German university town without seeing that these learned professors are by no means dreamy on these heads. The fixed salaries of German professors are generally small, and they are taught to look to the acquisition of a large class of hearers, for the augmentation of their income. But as this is not always effected, and in some departments of science or literature never can be, it is curious to see the manoeuvring and coquetting with the different governments on the part of professors to obtain an advancement of salary. Soon as a professor, by his books or his lectures, manages to obtain a pretty good reputation, and a great deal of this is often conjured up by themselves, by good friends practising "the caw me, caw thee," with mutual vigour in the periodicals—he then keeps a sharp look-out for a CALL from a university of some other state. This call can be, and no doubt often is, promoted and even elicited by the suitable suggestions of an influential friend in the right quarter. No sooner is the CALL obtained than care is taken to narrate abroad that Professor so-and-so has had such an one. Articles appear in journals and newspapers commenting on the great and splendid reputation which this learned professor has gained. How far and wide his fame resounds! and how little those living in the same place, and seeing the simple and plodding habits of the man, can have any adequate ideas of this gigantic renown, which swells against all the most distant borders of the country-nay, has become even European. The good people at home wonder at all this; but think, O that is the way-"no prophet has honour in his own country," and begin to feel very proud that their town has produced so great a man, and regret that they should lose him just as they have found out what a great man he really is. All this having duly operated, become the talk of the taverns and smoking resorts of the whole district, when the good man himself thinks that it has sufficiently penetrated to the ears of government, he then announces the fact himself. He humbly, and in duty, informs the gracious Prince of the call with which he has been honoured; expresses the gratitude he feels for all the Prince's former favours, how dearly he is bound to the honour and interest of the university, how it grieves him to leave it,— but his family is growing large, he looks forward to the expenses of educating and establishing his sons and as the new call offers him a higher remuneration; he fears, however reluctantly, that he shall be obliged to accept it. If the thing has operated to his satisfaction, he gets an addition to his salary, and stays. It is then as loudly sounded abroad that the gracious Prince, duly sensible of the great reputation and invaluable services of the professor, has refused to part with him at any rate, has augmented his allowance, and that nothing now will induce him to tear himself away from the midst of those beloved friends, citizens, and pupils, where all his affections lie. All this is very natural, but very curious and amusing. Nothing could maintain such a system for a single week in a country with the slightest freedom of constitution, speech, or pen; in a country which did not in every way, as well as this, as I have shewn, bind down the whole mass of subjects with the bonds of both fear and interest, bind them down every limb, and every faculty-bind down tongue, hand, pen, body and soul, present activity and future hope. That all these crossed and plaited bonds do not, however, prevent a very uneasy feeling in the country, I will now shew, and that in a peculiar and novel form. CHAPTER VIII. THE LIVING POLITICAL POETS OF GERMANY.* Liberty! ha! that sounds most wondrous fine! Ortlepp's Songs of a Day-Watchman. AMONGST the many curious phases which the present social and political state of Germany presents, there is none more singular than that exhibited in its political poetry. The system of paternal government is there so completely organized, and so beautifully carried out, that scarcely a restless motion can be detected in that great stalled ox―the Public, and if a groan escape it, it is so modulated by custom, that it may be mistaken rather for a low of too much rest and fulness, than an expression of pain. The police are so admirably distributed and posted in every city, village, street, field, lane, wood, and public-house; the censorship is so * Originally published in the Athenæum. alert at its station in every printing and newspaper office, that not a sigh can escape through the press. The great net woven by the German governments for the accommodation, as they call it, of that many-headed animal, the Public, has been so scientifically constructed that not one of those many heads but is caught in a mesh, and the whole living fry is dragged along with wondrous ease. Then, this great and heterogeneous fry is not only so cunningly netted, and scientifically dragged along, but it must be confessed, is so well fed, that he would seem to be a very unreasonable sort of fellow who would wish them out of their net at all. The learned are well supplied with professorships, librarianships, and secretaryships; the nobles with commands in army, and offices in cabinet and bureau; the middle ranks are all equally engaged and employed by these paternal governments in the thousand and never-wanting posts in the magistracy, the post-office, the police, the customs, the stewardships of forests and domains; nay, the very members of the common herd are universally distributed through all the more ordinary employments of justice-rooms, post-offices, railroads, travelling posts; as watchers of roads, of streets, of highways; as gens-d'armes, parish schoolmasters, scavengers, ay, as chimneysweeps, which are all in the patronage, or under the surveillance of government, that well may people ask, What do they want more? |