to privates in the Prussian Landwehr by things. We do not care to see a bed of tulips their officers, is at present highly resented, where the wheat and potatoe crops have eviand a subject of great dispute, it being con- dently been robbed of manure and neglected sidered degrading, because the ranks of the in order to raise them. The æsthetic is not the Landwehr are filled by gentlemen often supe- moral, nor the religious, nor, in many of its ob. rior to their officers in birth, education, and for-jects, such as music, painting, architecture, the tune, and who think themselves therefore en- intellectual, in a people or in an individual, and it titled to be addressed by their officers with sie, may be cultivated at the expense of higher obnot du. But German has two forms of speech jects and principles. This is particularly true more in addressing inferiors, and marking the with regard to education in Germany. The difference of social station between the speak- public mind, debarred from free action in puber and the person he is speaking to. The third lic interests or private affairs, naturally occuperson singular er, is used instead of sie, by a pies itself in those secondary pursuits which person of the higher class addressing an infe- alone are open to it, and the autocratic governrior. It is an usage of language, not the pride ments in their educational systems favor the or arrogance of the individual; and is formed cultivation and diffusion of taste in the fine from the state of society. The person of the arts-of the development of the aesthetic upper class addresses the person of the lower among the multitude-as a means of keeping with er, the master his menial, the noble or them contented and happy. It is the old Roman of rank the non-noble or inferior. A still man policy of providing games and bread for more contemptuous form of expression for in- the people, to keep them quiet under the misdicating the distance between the talker and rule of the Emperors. The preponderance of the person addressed, in social station, is man, the aesthetic in the education, literature, and viz. one, used instead of er or sie. The inferi- daily life of the German people, has not workor is not addressed in the personal pronoun ed favorably on the present generation. It when speaking to him, but as a thing having has diffused a weakness and frivolity of chano personal station or existence-man. The racter, a turn for ease and present enjoyment, noble addresses his laborers or menials with and a disregard for, or ignorance of higher obman; his bailiff, tenant, tradesman, with er;jects than it presents to the mind. his equal with sie; but it would be a gross insult if he were to use er to an equal, or to a person claiming to be above the lower or middle classes, and still more if he were to address The occupations and amusements of the upsuch a person with man; yet he applies these per classes in Germany being much more seforms to persons of the lower and middle class- dentary and refined than with us, consisting much more in music. reading, theatrical enteres, by the usage of the language, without haps any personal pride or arrogance in the tainments, conversation, visiting, and social enspeaker. This form of language may be joyment, and much less in hunting, shooting, ridthought a matter very unimportant in itself-ing, racing, boating, and all the active, rough a mere grammatical difference from the Eng. sports and tastes which occupy our young men lish or French; but language is the expresof the higher classes, and bring them into daily sion of mind, of the public mind, and it indi- familiar intercourse with the lower, as assistants cates more truly than any other expression of and partakers in their common pursuits, keep it, the manners and state of society, the civili- those classes in Germany much more apart zation and independence, and the social spirit from, and ignorant of, each other than they of a people. These forms of expression mark are in England. The son of a nobleman or a distance, a non-intercourse, a want of mutu- country gentleman of the largest fortune and al communication and feeling, and of inter-highest family in England is intellectually, change of ideas, and sympathies, and knowledge of each other, between the classes using them. They indicate the state of society in Germany-the relations between its classes. GERMAN EDUCATION AND ITS RESULTS. per. ENGLISH AND GERMAN TASTES COMPARED. and in his tastes and habitual enjoyments not very different, or rather is very much the the lower class. The difference is more in the same as the son of a farmer, or of a man of means and scale of enjoyment than in the tastes of the two persons at the extreme ends of our social body. They have many objects, purA great part of the education in Germany, suits, feelings, occupations, sports in common, and almost all mind, is directed to æsthetic and bringing them together. These are, perobjects, to the cultivation of the fine arts-to haps, low in taste, and denote a low standard taste and production in poetry, dramatic works, of intellectual development among our highromance, and other imaginative or speculative er classes; but they bring the lower up to that literature-to music, theatrical representation, standard, establish a wholesome intercourse painting, architecture, and all that comes un- and exchange of ideas between them-for the der the name of aesthetic-all the intellectual lowest can understand and talk of horses, objects that embellish civilized life, and add to dogs, guns, or yachts, as well as the highest its enjoyments. Valuable as the aesthetic is, and denote a higher social state of the awhen it is a flower growing spontaneously out whole, than if the upper class were so far reof a high state of civilization, it is but a poor fined and educated beyond the mass of the peocrop to cultivate instead of more essential | ple below, as to be, as in Germany, a froth with out spirit or flavor, swimming on the surface, and altogether different in substance from the good liquor at the bottom. The Catholic Bishops could not renounce or make a tariff diminishing those payments, because they are held essential by the giver to The social state of Germany is similar to his own religious welfare, in whatever way that of British India. The upper enlightened they are applied. The people would not be class, consisting of civil and military functiona- relieved from these onerous and impoverishing ries, lawyers, judges, and officers connected payments, if they are as onerous, impoverishwith the administration of law and collection ing, and oppressive to the lower classes as the of revenue, bankers, merchants, and profes- Irish landholders represent them to be, by any sional men, is different in language, habits, provision made for their clergy. They must ideas, and feelings, from the Hindoo people first be relieved from the superstition which whom it governs; is little acquainted with makes them believe that such payments are them-does not mix with them-has little salutary to their own souls in a future state. knowledge of them but what circumstances It is besides a gross exaggeration, equalled may force upon its notice, yet governs only by the credulity which believes it, that them tolerably well, and the great mass of six millions and a half of people are impoverthe inert Indian population below it is submis- ished by the sustentation of two-and-twenty sive, and contented with the state of pupilage hundred single men." in which they exist. * * * * "The smallness of the expense to the comTo this great lower mass of the people in munity at large is an argument against it, not Germany, the opinions, political or religious, in its favor, because this shows that there is no of the upper class, scarcely penetrate. They real necessity for it. If so paltry a sum as do not at all take up the German Catholic 250,000l. or 300,000l. be all the expense of machurch. On the contrary, they are evidently king a suitable provision for the Roman Cathin the same intellectual and religious condi- olic clergy of Ireland, it is altogether absurd tion in which they were four centuries ago-to maintain that six millions and a half of peoquite as ready for pilgrimages or crusades, or whatever superstition or belief the Church of Rome may impose on them. They are not ripe for this movement. ple are impoverished by this trifling yearly drain upon their substance, are reduced to misery by it, while in the naturally much poorer country of Scotland one million of their fellowsubjects are voluntarily raising 300,000l. yearMr. Laing's views on Ireland may be thus ly for the support of their church; and the stated. Notwithstanding their book-igno- whole body of English Dissenters of all denomrance, rags, and wretchedness, the Irish are inations are supporting their Ministers at a really a better-educated people than the vastly greater sacrifice than eleven-pence halfGermans in all that concerns independent penny a head, which is about the amount of judgment and activity of mind. In this this impoverishing drain on the Irish Catholic population. On what principle-for it is a point of view, the monster-meetings, usequestion of principle, not of expense-is one less as they are for their avowed purpose, class of British subjects to be relieved of the accustom the peasantry to take a part in burden of supporting their clergy, and not anpublic questions, and give to them a con- other? And how is this relief to be adminissideration which is altogether denied to the tered? Is it to be a regium donum of 300,000l. Germans. This growing disposition to con- yearly, to be paid to the heads of the Roman sider public affairs, the extension of rail- Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, to be by them ways to Ireland, and of steam-communica- applied to the sustentation of their parochial tion in general, will carry both money and clergy? In that case, it would be only an apparent, not a real relief. The parochial information into the country, and offer the clergy would apparently be sustained and paid prospect of a conversion to Protestantism out of this yearly fund, but the people would or a modification of Romanism. The en-pay the same as before for masses, remissions, dowment of the priests will do as much as offerings, &c., because these payments are esthe State can do to destroy this proba-sential to the spiritual welfare of the giver, acbility; will give greater power to the priests over their flocks than they already possess; without, Mr. Laing maintains, procuring for the Government any efficient control over them (as may be seen by the facts that are occurring in Germany,) or relieving the Irish people from the present demands upon them. cording to his religious views and feelings, independently altogether of the application of them to the support of the priest. The money may be applied to adorning a relic, gilding an image, furnishing out a procession, or supporting the priest; it is the giving that is the No stipulameritorious, soul-saving act. tion can be made with the higher clergy of the Church of Rome that such contributions shall cease in Ireland, because they are of the very "The endowment of the Catholic Clergy nature of the Roman Catholic faith, and are would not relieve the people, but only furnish pious sacrifices. But if they are not to cease, the Church of Rome with funds for supporting where would be the relief? The regium doanother body of 2,200 priests in the country.num of 300,000l. a year would only be,in effect. a subscription for the propagation of the Roman Catholic religion, as the same sum that is now raised, and applied to the support of the priest, would, from the very nature of the religion, be raised as before, and applied to the support of an assistant priest. It would only have the effect of doubling the number of the priests. The grant to Maynooth even will probably only have the effect of increasing the number of students, not of raising their habits and intellectual and physical condition, if care be not taken by government to have the money applied in the way, and on the objects, for which it was granted." The only mode in which Government really can relieve the distress in Ireland, Mr. Laing maintains, is by establishing a fixity of tenure, giving the present tenants an absolute interest in the soil on the terms upon which they at present hold, similar to that change which Hardenberg established in Prussia at the beginning of the century. "It is evident that such a measure involved the direct violation of all the rights of property; and could only be justified by the most extreme necessity for the very preservation of society, or of the state itself. But this necessity had, as regards the existence of Prussia, evidently set in. The campaign of the preceding years had already shown, that although Prussia could bring armies into the field, her people had nothing to fight for, had no interest in the soil they were called out to defend ; but on the contrary, the people were much better off in Westphalia, and the provinces occupied by the French, than under their German social system. A similar necessity exists in Ireland for a similar measure. The sacred rights of property themselves must give way before the necessity of the preservation of society from state of anarchy and barbarism; and if the rents and estates of a few thousand great landowners on one side, and the existence in a civilized state of nine million of inhabitants on the other side, are to be weighed against each other, it is evident that either by some sudden convulsion tearing up society by the roots, or by the timely interposition of government, while it has the power, and has no external enemies, the same revolution in the state of landed property, that has been effected in Prussia must take place at no distant period in Ireland.', a shrewdness of perception and vigor of style, enforcing attention though not always commanding assent. As regards the Romish Church and the Irish questions, his views are less conclusive. He instances the, pilgrimage to Treves, an unlawful assemblage according to Prussian law, as a proof of the power of the Romish priesthood when recognized by the State; but if the assembly would give them no advantage. Whether was unlawful, the status of the parties Bishop Arnoldi was tolerated by the State or supported by the State, he was equally obnoxious to prosecution, if the State deemed it prudent to prosecute. We doubt, too, whether the Irish are not equally ignorant and superstitious with the Germans. They have no pilgrimages so numerous as that of Treves; but, if tourists are to be believed, journies are made to holy wells and similar spots for purposes equally futile, dicate as great a prostration of the underand ceremonies are performed which instanding. Nor are the author's Irish facts always correct. Surely Sir Robert Peel did not consult the Romish Prelates on the College Bills: his refusal to do so is a trading grievance. Nor is the hacknied argument of much weight, that if the Irish priesthood be paid the Dissenters have a right to require assistance. As an abstract rule, no class has any right to the public money: it is a question of public expediency-that is, of public benefit. But the Dissenters themselves settle the question. The Romanists seem willing to take whatever is given them the Dissenters repudiate the idea upon principle. The proposal to vote them money would be an affront; its acceptance, a sin. From Fraser's Magazine. BY ANGLOMANE. "Un linguaggio Parlan tutti, fratelli li dice The extent and character of the subjects treated of, and the manner in which they are handled by Mr. Laing, render it superfluous to recommend his work to the atten- THE United States of America are the tive consideration of the reader. He will greatest edifices ever achieved by the find in it a close and succinct statement of Anglo-Saxon race. They are a living eviwell-selected facts, a living knowledge of dence of the stubborn vitality, of the conGermany derived from practical observation sistent enterprise, of the sound judgment, and kept up by the perusal of its periodical of that sturdy variety of the old Teutonic and fugitive literature, together with great stock. England came last to the great than the whole of Europe, excepting Russia. "Collectively, their greatest length is 3000 miles, their greatest breadth 1700 miles. "They have a frontier line of about 10,000, a sea-coast of 3600 miles, and a lakecoast of 1200 miles." A few pages farther we learn that "the United States have 272 millions of acres of public lands surveyed and unsold, and 811 millions more which are unsurveyed. These lands are sold at 125 cents (say 5s. sterling) per acre," &c. work of American colonization. Rival nations had seized upon all that was deemed habitable in the New World. The English had to put up with a barren, inhospitable coast, under the inclemencies of an iron climate. Other powers exhausted their resources to secure the golden prize. The English government abandoned the new settlements to the contingencies of private speculation. The results were such as no human wisdom could anticipate. The Mississippi valley withered in the hands of the French. Spain was beggared by the gold of her Peruvian and Mexican mines. England alone owed her wealth, and to a With all this extent of territory, with all great extent her safety, to her Transatlantic this unimproved desert, the Americans are possessions. New England and Virginia still fretting for want of elbow-room. Still were the master-pieces of English construc- they drive the wild Indians before them betiveness. yond the great lakes, beyond the Rocky When the day of emancipation came, Mountains, beyond all the limits of the reand the over-grown colonies felt able and gions appointed by providence as the dwellimpatient to shift for themselves, the supe-ing of man. They bully the Mexicans on riority of the British over the southern the south, and sympathize with the Canadiraces was yet more strenuously asserted.ans on the north. They adopt for their French levity and Spanish indolence gave motto in their popular journals,way before American thriftiness and endurance. The Creole every where dwindled and vanished before the Yankee; and the day is not, perhaps, beyond the limit of human conjecture when the preponderant element shall have completed its work of irresistible, even although pacific invasion, when the Anglo-Saxon shall lord it all over the Continent. "No pent-up Utica contracts our powers; For the whole boundless continent is ours." It is not difficult to account for this apparently senseless ambition. The Americans are a race of emigrants. The security and prosperity of the country is based on a system of general migration. The American is the citizen of a world. His rights, It is with little reason, we believe, and his name, his language, follow him every to little purpose, that an outcry has been where. A descendant of pilgrims, he has raised in England against the late schemes no narrow-minded notions of local patriotof American aggrandizement. The annex-ism. His wooden dwelling is something ation of Texas, the invasion of the Oregon intermediate between a European house territory by right of accretion, or by whatever name such conquests and usurpations may be designated, are matters of necessity. They are the obvious consequence of that onward impulse, of that go-a-headism, which can only be arrested by the desert or the ocean. The Yankees have already monopolized the name of Americans, and the day will perhaps be when their universal nation and the New World shall be utterly identified. "The United States of America," observes Mr. Palmer Putnam, in a statistical work lately published,* "occupy an area of 2,300,000 square miles, or 650,000 more * "American Facts," by George Palmer Putnam. London, 1845. A work written with remarkable skill, and containing a great deal of useful information on important topics. and an Arabian tent. On the back-ground of Illimitedness of territory is then essential to the tone and temper of the American mind. Conscious of unbounded existence, Union to follow them (by annexation) to Texas and Oregon. Every citizen is an integrant part of the republic; wherever he may choose his abode, he is understood to carry his stars and stripes,-in fact, the republic itself along with him. the Yankee moves to his aim, circumscribed [sire to ward it off by a farther extension of only by the natural orbit of his individual their migratory system. powers. He apprehends no encroachments, Not that the Mexican or British Northbrooks no obstruction. He relies on no in- American territories may not be considtervention of miraculous agents. Hence ered, even now, as widely open to Yankee his life is movement, not struggle. He is speculation, but the United States, who active, not restless. His interests naturally have given the first instance of a colonizaharmonize with social welfare. His private tion without emigration as it were, are bent efforts are easily identified with the forward- upon claiming as home every foot of ground ing of the good of the state. In a land of upon which their wild pioneers and squatuniversal suffrage he has nothing to hope ters may set their foot, and determined that from violence or conspiracy. His equanim- emigration shall add to their territory what ity in social life has a soothing influence on it would otherwise take from their populahis domestic affections. At home and tion. Therefore if the Kentuckian hunter, abroad the American is rational, resigned, or the trapper of Michigan, pursue their and hopeful. Disappointed in one branch game beyond the boundary of the Union, it of industry he calmly turns to another. A is for the boundary to stretch, it is for the bankrupt in the east he sets up in a new line of business in the west. Whatever the result of the battle he is now engaged in, the "far West" always offers a safe and honorable retreat. Hence that "far West" must needs be inexhaustible, it must expand in proportion to the rapid increase of Whatever may be said as to the justice population. From Virginia to Kentucky, and wisdom of this system, we do not see and hence to Arkansas, Texas, and the what honor or advantage England or EuOregon, down to the western shore, all rope may obtain by interfering with it. must be appropriated by one sweeping in- War in America, with whatsoever result road. Whenever the overwhelming tide it might be crowned, would never be atbe arrested or forced back by material tended with any permanent success. Engcauses, then it may be time to look out for land has fought but too long for the privilege an awful reaction. Evils which the safety-of sending out lieutenant-governors to unvalves of emigration either averted or palli-profitable colonies. It is universally acated will burst forth with redoubled inten- knowledged that British trade has gained sity. Civil dissensions, which have hitherto by the emancipation of the States. The been rankling in a few ambitious breasts, day may come when the independence will arm the several members of the Union of the Canadas, nay of all the British against one another. Large standing arm- Transatlantic and Australian colonies, will ies, hotly disputed boundaries, insane wars, be looked upon as a matter of mutual expetreacherous diplomacy-all the calamities diency. What of it? The British race will of European strife, will rend the bosom of not the less have settled and thriven on that republic which "equals Europe in nearly three-fourths of the earth. Old size," and such disasters in a country in- England will not the less be the centre of habited by one kindred race will be aggra- a hundred New Englands. It is not by the vated by the wonted inveteracy of brotherly appointment of a few executive officers, or feuds. The shrewd calculating New Eng-by stationing idle garrisons in those prov lander, the hot-headed Kentuckian, the inces, but by imparting to them the advanbloody-minded Mississippian, are already tages of her industry, learning, and civilizavirtually separated by sheer incompatibility tion, that Great Britain may exercise a of temper; and Congress is only a tourna-lasting supremacy over them. It is not by ment, in which the battles of after-ages are faintly but unmistakably shadowed forth. All these, however, although in our mind unavoidable, are as yet remote contingencies; and the American statesmen of all parties, by so unanimously concurring in their late measures of territorial enlargement, seem to evince an undefinable dread of such probable issue, and an anxious de squabbling against rights of search and boundary lines in a desert, that kindred nations can contribute to the advancement of the common cause of justice and humanity. All struggles between England and the eldest of her colonies, were the latter even to carry into effect her ambitious views by armed conquest and usurpation, would be equally unnatural and impolitic. |