BEFORE the French invasion, what an old-fashioned state must Germany have been in! The Germans are naturally a most contented people. Contented with their mode of living, the daily round of their pursuits, with the state of things as they find them. There is no people of the same numbers, or possessing a territory of the same extent in Europe, who have shewn themselves so little disturbed by a thirst of foreign conquest and aggrandisement. If their neighbours would but let them alone, they would never meddle with their neighbours. If they had had the restless military ambitious disposition of the French, what a condition would Europe have been in! They have quarreled and fought enough in all conscience amongst themselves. That seemed to be a legacy of their feudal system, and of the jealousies arising out of the choice of their emperors, out of first one family and then another; with all the internal changes in the government of

different states which followed, as well as of the martial character and love of freedom inherited from their ancestors. But beyond this, on almost all occasions, the Germans, as a people, have been the invaded and not invading nation. The Romans of old, and the French in more modern times, have overrun them, and have raised in them little other spirit than that of resisting and expelling their enemies, and then being quiet again. Nothing can be more demonstrative of this than that, notwithstanding the more aggressive character of Prussia and Austria, which give almost the only exceptions to the character just drawn, by the partition of Poland and the absorption of Hungary and Bohemia by the latter power, (for the Italian territories are part of the old imperial Frankish dominions), yet, at the period of the invasion of the French revolutionists, almost as many petty dynasties existed in this country as there are days in the year.

In fact, before that period, the Germans seem to have lived pretty much as the Dannites did of old, "every man doing what seemed good in his own eyes." Little could have been the alteration in any thing for many generations. They must have lived on and on,-the bauers cultivating, the professors teaching and dreaming, the gentry hunting in the woods, and the ladies cooking and knitting, just as their ancestors had done for ages. By what we see now, they must have been in a very homely condition indeed. The manual arts must have been very humble; their houses must have been very old-fashioned, ill furnished, and none of the cleanest. Their clothes, what an antique cut they must have had! Their locks, door-handles, keys, all sorts of household utensils, their furniture, their carriages, their everything, how rude and homely they must have been! What a length their hair must have grown then; what a length their coats must have been then; what a length their pipes; what a length their dreams! Washing could not have been much in fashion; for, even now, they are amazed at the English; and in the inns they more commonly give you a wine-bottle and an oval pie-dish, instead of a good capacious ewer and basin, than anything else. Such a thing as a piece of soap, or a slop-jar, you never see in the bedroom; and if you ask for water and a napkin, to wash your hands before dinner at an inn where you are not staying the night, they

stare at you, and make a charge in the bill for it. As Diogenes said, on walking through the city, so would the old Germans have said, had they gone through a city in another country, “What heaps of things are here that I have no need of." Roads even they had none-they did not want them-they wanted only to stop at home, eat their sour kraut and sausages, smoke their pipes, and drink their beer.

The French revolution was like an earthquake, which shook the Germans from their slumbers. The French swept through this country like a hurricane, hurling down many little states, and tearing up old customs and laws. Buonaparte, with his code and his imperative spirit, cleared away whole mountains of antiquated things, and made wide space for the new. The French language, French dress, French manners, which had been before repeatedly introduced, from the days of Louis XIV. and in those of Frederick the Great, once more grew prevalent. In the plays of Iffland one sees striking pictures of the social condition and manners of Germany before the war. In Kotzebue, as striking ones of the changes introduced. He gives a very amusing picture in "Die Komödiant aus Liebe,"-The Comic Actress through Love,-of a family of the real old school, which has got one of its members inoculated with French court manners and notions, and is on the point of the son marrying a young lady who may be considered a representative of the change introduced, and existing since.

There is the Oberforstmeister, chief forest-master, Von Westen, a genuine old German; his wife a perfect pattern of the genuine old German wife. There are three brothers of the Oberforstmeister, who are thus described. The Colonel is a very jolly blade, who is as fond of laughing as Democritus, and to whom a bon-mot is as good as all the profound sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. His brother, the Court Marschal, is an author. He has written a great work on the shoulder-knot of the pages, and another on the art of arranging the play-table. He is now engaged on his great work on etiquette, in eight volumes, and in three hundred and forty chapters, one of which contains very learned rules for one's behaviour towards the royal lap-dogs. The third, the Criminal Judge, disputes upon life and death, and cannot bear that any one should yield to him out of desire of peace, which he

calls dying to avoid the trouble of eating. By the way he is a little rough. When nobody will contend with him, he treads on the tail of the sleeping dog, in order to hear him growl. Then he sets himself opposite, and growls at him again. There is a sister too, an old maid, a very natural character, who saves drowning flies, but likes war because so many of those monstrous creatures, men, get shot in it!

The son has given to his intended a description of the various characters of the family, and when they come on an appointed day to meet her and her friends at an hotel in the neighbouring town, in order to see how they like her, she receives them in succession, and dressing herself according to their several tastes, addresses them as the sister of the bride; in a style adapted to their individual notions, and so enchants them, that when they finally come to know who she really is, they are all equally delighted. The conversation with the father and mother may be given here, as presenting admirable notions of the mode of living and thinking in those days.

The son announces the approach of his father, whom he says, " is a true old German blade, to whom every thing new is so hateful that one dare not congratulate him on the new-year. Once after a severe illness he was afraid of becoming deaf, and it was recommended that he should be galvanized, but as soon as he learned that this was a new invention he chased the doctor to the hangman. Geography was once his hobby, but since he has found so many towns called Newtown, and more especially that the old towns have got new masters, he has cast away his Büsching and Gaspari." The youth retreats, and this scene passes between the lady and her maid

Eliza (the lady). Give me my spinning-wheel.
Lizette. You know nothing about spinning.

Eliza. That signifies nothing, if it only looks like it.

Lizette. Sing at the same same time," Hurre, hurre, hurre, schnurre, my wheel, schurre."

That is much too new.

Eliza. Heaven forbid! a song of Bürger's!
Lizette. I hear a pair of great jack-boots on the stairs.
Eliza. Draw thyself directly into the background.

Oberf. Your servant.

[Enter the Oberforstmeister.]

Eliza (very demurely). God greet you!

Oberf. Thank you, thank you. That is a brave greeting, which one hears seldom now-a-days.

Eliza. Because now-a-days one does not hear much that is good.

Oberf. Very true my dear girl, or Miss--I know not how you style yourself. Eliza. Maiden, hear I most gladly. I am a sister of the Frau Von Sternthal. Oberf. Whom my son is for marrying?

Eliza (rises). Ah! are you the Herr Oberforstmeister? have heard much good of you.

shakes him heartily by the hand),

Oberf. That rejoices me.

Permit me to seat myself.

You are welcome (she

Eliza.

I cannot bear to be idle.

Oberf. A hearty child, after the old fashion.

Eliza. I have been desired to point out your chamber to you. It is there, No. 5. Oberf. Chamber! right brave. A fashionable puppet would have said-room. Eliza. Shall I prepare you some warm beer, with honey in it?

Oberf. Do you understand that?

Eliza. It is my daily breakfast.

Oberf. What do I see and hear? Dear child, do you live thus after the good old fashion of our fathers?

Eliza.

Ah! it is my only trouble that I was born a hundred years too late.

Oberf. There you are right. In our days

Eliza. What manners! What morals!

Oberf. Sodom and Gomorrah.

Eliza. Youth thinks itself old

Oberf. And age makes itself young.
Eliza. The mothers go to tea—

Oberf. And the fathers to the club.

Eliza. The daughters wrap themselves in costly shawls

Oberf. And the sons cultivate whiskers.

Eliza. To prate French, is called being well educated.

Oberf. But when one asks, when did Doctor Martin Luther live, then comes the

answer, "Three hundred years before Christ."

Eliza.

People go to the theatre rather than to the church.

Oberf. People read Schiller rather than Gellert.

Eliza. They breakfast towards evening

Oberf. They dine about sunset.

Eliza. They occupy twenty rooms

Oberf. And are at home in none of them.

Eliza. Coffee steams up before every journeyman.

Oberf. Wine drives the noble juice of the barley out of doors.