient to convince us that at a very early epoch the language had all the roots which it now possesses. Foreigners, who are either too lazy or toe proud to learn it, or who are accustomed to a softer pronunciation, generally censure it as a rough and barbarous language. The French pronounce it a language utterly unfit for gentlemen, and fit only to be spoken by mechanics. In the judgment of Voltaire, it is the most barbarous language under heaven. He observes, in his sarcastic manner, that if he were called upon to confer with men of science, he would use the English in preference to every other language; if he were to address a gentleman, it would be in French; to his mistress, he would speak Italian; to his dog, he would speak Dutch; and to the devil, he would address himself in German. Pomponius Mela, the ancient Roman geographer, observed, that German names were not fit for Roman mouths; and hence it is, that we meet with such monstrous words in Roman authors, when they attempt to give German names Latin inflexions. What is termed erudition, or a profound acquaintance with dead and foreign languages, had long been peculiar to this country; whilst the vernacular language seems to have been totally neglected, as unworthy of cultivation, till the middle of the 18th century. Until that period Latin, and Latin only, was the vehicle of all literary communication; so that by constant and uniform practice, the German literati attained the talent of writing with an ease and elegance in Latin unknown to other nations. It was a singular circumstance, that a nation pre-eminent in literature, and possessed of every qualification to attain excellence in that pursuit, should have remained so long without a literature of its own; and that a country which had produced a Guttenberg, a Copernicus and a Kepler, a Luther and a Leibnitz, had no writer in her own language to proclaim her fame to surrounding nations, whilst the national literature of Spain was known through the medium of a Cervantes, a Lope de Vega, and a Calderon,— that of Portugal by a Camoens,—and Britain, France, and Italy, had each attained the summit of celebrity in national literature. It is undoubtedly true, that the German by no means abounds in pleasing sounds; that it is rough, guttural, and inharmonious, and more fitted for war than courtship. It was also the peculiar misfortune of the German language, that it had not been made to pass through the crucible of literary refinement; that no attempts had been made to polish it; and that it was not till very recently the language either of German courts, or even of refined German society. Yet like its sister-dialect, the English, the German is undoubtedly capable of classical polish. But while England enjoyed a brilliant court, a splendid capital, and a succession of national classical writers who contributed to soften its asperities, to give energy and dignity, precision and perspicuity to the national language, Germany enjoyed no such privileges. French was the language of all its courts ; and the number of these in Germany rendered this circumstance almost equivalent to the exclusion of the German language from all polished society, so that it was left to be the mere instrument of the most vulgar intercourse of life. The great Frederic showed the most public and marked contempt for the language of his native country and his own subjects, and a decided predilection for French, which he not only introduced at court, but caused to be employed in all acts of State, and to be used in all public offices: by his patronage of French philosophers and poets, he in fact did every thing in his power to Frenchify his subjects. For this unpatriotic and unnatural preference of a foreign language to German, he justly incurred the censure and resentment of the German literati, who felt indignant at the insult thus thrown upon their vernacular language. The successor of Frederic, however, acted a more patriotic and honourable part, in showing a marked preference for his native tongue. "Germans we are," said he, in council, "and Germans I intend we shall continue;" and in proof of his determination, he gave orders that the German language should be restored to its proper rank, and patronized men of merit who wrote in it. The Saxon is the purest and most polished dialect of the German language, whilst that of Austria is the most rude and barbarous. Luther's version of the Bible forms an important epoch in the history of the German language. It was one of the innumerable blessings which the Refor |