horses neither go the pace nor eat the corn that ours do, and consequently their feet, like those of French horses, very seldom fail.

Respecting English servants in the establishments of German sportsmen, I found them generally well pleased with their situation, although I could not help pitying one of them who had the care of the stud of the elder Count Bassewitz; for, with very little knowledge of the language of the country, he had all German boys in his stables. As may be expected, awkward mistakes would sometimes occur. For example -the person of whom I am speaking, on his first arrival by Diligence at the neighbouring town, inquired the distance to his master's house. He was told it was two miles, and, out of respect to his master, and as night was approaching, he was offered the use of a horse.

"By no means," replied the trainer and jockey; "if it is only two miles, the walk will do me good after my journey." They were German miles, which made ten English ones!!

Of the agriculture of Germany at the period I allude to, I have only to observe that, steady to the soiling system-the system alone by which land receives a proper return from its produce-it so far met with my approbation. In other respects, it was behindhand with our own; but doubtless it has "marched" with the times, and would march double quick should our corn-laws be repealed. When at the races of New Brandenburg, however, I saw a great-an almost incredible-number of private carriages, drawn by four horses, which I was informed were the property of men coming under the denomination of our gentlemanfarmer or yeoman. In several cases, a foal or two would accompany the carriage, the dam or dams being in the team. This had a curious appearance, but there was something of a pastoral as well as primitive character about it that much took my fancy.

Of patrician agriculturists, I can give a little anecdote, showing, not so much to what extent they carried it, as to what account they may have turned it.

"You farm largely, I suppose?" said I to Count Bassewitz th younger, as we approached his mansion on horseback.

"Pretty well," he replied.

"How many cows do you keep?" resumed I.

"About three hundred and fifty," was the reply.

Seeing a large herd at a distance, I asked him if they were his.

He answered in the affirmative. Presently we met another herd on the road, consisting of about a hundred.

"Are these yours?" said I.

Looking at them for some sime, he replied, "I do not know;" but turning his head round to his groom, asked him the question.

"Yeau, Graff," said the groom.

On looking into one of his stables, and seeing three horses in bodyclothes, I asked to what purpose they were put.

"They are my steward's horses," answered the Count. Perhaps he could have distinguished the Count's cows from his neighbours.

On another occasion I was condoling with this sporting Count on the almost certain prospect of three hundred acres of his wheat being spoiled by rain, when he answered me à la John Bull, "I don't care a d-n, it is worth nothing; I am only sorry for the straw."

Repeal our corn-laws, and the count's note would be changed.

Agriculture, however, is held in high estimation by the Germans, as indeed it has ever been by all sensible persons. Being, as Columella says of it, closely allied to true philosophy, it has been the resource to which eminent men in all ages have recurred, in order to amuse the leisure hours of a retired life; and the case here alluded to, that of the Count and his cows, is only one amongst the many wherein the love of horses and hounds has become the ruling passion of the human mind, to the exclusion of some others.

I now bid adieu to German sportsmen. Had I no local attachment, and could speak their language, I should like to live amongst them, they so very much resembling my own countrymen in their pastimes and pursuits. I would do all in my power to encourage stag-hunting in their country, to which it is well suited; but, from the great size of its woods-although the late Count de Plessen kept foxhounds for more than fifty yearsit is not adapted to fox-hunting. The reverence of the people for the stork, is typical of their primitive character, to which I have already alluded. It would be considered a profane, if not an impious act, to offer violence to those birds, one of which had built its nest on a barn at Zierow, which was hailed as an omen of good fortune to come.

Baron Biel informed me that those birds generally quit his neighbourhood about the same period in October, and in proof of the distance from which they come, one is preserved in the museum at Rostock, near to which it was killed, having part of an African's arrow in its wing!

As I travelled over a great part of Germany, Ovid's typical allusion to the country often presented itself to my mind. He places her in two positions-sometimes as kneeling, or sitting in a dejected posture at the foot of her conqueror; at others, recovering herself under the mildness of the Roman government. The last-named position is best suited to her at present; but a foreigner, traversing some of the districts through which I passed, might be led to suspect either an exterminating angel had destroyed the first-born of the land; or, as was really the case, that a great portion of the population had been swallowed up by the devouring jaws of war. I travelled many miles occasionally without seeing a human face, or a cottage by the roadside; and, on one particular day, upwards of seventy with only observing one gentleman's seat. The absence of what are called countrypeople, however, is, in some degree, to be accounted for by their living in villages for security.

I visited the breeding stud of the King of Prussia, at Neustadt, and was most hospitably entertained by Mr. Strubberg, who had (and I hope still has) the management of it; and, as he spoke English well, there was no bar to the attainment of the information I was in pursuit of. The place, from the immense number of stables, and the houses for the persons attached to them, had every appearance of a village, and is situated in a very fertile country. In these stables I found more than a hundred and thirty entire horses, and the amount of the whole stud exceeded five hundred. The principal aim of this establishment being to breed the coach, the saddle horse, or the trooper; the stud-horses were either of pure or half Arab blood, which was found to succeed well when crossed with that of the country. Amongst the Arabs of pure blood, was Borak, or Pet, as he was called

when in England, and, next to a horse called Koylan, who was very perfect of his kind, he stood highest in estimation. I never saw an Arabian horse which pleased me until I saw Koylan. When in action, from the immense muscular powers which he displayed, he appeared to be half as big again as when standing still in his box-a sure criterion of his possessing the essential points for carrying high weight.

To show the estimation in which this horse was held, it may be stated, that a Prussian nobleman was engaged to dine with Prince Hardenburg, Chancellor of the State, and consequently not a person to be trifled with, and, moreover, they were strangers to each other, which rendered the forms of etiquette still more indispensable. The nobleman, however, found that if he kept his engagement with the prince, he must lose the sight of Koylan, and Koylan won the day.

Some time after my arrival in England, I was applied to by Mr. Strubberg to purchase an Arabian horse for this stud, if I could find one worthy of my notice. I consequently purchased Buckfoot, a horse of good character as a race-horse in India, and with a well-attested pedigree, of Mr. Thornbill, of Wadley, in Oxfordshire, for the sum of five hundred pounds. He was highly approved of, his stock being good, and all of his own colour, viz., silver gray on a black skin; but at the end of the second year of his being in the stud, he fell a victim, with eleven others of his kind, to a malignant disease that committed great ravages. Having ridden Buckfoot before I purchased him, he appeared to be the only Arab horse that I had ever come across, able to carry a man of twelve stone weight, at a quick rate over a deeplyploughed field in the winter. As for Borak, or any animal in his form, highly bred as he was, I should, for my own riding, as soon have thought of looking for that mysterious animal, his namesake, which is said to have carried Mahomet from Mecca to Jerusalem on his road to Heaven. Borak was soon after this period drafted from the royal stud. From the very high caste, however, to which he is said to have belonged, he ought to have had a trial in England.

I was amused with the appearance and costume of the superintendents of this royal establishment; but I must say, I considered the economy of it very well arranged with regard to the safety of the stock. In each stable was a master-man in blue and gold, laced cocked-hat, leather breeches, and jackboots, with a sword by his side, who had all the helpers under his command, and of whom there was one to every five horses. The head-man of the paddocks was also similarly attired; had been fifty years in his situation, and knew the pedigree of every horse, mare, and colt, as well as he did his own name. Guards patrol the stables and paddocks day and night to prevent accidents. Neither of those "master-men" seemed to think smallbeer of himself, but the office claims high antiquity. Even previously to the general use of horses, persons of skill and experience were selected to superintend the breeding and management of beasts of burden.

THE LITERARY PUBLIC AND THE REPUBLIC OF
LITERATURE.

"Quis leget hæc ?"

"Il y a bien souvent des choses obscures, qui vient du côté du lecteur."—

MENAGRANA.

some

THERE is a rule of logic, which in our times has become " thing musty," inculcating that every relative must have its correlative; the existence of the one calling forth that of the other, as necessarily, as the positive electricity of one pole induces negative electricity at the opposite one. Whether it be, that this rule was originally drawn on insufficient observation, or that the laws of nature, like those of man, may occasionally become obsolete, is not to the present purpose to inquire; but that the necessity is less stringent than has been commonly supposed, is matter of daily experience. Thus there is nothing more usually to be encountered (in other times and places besides the Carnival at Venice) than kings without subjects: actors, too, without audiences, representatives without constituents, and (miserabile dictu), sellers of all sorts of things without buyers to take their goods off their shelves, are by far too common. It is not, then, quite beyond the sphere of probability, that a time may be at hand, when the very useful correlative of authors, a concomitant race of readers, may be an unknown quantity, and absolutely extinct. Thus much at all events is certain, that in proportion as the number of authors has increased, the supply of readers has dwindled,-till, in these days of all but universal scribbling, it is much easier to produce and to print, than, with all the means and appliances of advertising at command, to assure for your book a mo men ention on the part of the public.

If in the time of Hippocrates, art was found to be long and life short, the disproportion between these particulars is by no means lessened, now that arts have multiplied, and every one has more to do than he can get through. Notwithstanding the actuaries, therefore, life is practically shorter than ever. It might then be inferred from the fact, alone, of every body, gentle or simple, having taken to the pen, and of the scribimus indocti doctique being so decidedly the order of the day, that the writers must have gone very far to supersede the readers. But without insisting on this, every one's personal experience should satisfy him that merely to skim the newspapers, and to cut the sheets of periodicals, is sufficient occupation for a man of ordinary industry and when he also remembers the length of the parliamentary sessions, the multitude of dinners, the preoccupation of balls, operas, and concerts, and the infinite obligations of a coloured and embossed paper correspondence, he must be very inapprehensive, indeed, not to entertain a painful anxiety for that once-flourishing corps, the "bene. volents" and the "gentles" of preceding centuries.

The advent of so fatal a catastrophe, of a consummation so devoutly to be abhorred, has, indeed, long been foreshadowed in the progressive downfal of folios, the disappearance of the long-winded race of Scuderis, Calprenedes, Richardsons, and other dealers in endless detail and ennui

en permanence; but of late years the process of abridgment, the pursuit of the concentrated and the quintessential, has gone on in a ratio so rapidly increasing, as must leave no doubt concerning the close approximation of the last term of the series, when the idea of reading will be numbered among the things that are no more; and when, no matter how scandalous a publication, or how noble its imputed author, no publisher will take it at a gift.

Before, therefore, this evil destiny is accomplished, and while a few specimens of readers remain to be examined, it may be useful to the antiquaries of remote generations, to place upon record some reminiscences of their nature and condition; and at the same time, the attempt may not be wholly supererogatory, as affording writers in the present day some valuable hints, for economizing the few readers they still possess, and for making, as the phrase runs,--the best of a bad bargain.

In the first place, let it be borne in mind, that even where reading and writing do "come by nature," the term " reader," as we long ago showed is not exactly coextensive with that of "man." It is by no means a novelty unsung in prose and rhyme, that many rare qualities are necessary, to qualify for a due discharge of the function. Even in oral communications (in which the looks, the tones, and the gestures of the speaker assist so powerfully in the due comprehension of the words) a certain share of understanding is necessary to prevent the wise speech from sleeping in the foolish ear; judge, therefore, how much more so, in the case of communications between the author and his reader, carried on through the instrumentality of the popular publishers. The relation between these parties is not of that commonplace, matrimonial kind, which renders every man a fit husband for every woman, provided their pecuniary resources are of a corresponding development. Money, indeed, may render any ignoramus disciple of common sense, the purchaser of a Plato, a Kant, or a Carlyle; but to read,—that is, to understand him, no: the case of such a man would be no better, than that of the celebrated nobleman who bought Mr. Punch for an agreeable companion. In the matter of readers, the ratio recipientis is every thing; and to relish these transcendentalists (understanding them on any terms, is quite out of the question), it is absolutely necessary (excuse the coarseness of the phrase) to be tarred with the same brush. If it be true that although one man can take a horse to the brook, two cannot make him drink (and the memory of man runneth not to the contrary), it is not less clear, that though one man may demonstrate a proposition, twenty cannot force the hearer to understand, much less to accept the consequence, when it stares him in the face.

To proceed from the known to the unknown, is a very pretty mode of arriving at truth; but in this, as in many other instances, c'est le premier pas qui coûte; and there are so many would-be readers in the world, to whom the difficulty of obtaining a starting-point is insurmountable!! It is for authors to take good care of this point; and let them set it down as a general rule, that something more than the providing the public with a good book, is necessary, in order to ensure either its utility, or its popularity.

Before proceeding further, it may be as well to dispel an illusion, Dec.-VOL. LX. NO. CCXL.

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