through the silence and darkness, as if from | the doors of the citizens of that town on heaven. These are the choristers of the holidays; but adds, that the fees made up Kreuzschule, singing their beautiful hymns on the outer gallery which surrounds the lofty tower of the Kreuzkirche. At daybreak the fine military band parades the principal streets playing, as a réveille, the venerable and noble carol which the church of Luther has sung from its infancy-the greeting of the angels to the shepherds. "Von Himmel hoch nun komm ich her Soon the huge deep-toned bell of the Kreuzkirche swings through the air with its long and harmonious vibrations; and the streets are filled with well-dressed people thronging to the churches. A little later you may see the beloved and revered Catholic Monarch of the Lutheran People, with all the members of his house, devoutly joining in the offices of a Church, which they have no other means of upholding, than through the warm charity of their hearts, and the spotless purity of their lives. The whole scene is at once religious, antique, and joyous, and realizes all our conceptions of a festival of the Christian church. But the reverence for Luther, and the adherence to the forms which he instituted, are still more unshaken in the country lying on the confines of the Saxon duchies and electoral Hesse. Here he still lives and reigns, in spite of Rationalists and Hegelianers, Papists or Pictists. A year or two ago some travellers stopped to dine at Eisenach, under the very shadow of the Wartburg. While they were at dinner, a choir of scholars, in their long black cloaks, came under the windows and sang several hymns. The travellers inquired whether it was any particular festival. "No," replied the waiter, "it is an ancient tradition, (eine alte herkömmliche Anstalt,) established by Dr. Martinus Luther. We give two dollars and a half a-year, and for that the poor scholars must sing twice a-week before our house; and so they receive their learning, (und dafür bekommen sie ihre Studia.") We are sorry we cannot do justice in English to the agreeable pedantry of the whole speech. This was one of the substitutes contrived by Dr. Martinus, for the monastic institutions to which he owed the learning which he afterwards devoted to their destruction. How many of the illustrious scholars of Germany have earned their education in this manner! Döring, whose edition of Horace was republished in London in 1820, and who was rector of a school at Guben in 1781, complains of having to sing before too considerable a part of his salary for him to discontinue the practice. In a small and thriving town called Ahlfeld, in the country of the Whitehaired Catti, whose blood is as unadulterated as their faith, the same travellers stopped in the inn at which the stouthearted Reformer slept, on his way to the diet of Worms. They were told that, shortly before, a schoolmaster and all his scholars had walked from Eisenach to see the house, which is preserved as it was in its pristine state, and that such pilgrimages were not unfrequent. This is a very German, as well as a very Lutheran part of Germany. In the bordering county of Hesse the manners of the peasantry are little changed. They are still clad from head to foot in the stout linen woven in their own houses, decorated with large metal buttons. Like all commercial cities, and especially seaports, in that age, Danzig presented a variety of costumes, and of striking national characteristics, of which we can now form no idea. Its situation was peculiarly favorable to this motley grouping. The march stone of civilization, as Madame Schopenhauer calls it-the point at which the Slavonic and Teutonic races blended-at which the more polished nations of the south and west met the semi-barbarians of the north and east, it was necessarily rich in varied and picturesque figures. Poles, from the splendid and haughty Starost-who looked as if the earth were not worthy to touch his yellow boot, with his running postmen, habited to their very shoes in white, with long ostrich feathers in their caps, streaming as they ran panting by the side of his carriage-to the half-naked Schimkys, who navigated the rude barges, laden with corn, down the Vistula, and the wretched Marutschas, flocking in troops to weed the fields around the city for the barest pittance; the rich Jews of Warsaw and Cracow in their stately oriental garb, and their wives in rich brocade, covered with gold chains, and pearls, and antique jewelry; Russian merchants, with their singular dress, rude Istwost schichs, and the ponderous bags of roubles carried behind them, attesting their ignorance of the commercial transactions common to civilized Europe; M. de Pons, the French resident, distinguished by his red-heeled shoes, and the English consul, Sir Trevor Correy, by "his splendid equipage, and his negro-boy Pharaoh ;"-these, and many more, were the foreign elements in this gay picture; while the adherence to the established dress of the various profes- good-natured impartiality with which Masions and classes among the natives, com- dame Schopenhauer describes the absurd pleted the motley variety. Among the and troublesome fashions, the follies and most remarkable of these were the physi- the abuses of her early days; she sees cians. Madame Schopenhauer's father was them with as clear and unprejudiced an eye the first to brave the prejudice against in- as if they were not surrounded with the oculation, which seems to have been as bright morning mist of youth. strong in Danzig, as, according to Goethe, it was among the free citizens of Frankfort. After reading her description of the doctors, we can easily imagine what a determined opposition they would give to "theory," "experiment," and the like. "My emancipation from the school-room," says she, "fell in the spring; balls, concerts, plays, &c., had ceased. A few late evening parties alone remained; the brilliant part of these was the two hours' long hot supper, under which the tables groaned. In Danzig, as every"The character of our Danzig physicians of were not thought of. To such a party, for the where, supper was the social meal; dinners that day left my father not the faintest hope of first time in my life, was I invited, as a confirmeffecting his purpose by their means. first place, they were all and several extremely teen years of age. With a frisure in the most In the ed, i. e. grown-up young lady, of scarcely fourold, and petrified in obstinate prejudices. Whe- fortunate state of preservation, I had alighted ther they had ever been young, where they had from my father's carriage; not a grain of powlived, and what they had done in their youth, der had fallen from the lofty tower, the broad I know not; but I can affirm, that up to the summit of which was crowned with a labyrinth twelfth or fourteenth year of my life, I had never of feathers, flowers, and beads; my new silk seen nor heard of a young physician. These gown rustled proudly over the large and stately reverend gentlemen enjoyed the title of excel- hoop. Holding the hand of the eldest daughter lency, and not only in their own houses and of the house, who had advanced to meet me, I from their servants, but in society generally; tripped lightly on my gold-embroidered shoes, only very intimate friends could sometimes ven- with heels at least two inches high, up two steps ture on a respectful 'Herr Doctor.' Their head leading into the room. Never had I been so was covered by a snow-white powdered full-handsomely dressed-never had my heart beat bottomed periwig with three tails, one of which so violently-the folding-doors were thrown hung down the back, while the others floated open-ah!" on the shoulders. A scarlet coat embroidered with gold, very broad lace ruffles and frill, white or black silk stockings, knee and shoe buckles of sparkling stones or silver gilt, and a little flat three-cocked-hat under the arm, completed the toilette of these excellencies. Add to this a pretty large cane with a gold head, or mermaid carved in ivory, upon which, in difficult cases, to rest the chin-and certainly every one will admit the impossibility of so much as thinking of an innovation in their presence." England, the leader in all such enterprises, seems to have mainly contributed to the spread of this great discovery in Germany. Goethe speaks of "travelling Eng lishmen" as the only inoculators in Frankfort; and the Dr. Wolf who introduced the practice into Danzig, "came from England recommended to Dr. Jameson." Madame Schopenhauer remarks, that "he was one of a race of physicians who just then came into fashion, but are now extinct; they set at defiance all the established rules of decorum and civility, and affected a simplicity of manners bordering on rudeness. Probably from contrast, they were the especial favorites of fine ladies and princes." "Ball-dresses," she continues, "properly so called, we had not, for the simple reason that the varieties of spider net, tulle, organdie, gauze, or whatever be their names, which now float like a mist around the graceful forms of young ladies, as yet reposed in the wide and distant domain of the possible. And yet we danced in our heavy silk company' gowns-danced with passionate glee; were sought, admired, and now and then a little adored; just exactly as our grand-daughters are at the present day. How this was possible, in the disguise we were, is still a mystery to myself."were more richly dressed, in other words more them its fashions, somewhat obsolete, indeed, heavily-laden, than their daughters. Paris sent and deformed by exaggeration; but still they were eagerly received. One alone formed an exception-rouge. The few ladies who dared to act in defiance of the opinion that it was sinful to wear rouge, were forced to do it with the themselves to a public rebuke from the pulpit." utmost secrecy, if they did not wish to expose "Our mammas It seems from Madame Pichler's Sketches, that the consciences of the Vienna ladies were less scrupulous, or their spiritual guides more indulgent. There, the same rule obtained as in Paris. Married women Was The description of our heroine's inocu-alone were permitted to wear rouge. lation, the preparation for it, the anxiety this a sort of symbol or affiche of the franand terror it occasioned, and its final suc-chises conferred by marriage? We have cess, is amusing enough. But we have not room for it. It is impossible to praise too highly the always wondered why the whole virtuous horror of artificial aids to beauty was directed against red and white paint. Ladies are delicate casuists, and we should like to see a treatise from some fair hand, on the innocence of a "front," the venality of a tournure," and so on, through all the gradations of criminality, to rouge. In what part of the scale patching would come, we know not. Madame Schopenhauer says nothing of the attempts of the clergy of Danzig to repress this practice, though nothing could be more felonious than the animus it displayed. "Another fashion found great acceptance with our fine ladies, so absurd that I should have doubted the possibility of its existence, did I not remember the long flat little mother-of-pearl box, with a looking-glass in the lid, which often served me as a plaything. This all ladies carried about them, that whenever a patch fell from its place, the void might instantly be filled. These little bits of so-called English plaster were cut in the forms of very small full and half moons, stars, hearts, &c., and were stuck on the face with a peculiar art, so as to heighten its charms and increase its expression. A row of moons from the very smallest gradually crescendo to larger, at the outer corner of the eyelid, was intended to add to the length and brilliancy of the eye. A few little stars at the corner of the mouth, gave a bewitching archness to the smile; one in the right place on the cheek, set off a dimple. There were larger patches in the form of suns, doves, cupids, &c., which were called assassins." we now turn from with dizzy eyes. The only merit of a dancer of the present day, seems to be the power of spinning round like a frantic Fakeer. We rather wonder that some of the venerable chroniclers of German manners have not moralized upon it, as a symptom of the change which seems to strike them more than any other-the incessant demand for novelty and excitement; and the no less constant weariness and disappointment consequent upon it. Things which were formerly events, are now every-day occurrences, and pleasures which were formerly looked forward to for months with beating hearts, are now regarded as childish, insipid, and tedious. And if Germans find cause to complain of this rapid and wearing action of all the wheels of life, what shall we say of our vast and tumultuous metropolis, compared to which the capitals of Germany are quiet, homely, and stationary? But as the distance between given points may be equal, though the point of departure is different, we have no doubt the change is quite as great in Germany as in England. We remember to have heard or read of nothing at home like the absolute monotony in which, according to Jacobs, childhood was passed in Gotha; then, no doubt, a fair specimen of the smaller cities of Germany. Such a state of ex"Every thing," continues Madame Schopen-istence would now be thought fit only for a hauer, "in domestic, as well as in social life, wore a different air from what it now wears, even the greatest joy of youth-dancing. One of the elegant dancers of the present day would hardly bear the tedious Vandalism of a ball of that age for an hour; and no doubt they will pity their grandmothers in their graves when they hear that no dancing soul among us dreamt of such a thing as waltz, gallopade, or cotillon. These dances are all of south German origin, and had not yet found their way to the shores of the Baltic and the Vistula. Our northern popular dances were the Polonaise and the Mazurka, and are so to this day. Then, as now, the ball opened with a Polonaise. But what a difference between that stately and graceful dance, "The life of the middle classes," says Jacobs and the lazy, slouching walk which has usurped its name! To understand what I mean, it is in his Personalia, 66 was then very simple. My necessary to see it danced by Poles. Our trains father's income was precarious, and we grew having been carefully fastened up by our moth-up under restraints which would appear melers, an Anglaise followed, then Mazurka, qua- ancholy and oppressive to children of our class. drilles, and lastly, minuets, till an abundant hot But the amusements to which the children of supper, which neither old nor present day are accustomed, were unknown young disdained, was served. After this, dancing was resumed to those of a former; and they missed not with fresh vigor, and continued till morning which keep asunder the members of a family, what they did not know. Spacious buildings, were rare, and those who had them, used them Madame Pichler, in her description of a only on rare occasions. Parents and children Vienna Carnival ball in the last century, la- were generally together in one room; the children worked and played under the eyes of their ments over the disappearance of the grace-parents, and a great part of education consisted ful and decorous Allemande, (as the slow in this companionship. Filial obedience, the waltz of that time was called all over Eu- beginning and foundation of all domestic and rope,) which has degenerated into the whirl civil virtues, was a matter of course, and parents broke." penal colony, or a bettering house. If we had not good evidence for it, we should be unable to believe that children grew, prospered, and were happy in a life so entirely gray upon gray, (to use an excellent Germanism.) We forget what a glow and brightness are diffused over all things by the sunlight of youth; how the imagination of childhood (if not blunted by excitement) can give shape, color, life, meaning, to the most ordinary objects, and find, not "sermons," but romances and dramas, in stocks and stones. the were the better for the constraint which the presence of their children imposed on their words and actions. The respect which they (with few exceptions) inspired, spared parents much admonition, teaching and preaching-the cheap but feeble substitute for practical education. So at least was it in our house. Company was hardly thought of; at the utmost, families assembled after afternoon service on Sundays; the women to discuss the sermon, the men to talk of business or news, or, if they had nothing to say, to play backgammon. Family festivals were rare. On New-Year's day and birthdays, relations wished each other joy; the boys generally in a Latin or German speech, got by heart. Presents were not thought of. Those for children were reserved for Christmas eve, when the tree, with its sweatmeats and angels and wax-lights, gave an appearance of festal splendor to things which were, in fact, mere necessaries. Bethlehem, with its manger and crib, was indispensable; and this sacred spot was surrounded with a blooming landscape, gardens, and ponds, which my father had for weeks employed his evening hours in decorating with his own hands. He thought his labor richly rewarded on the long expected evening, by our delight and admiration. The narrative of St. Luke, which it had not at that time occurred to any body to regard as a myth, was always read. The joyous recollection of this pious festival, caused me and my brothers to retain the same custom with our children." Goethe's description, in the work before quoted, of his grandfather, is a charming picture of contented monotony in advanced life. Every day the same business was followed by the same simple pleasures, in exactly the same order. In such a life, disappointment was scarcely possible. His expectations were extremely moderate, and he knew exactly what he expected. "In his room," says Goethe, "I never saw a novelty. I recollect no form of existence that ever gave me to such a degree the feeling of unbroken calm and perpetuity." Yet this was in the busy and wealthy city of Frankfort, on the high-road of Europe. Even the tumult and luxury of the capital of the empire did not materially disturb the tranquil and regular habits of its citizens. Madame Pichler gives the following description and summary of the life of a Vienna employé in her youth: "Between sixty and seventy years ago, the income of a K. K. Hofrath, (an imperial Conseiller de Cour,) who generally had, besides his salary, official rooms, enabled him, with good management, to live in a respectable manner, keep an equipage, and still fay by something yearly. He and his wife thus lived in tranquil comfort, and in the enjoyment of competence; they settled themselves in the dwelling which cost them nothing, as handsomely as was consistent with an accurate calculation of their means, and in twenty or thirty years died in the midst of the same furniture, pictures, etc., with which they had first adorned it. The effect of this unchangeable plan of life on the character and happiness, was incalculably different from that produced by the mobile, striving, allattempting, all-overturning existence of the present generation, both for good and for evil. And if we hear those times spoken of as perruque, and reproached, not unjustly, with routine, Phillisterei, etc., I must still think that the absence of the continual exciting movement which now prevails, favored the possibility of deep thought and steady feeling; the character, though more one-sided and narrow, had a depth and consistency which is now rare." In all Madame Pichler's personages of the middle class, we find the contentment, with the uniform and inflexible recurrence of the same amusements, which characterizes children. Children in a natural state prefer an old book, a story which they have heard a hundred times, to any thing unaccustomed. The narrator who thinks to please them by various readings and new fioriture, finds himself completely mistaken. At the smallest departure from the authentic version, he is called to order, and brought back to the established form of the history, every deviation from which is disappointment. So it was with the amusements of our ancestors. Each holiday had its appropriate and obligé diversion, its peculiar dish or confection, its fixed form of salutation. To alter these was to invert the order of nature. Surprises were unwelcome. People liked to know exactly what was coming-what they had to see, to feel, to say, and even to eat. We have already noticed the broad line of demarcation which formerly existed between the several classes of society. It was the object of the legislature of every country to perpetuate this; and one of the expedients most commonly resorted to, was the enactment of sumptuary laws. By no class of rulers were these more rigidly maintained than by the municipal aristocracies of free cities. Even in Madame Schopenhauer's youth they were still in full force. "At the weddings of the wealthiest and most respectable artizans, an officer, whose especial business it was, invariably presented himself in full dress, with a sword by his side, to count the guests, and see that they did not exceed the prescribed number, and to ascertain that the bride wore no forbidden ornaments, such as real pearls. But the fear of being ridiculous in the eyes of their neighbors and equals had still more effect than the law. No woman of that class thought of wearing the hoops, the richlytrimmed trains, or the high head-dresses of the ladies." We find the same remark in Madame Pichler's description of the Vienna citizen [vestiture (lehensbrief) required the claimof the same date. ant to drink out (vel quasi) the great feuda. "The wealthy saddler, who was supposed to tory goblet, (lehensbescher), as a proof that be able to leave each of his three sons thirty he was a German nobleman and an ablethousand florins, lived in a few simply-furnished bodied warrior. In that principality, even rooms, surrounded by his family and journey-about fifty years ago, there were no glassmen, ate well, but without elegance, dressed the es holding less than half a schappen, (a same, and placed his pride in never affecting half bottle.) any thing above his station. For this reason records the feats of two sisters, who drank The Homburger chronicle he never allowed his wife to wear any dress worn by women of the higher ranks, no hoop, thirty-two schappens at a sitting, and then no open gown-that is, a gown with folds walked quietly to their home, half a league hanging from the shoulders and ending in a distant." sort of train. These were peculiar to ladies. The Ecclesiastical Courts were distinThe citizens' wives wore those folds confined guished for this jovialty. It was a canon at the waist by a black silk apron, and ending of Mainz to whom the world was indebted at the feet. The worthy citizen's rigor was so great, that he once hacked to pieces a beau-for the admirable excuse, that "there was tiful lace cap which his wife had made in secret, too much wine for the mass, and too little that she might see it was not the cost, but the for the mills." pretension, of such luxury which he objected. to. There is still a good deal of drunkenness among the lower classes in some parts of "So thought, so lived, the Vienna tradesmen Germany, although not nearly so much as sixty or seventy years ago. Their journeymen in England. Among the higher classes it ate with them at the same table; the discipline, though paternal, was strict, and often enforced is very rare in both countries. The beeron both children and workmen with the stick drinking of the students is not to be classor the strap. Rough words and coarse jokes ed with ordinary intemperance. It is part formed the scanty conversation at table. of a system, (the studenten wesen,) and "On Sunday, after the huge and indispensa-whatever their admirers at home or abroad ble roast was dispatched, the party separated may tell them, not the best part. It is difto their several amusements. The master and ficult to understand the enjoyment of pourmistress went to church to hear the benediction, ing down the throat gallons of beer, neither pleasant to the taste nor exhilarating to the spirits. But "sic Dii voluerunt". so the Burschen have decreed. It begins by being a fashion, and ends by being a want; like its kindred abomination-smoking. which they received with great devotion, and then returned home. The Sunday clothes were now laid aside. The master went with a few neighbors to a grocer's shop, and there indulged rather freely in an Italian salad and foreign wine; while the wife regaled herself and her gossips with excellent coffee served in a massive silver pot. At eight or half past eight the master came home, somewhat more excited than usual, joked a little with one of his pretty neighbors, gave his wife a hearty smack to appease her rising jealousy, and ended the Sunday with the same homely simplicity as he began it." Madame Pichler, who, as we have remarked, is apt to insist on the degeneracy of the age, laments over the galloping speed at which Austria has joined in the mad race after novelty and change. This will surprise our readers, who are accustomed to regard Austria as the drag on the wheel of European life. We should have thought the easy contented character of the people, and the insurmountable barriers which surround the higher ranks, would have kept down all ambitious imitations and restless change. In justice to the present age, upon which it may be thought we, as well as these gossips, are rather hard, we must express our surprise that none of them have said any thing about the astonishing decline of drunkenness in Germany. "Not a century ago," says Carl Julius Weber, "German sotting (saufen) was proverbial. Different In some respects we venture to think the towns and cities claimed precedence in it. revolution is not alarming. Madame SchoTo drink more palatino, was to get dead penhauer's description of the precautions drunk. The collections of antiquarians of the police on the Austrian frontier, forare full of drinking cups, and horns not ty years ago, is wonderfully exact to this made to stand. Trink alle aus, was the day. You are still detained half an hour, motto of the Oldenburger Wunderhorn. at the least, while the accomplished funcThe last Count of Gorz used to make his tionary is spelling out your passport; you children drink at night, and, if they want- are still asked your religious confession, ed to go to sleep, he grumbled at their de- the maiden name of your grandmother, generacy, and doubted if they were his and other particulars not less important to own children. The Hohenlohe deed of in- the interests and safety of the Austrian VOL. II. No. II. 11 |