nation found worthy organs, who announced in strains of prophetic eloquence its wants, its wishes and its destination.

But the enthusiasm, which, while its immediate object was before it, burnt with so pure, steady and beautiful a flame, displayed itself, after the first great work of deliverance was effected, in a variety of forms, and in some which were ludicrous, disgusting and possibly dangerous. It began soon to excite the jealousy of the governments, which had cherished it, and owed to it their independence and even their existence. Perhaps this jealousy, not always reasonable in its grounds or judicious in its measures, may have contributed to occasion the extravagances in which it afterwards found new motives for precaution and restriction, by checking the active spirit which might have been usefully guided into proper channels, and thus forcing it to licentious and mischievous aberrations. The circumstances too which usually accompany all revolutions of public feeling, attended likewise on this. The spirit of the times always finds in different individuals various degrees of capacity for receiving and containing it. Those who are possessed by it instead of possessing it, are apt to attach great importance to outward badges and distinctions, to attribute to them a productive power, and to substitute them for that which can alone give them value as signs and indications of its existence. These externals, which satisfy the indolent and amuse the weak and superficial, become the ready instrument and mask of imposture. The strong and glowing language, which in such seasons of general excitement gushes in a living stream out of the inmost depth of really inspired bosoms, is echoed by the imbecile without meaning, and by the designing with selfish views. Thus things in themselves innocent and even commendable become first contemptible and then suspected; the most genuine expressions of the purest and warmest feeling are profaned and abused, till they sink into unmeaning or equivocal commonplace. All this happened in Germany. In the first effervescence of patriotic rapture several violent and premature innovations were introduced or attempted in things of no moment, except so far as they are the natural and unforced expression of the inward character which produces them and by them is brought to light. Efforts were made to return to the dress, language and manners of a former age, by those who did not reflect that, until the spirit of the past had penetrated the whole mass of society, it was neither practicable nor desirable that any great change should be wrought on its surface; that it was in vain to think of improving the physiognomy without altering the disposition. The consequence was, that this imitation instead of becoming a popular habit remained a fashion confined to a few, and exhibited a strange and ludicrous contrast with that which it was meant to supplant. The fifteenth and eighteenth centuries brought side by side only put each other out of countenance.

A similar superstition displayed itself in the cultivation of the arts, particularly that of painting. The great works of the native masters, in which Germany is so rich, were deservedly admired, but they were not always studied in the same spirit in which the great Italian artists of the fifteenth century profited by the works of their predecessors. The new German school, though it has to boast many productions of genius, too often betrays by manner, affectation and caricature, its dependent and arbitrary origin. Those who least understand their models cling to the surface with indiscriminate imitation, and copy and even exaggerate defects. Their extravagances seem to justify the aversion of those who are equally partial in an opposite direction, and widen the breach between the classical and romantic schools. The conflict of opinions thus produced, intimately connected as it is with the other phenomena of the day, forms an important feature in the intellectual face of Germany, and the description of it has been woven by the author, with inimitable art and an irony that never relaxes its impartiality, into the texture of the first Novel.

One of the consequences of the vicissitudes and revolutions which Germany had undergone was the revival of religious feeling. In the last century, partly from internal causes, partly from the influence of foreign manners and opinions, it had every where begun to languish, and had been almost entirely banished from the higher and educated classes. But the disasters and reverses of so many eventful years had subdued the irreligious levity, so little congenial to the German character; the very excess of calamity which seemed to have extinguished hope, had awakened a faith which gained strength even from despair. The war too which rescued Europe from the last and most imminent danger of an universal monarchy, was in Germany essentially a religious war. It was neither the desire of revenge nor of glory, nor even of liberty itself as the ultimate end, which nourished the enthusiasm there excited; the feeling which animated all the leading spirits, and which operated instinctively on the least reflecting, was the conviction that they were engaged in the highest and holiest of causes; that the moral, as well as the political regeneration of Europe depended on the issue of that struggle. The deliverance itself was so greatly beyond hope, so rapid and complete, and attended by so many wonderful and striking circumstances, that it was hailed rather with gratitude as an interposition of Heaven, than with triumph as a victory achieved by human strength. The newly kindled religious fervour broke forth in various directions, and produced some remarkable and interesting changes. Individuals who could not find satisfaction for their religious cravings in the communion to which they belonged sought it in another. Religious societies separated from each other by slight distinctions made approaches to a closer union; those divided by an insurmountable barrier cherished and maintained more warmly than ever their distinguishing peculiarities. A new life seemed to be infused into the old observances of Catholic devotion, and the spirit of Protestant piety strove to display itself in new forms. Religion became a great public and private concern; every question relating to it excited a lively interest; every method of diffusing it was deeply studied and sedulously practised.

This good however came not unalloyed. Those in whom the religious feeling was least genuine, those who had merely caught it by contagion from others, were, as usual, the most anxious to make it prominent and conspicuous. They thought they could not exhibit too striking a contrast to the sceptical indifference and irreligious frivolity of the former age in their language and deportment. Piety, which is of a retiring nature, seldom conscious of her own actions, and never wishing them to be observed, was forced against her will into all companies upon all occasions, was made to occupy the foremost place, to study attitudes and gestures, to think aloud and deliver herself in set terms. A new kind of spiritual dialect came into fashion, and threatened to infect the whole tone of conversation and literature. It was not precisely the cant which with us is the property and badge of certain religious sects, and which to unaccustomed ears is either ludicrous or disgusting; it was a more refined compound of mysticism and sentiment, rather cloying from excess of sweet, but not without a charm for the young and inexperienced, and very easy to be caught by habit or learnt from design. In the endeavour to exclude from society all symptoms and tokens of the freethinking age, the moral taste grew alarmingly squeamish, and began to reject the most wholesome food as savouring of profaneness. As the freedom of Shakespeare scandalizes our sectaries, so among the circles, in which religion was most the mode in Germany, the unconstrained and unaffected purity of Göthe began to pass for licentiousness.

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