perfect flower that our German climate can produce, but I am not fool enough to require my garden to provide me with them at the end of April. I am content if I then find the first green buds-it, from week to week, I can see the leaves, one after another, unfolding themselves; and rejoice when, at the end of June, the rose unfolds itself in all its glory and fragrance. If any one has not patience to wait for this, let him go to the forcing-house.

I have been reproached with being a servant of princes. Do I then serve a tyrant or a despot ? Do I serve one who lives for his own pleasure at the cost of his subjects? Such princes and such times lie, thank God, far behind

us!

For half a century I have been strongly and intimately attached to the Grand Duke; for half a century I have worked and striven with him-but I should speak falsely if I said I knew of a single day during that period in which the Duke has had no thought tending to the good of his country, and the improvement of the condition of his people. What does he get personally by his princely rank but a weight of care and trouble? Is his habitation, his dress, his table better appointed than that of many a private man? There are merchants enough in our great trading cities who expend more upon their kitchen and cellar than ever he did. We shall celebrate this autumn the day on which the Grand Duke_will have ruled and reigned for fifty years. But when we consider this reign, what has it been other than a fifty years' service? A service for the attainment of great objects—for the welfare of his people. If, then, I must needs be a servant of princes, it is at least a consolation that I am the servant of one who is himself a servant of humanity.'

In all this we doubt not Goethe was perfectly sincere. We do not believe that he would have felt, still less that he would have stooped to profess, without feeling this attachment to a sovereign who did not possess, in a great measure, the virtues and excellences described; but would he have felt the same attachment and veneration for these virtues and excellences, had they been manifested in a humbler sphere? It belonged, perhaps, to the character of his mind, to his intense susceptibility to the beautiful, that they should attract him more powerfully when thus set in the imposing environments of princely rank; it belonged, too, to what we cannot but think a somewhat effeminate shrinking from all that was painful, that he should seek for the objects of his admiration rather on the glittering summits, than in the dark and rugged highways of life.

Of the low servility that attaches itself to

He did not 66

despise poor folk," but he soared, perhaps, in somewhat too lordly a manner above them; and cared little to seek

beneath the plain, or sometimes repulsive exterior of more humble life, for the virtues that so often "make a sunshine in that shady place." The following has much interest at the present moment.

6

"We spoke of the unity of Germany, and in what sense it was possible and desirable. ‘I have no fear,' said Goethe, but that Germany will one day be united. Our good roads and our future railways will do their part; but, before all, let us be united in love among ourselves, and united against a foreign foe. Let German dollars and groschen have the same value all over Germany. Let my trunk, when I am travelling, pass through the six-and-thirty states without being opened. Let the passport of a citizen of Weimar not be regarded everywhere else in Germany as that of a foreigner. Let there be no more talk of Inland and Outland among German states. Germany be one in her trade and commerce, in her weights and measures, and a hundred similar things that I could name.'

Let

"But if, by the unity of Germany, it is meant that it shall be one great empire, with one great capital-if it be supposed that this great capital will promote the welfare of the great mass of the people, as it may do the development of great individual talent, that is a great error. A state has been compared to a living body with many limbs; and in this comparison the capital will, of course, take the place of the heart, from which life and well-being circulates to the nearer and more dis

tant members. But for the members that are most distant, the stream of life will flow with less and less vigor.

A clever Frenchman-I believe Dupin-has made a map of the intellectual culture of France, and marked the greater or smaller illumination of the departments, with brighter or darker tints. We found in those provinces situated at the south, at the greatest distance from the capital, particular departments marked black, to represent their intellectual condition. But would this be the case if la belle France had possessed not one, but ten centres of life and light? In what is Germany great but in the admirable cultivation of her people, which has penetrated simultaneously to every part of the country? But does not this proceed from the numerous capitals? How would it stand with German culture, if, for centuries past, we had no other capitals than Vienna and Berlin, or, perhaps, only one ?-Nay, even with the general diffusion of prosperity, which goes hand-in-hand with culture.

866

'Germany possesses twenty universities, scattered over her territory, and above a hundred public libraries, besides a proportionately large number of collections of works of art, and museums of natural history; for every prince has endeavored to draw some of these advantages to his own territory. Gymnastic and industrial schools we have in superabundance; and there is scarcely a single German village that is unprovided with the means of education. What is the position of France in this respect ?

666

Again, we have above seventy theatres-and the theatre is by no means to be despised as the promoter of the higher popular culture. The taste and capacity for music and singing is in no country in the world so extensively diffused as in Germany. Then think of such cities as Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart, Cassel, Brunswick, Hanover, and the like; think of the great elements of life, which they have in them; of the effects which proceed from them to the neighboring provinces, -and ask yourself if they would have been what they are if they had not been the seats of separate rulers?

"Frankfort, Bremen, Hamburg, Lubeck, are splendid cities in themselves-not to calculate their effects on the general prosperity of Germany. Would they, however, remain such if they

1.

Mother, thou know'st how truly I am thine
By ties of sympathy as well as blood-
Warm from my bosom in a gushing flood
My best affections still to thee incline;
Thy breast has been to me a holy shrine

Where love unselfish, glowing gratitude,
With all that makes us kind, or leaves us good,
In one unchanging sentiment combine.

I hold naught dearer than thy power to bless,
As o'er the varied scenes of life I rove-
Not e'en the warm impassionate caress

Meeting or parting with the maid I love:
A mother's love! while I such boon possess,
I scarce would change my state with saints above!

IL.

Thy love was like a sheltering tree, that grew Över the stream that fed it;-thine embrace Was not more warm when first mine infant face Thou didst behold, than at our last adieu; Untiring, eager, generous, and true,

Thy tenderness did with my years keep pace, Seeking all sorrow from my brow to chase, And holding truth and virtue up to view. Thanks! grateful thanks! I have not all deserved, I plead me guilty to a wayward will; Yet thou didst chide so mildly when I swerved, That I returned to love thee better still; Thy warning counsel has my spirit nerved, Ånd proved an antidote to many an ill.

As age

accumulates upon thy brow,

And all thine energies become less warm, Securely rest on my more vigorous armTime the protectorship reverses now. If, by God's blessing, health and strength allow, My toil shall comfort thee; secure from harm, No dread of want thy last days shall alarm, Nor workhouse insolence thy spirit bow. Mother, though dim thine eye, yet many a day, While blythe I sported, didst thou toil for me, Along no path of flowers, but a rude way

Beset with hardship and with poverty. May I the debt that's due in part repay, By feeling grateful, and by aiding thee!

IV.

Dost ask why I have joined thy name to song?
Lo! how the ivy round the oak entwines!
Thus round thy worth these transitory lines
Enwreathe themselves, existence to prolong:
My muse now noteless 'mid the busy throng,
If in her lay a parent's virtue shines,

A pleasing theme unto her numbers joins
To warm the heart and linger on the tongue.
Though Fame pass by, a better guest, Content,
Dwells ever with us, making all serene;
And Hope is sometimes to my vision lent,
That, after we resign this earthly scene,
These lines shall be our humble monument,
O'er which remembrance shall in fondness lean.

Ar the moment that the dynasty of Louis Philippe was overthrown, the sovereignty of France fell into the hands of the people of Paris. What use they were to make of the opportunity, what character they were to give to the revolution that they had just effected, depended on the collective tenor at that moment of their political prepossessions and wishes. What those prepossessions and wishes were, however, it has required subsequent events to make clear.

ces.

One thing, indeed, was decided from the very beginning. France was to be a republic. Abolishing royalty, and accounting the events of the preceding fifty years as a mere interruption, in part splendid and in part disastrous, of the great career of self-government that had been begun in 1792, the French people were now to resume that career in a new spirit, and under better auspiSo much may be said to have been agreed upon from the first; it was virtually settled by the people in the streets, and if there were any dissentients, they were obliged to hide themselves. Another point also may be said to have been settled at the same time; namely, that the republic thus revived was to be a republic based on universal suffrage. To stop at a restricted system of suffrage, such as satisfied the men of the first revolution, was doubtless impossible. At all events the attempt was not made.

A republic, then, and a republic based on universal suffrage, such was the lowest result that the people would accept from the revolution of February. To this all classes were obliged to make up their minds, Louis Philippists and legitimists, politicians and bourgeoisie; and all that the more moderate spirits of the country could hope was, that by uniting their efforts they might be able to arrest the movement at this stage, and prevent it from going any farther.

To English readers, accustomed to regard a republic, and, above all, a republic based on universal suffrage, as a condition of things beyond which nothing else exists to be either desired or dreaded, these words "any far

ther" may appear strange. But when it is considered that the word republic is only the name for a particular method of electing the governors of a country, and that it implies nothing as to the set of principles that shall prevail in the government, except indeed a certain conformity at all times to the will of the majority, this wonder will vanish, and it will be seen how, among republicans themselves, there may be differences of moderate and extreme. Öne class of persons, for example, may desire a republic as an end, and for its own sake, that is, from a mere general conviction that this is the likeliest form of government to secure the prosperity of a nation; another class of persons may desire it rather as a means, in other words, from a conviction, that if this form of government were established, then certain favorite theories, that they are obliged in the mean time to keep in reserve, might be put in practice. It was precisely so in Paris on the 24th of February last. The effective revolutionists of that day were not a single compact body, feeling together and moving together; they were a great straggling multitude, of which one battalion marched far in advance of the rest. One portion of them desired a republic because they believed it would put an end to the corruption that existed, and secure better government for the future; but many desired it more expressly because they had predetermined in their own minds certain things that they would do when they had got it.

Of the moderate republican party, desiring the republic for its own sake, or at least for the sake of the general prospect of good that it held out, the natural leaders were Dupont de l'Eure, Arago, and other members of the small radical section in the old Chamber of Deputies.

Their chief organ out of doors was the National newspaper, edited by Marrast. To them was attached the generous and high-souled Lamartine. If not a republican before, in the precise sense in which they had been republicans, he had at least had democratic visions of his own; he had

Such was the moderate republican party, the recognized and traditional republicans of France, the successors and admirers of Armand Carrel, called from the position of a small minority of parliamentary radicals, to a supreme place in the eyes of the nation. To indicate the nature of their prepossessions and views, they may be called the political republicans, that is, the republicans, who having all along directed their efforts to the establishment of a republic as an end, were willing, now that the end was gained, to wait for the response of the people. Very different from these were the republicans that remain to be described. Confident that the republic would come, but weary of waiting for it, they had turned their attention, in the mean time, by way of preparation, to certain deep social questions, the settlement of which, they believed, would form the first and principal business of the republic whenever it should arrive. In the preliminary study of these questions, in the search beforehand for solutions, or even approximate solutions to some of them, they were already, they believed, serving the future republic, at the same time that they were procuring intellectual pleasure for themselves. Let others," they said, "strive in the political arena to bring in the republic; we will assist them when it is necessary to do so, but meanwhile we will rehearse our parts in an imaginary republic of our own. These were the social, or the social and democratic republicans, that is, the republicans, who in virtue of the zeal with which they had studied certain social changes that they thought would take place in a republic, had come to value the republic itself chiefly as a means for bringing about those changes. They had kept their promise, indeed, of fighting for the republic when the chance came, nay, they had fought with double ardor; but they had fought with doctrines in their heads, and when the fight was over, they stood aloof from their companions and attempted to dictate. "You have done your part," they said, "in achieving the republic; and now we will show you what to do with it." Let us examine a little more closely into the constitution of this party, and the nature of its

tenets.

66

The grand peculiarity of the party consisted, as all know, in certain sanguine pre

The father of these new social speculations in their most general form was Saint-Simon. It was he who, more than thirty years before, had thrown forth the idea, since become familiar, that a great crisis of European society was at hand, when not only should industrial interests assume the preponderance in politics, but the industrial mind itself should seize the administration; it was he that had set the example to theorists of a certain class, by proposing his ideal of society as it should be an ideal which consisted in a supposed hierarchical arrangement of all the members, on the one great principle that every man should be stationed according to his capacity, and paid in proportion to his services; and it was from him also, or at least from his school, that had emanated the proposition, so subversive in its purpose, for reducing all men to an original equality of chances, by abolishing the law of inheritance. Many of the Saint-Simonians, it is true, had abandoned their attitude of hostility to the existing régime, and, retaining their doctrines only as speculations, had even taken office as public functionaries. Others, however, maintaining their character as members of a church militant, had joined the ranks of the democracy, adopting the SaintSimonian creed for immediate service, and suiting portions of it to the popular taste. Of these the most eminent was Pierre Leroux, the founder of a philosophic sect called Humanitarians. His most distinguished pupil, and his assistant in the work of disseminating his peculiar democratic generalities among the people, was George Sand.

Tributary to this great stream of Saint-Simonian speculation, were the theories of the Fourierists. From them had emanated the doctrine of co-operation, as applied to industry; the idea of associating mankind universally into little communities, or phalanxes, by the operation of their natural inclinations and tastes, each community to form a united firm. or copartnership of various trades; drawing their provision from a common fund, and dividing the profits periodically among the members, according to the three categories of labor, capital, and talent; labor to share as five, capital as four, and talent as three, in the distribution. In this scheme of the Fourierists it will be observed, and particularly in its subordination of capital and talent to labor, there was, as compared with the scheme of the Saint-Simonians, a decidedly