and seeks her strength, not in the culture of independent interests, but in the subjugation, incorporation, and regular reduction of all the elements to the level of the Hapsburg Absolutism-from this very reasonAustria, with her present constitution and her former traditions, will proportionally effect little in the solution of the Eastern question, despite of the favourable nature of her position.

This duty will devolve principally on England, who, because she has carried out her reform in a social point of view, and has got rid of her Hapsburger, has raised herself to the first rank among the Germanic nations, and advances as the representative of Germanity in Europe. Her interests, as well as the principles of state, and the nature of the people, throw the solution of this question into her hands. It may be a matter of regret that this part has been allotted to her and not to Germany, whose position should render the latter the protector of European liberty; but we must confess that Germany, from its own fault, is entirely incapable of effecting this, and should owe deep gratitude to the English, if they check the progress of Russia. If the people of the Grecian peninsula can be regenerated, this will not be possible by the inundation of a materially barbarous nation, even if united with them by a religious bond, but only by the intervention of a free nation, whose state is based on self-government, which promotes self-government everywhere, which protects and develops labour and property, and manages to open out and exploiter the national resources in every direction. After an impartial consideration, we must allow that the English, of all the great and governing nations whom Europe has seen during the course of a long history, are best adapted to govern foreign nations, dissimilar, or even opposed, to them in character. The simplicity of their political arrangements and principles of government, which they derive from home, and which are suited for every country and every nationality, because they care for protection of liberty, life, and property, and everywhere extend the spirit of self-government-the respect for foreign institutions, which the English suffer to exist without modification, while the French and the Russians are always eager for assimilation and transformation-the strength and manliness of their character; and, finally, their superiority in every description of productive cultivation,-all these qualities impart to their government, not the character of an oppressive despotism, but that of an institution fostering liberty, independence, and civilisation.

The English have succeeded in arousing peoples and countries of the most opposite character from the deepest sleep and political dissolution to new life, and in re-opening long-choked sources of prosperity and riches, without any sensible nation being able to deny them the testimony of the service performed to the land and people. A nation, however, which has so thoroughly exhausted life in all its phases, like the Byzantine, can only gradually rise from its slough by the influence of a race in every respect superior to it, by growing accustomed to new interests and their promotion, through the example of the in-flocking strangers, and by a limited self-government, that is to say, a government which is deprived of the power of destroying itself. In this sense will England have to develop her influence in the East, for her own sake and that of European

cultivation; and, in truth, things will follow this track, now that war has been once declared.

And as formerly the contest between England and France was not confined to the limits of both countries and their waters, but set the whole of Europe in motion; in the same way the struggle between Russia and England will not be fought out in the East, where the nations came into collision, but all Europe will be gradually drawn into the conflict. It is one of the most remarkable facts in recent history, that under a Napoleonic empire, a lustre after Trafalgar and Waterloo, an approximation-an alliance between England and France could become possible. It would be very foolish to believe in the eternal duration of such an alliance, to fancy that now the national antipathy existing for ages between the two nations, and increased during a long history, should be done away with, and both would work hand in hand, with disinterested love, for the propagation of civilisation. But it may be asserted, without danger, that the reconciliation between England and France must be a necessity, so long as the Holy Alliance exists: that is, so long as Germany only serves to strengthen the preponderance of Russia. The Napoleonic period of France, which accepted the contest with the whole of Europe, and from whose traditions, hopes, and apprehensions, the wise diplomacy of the Continent is liberating itself with such extraordinary slowness, was a sickly and spasmodic condition: it will hardly return-for even a new and successful French revolution, in which many still believe, would not augment the power of the state in such measure that France could again subjugate Europe-least of all will it do so under Napoleon III. France will have to accustom herself to a modest policy; she will have to become reconciled with her old foes, one after the other; and so long as Russia domineers over the German governments, she will be in alliance with England. If this condition is only transitory, still it will serve as the introduction to a new period in European history. The war between England and France is over: the war of England and Russia is commencing, and France can only take part in this war, while in the other it occupied a first rank. It is the great fact of our era that France has descended from her umquhile elevation.

For the Russians, as it seems, the time is past, when they could take advantage of the hostility subsisting between the two great Western Powers, in order to quietly increase their own strength. Russia has now to defend her own cause, and prove the claims, which she has asserted, to the dictatorship of Europe. With her the hic Rhodus, hìc salta, is now true. She must show whether her nationality and her government, in junction with the sympathies of a portion of the East, will be strong enough to carry out the war against the West. It was by no means probable that she would rush headlong into this contest, but it was equally impossible for her to withdraw from it without permanent injury to her reputation. Let the decision be deferred, let the Ministry, which still manages English affairs, build a golden bridge for Russia's retreat: the battle-field is chosen, the combatants are drawn up-they may hesitate in commencing the war, but they can no longer decline it.

As far as we are acquainted with Russia, her nation, and her history, we cannot doubt but that the only possibility of her enduring the issue July-VOL. CI. NO. CCCCIII.

X

of the struggle lies in her authority over Germany. As long as this unhappy state endures, her position is strong, if not to attack, still in defence. In Germany, therefore, the question must be decided; and if Germany persists in her present conduct, that country will again become the scene of sanguinary contests, in spite of all the nonsense about the impossibility of a war. In Germany the battles were fought which England waged against France: shall the struggle between East and West be decided on German soil, when the German nation only requires one decision and one deed to settle the question without bloodshed? But whenever German states entered into alliance with England or France, it was for the interest of civilisation that the alliance was formed, and the war, if for the moment ruinous, was followed by beneficial results. But what can induce Germany, who has not yet ended all her internal struggles, whose interests imperatively demand national unity and national policy, to join the Russians, or, which in the end would be the same thing, to promote their interests by her moral support, and so imperil her own future existence more and more?

the

The importance of the impending struggle for Germany lies in the fact that it places the antagonism of the national interests with those of the dynasties in the clearest light, and naturally gives rise to the question which of the two shall have the supremacy. The national interests imperatively demand an alliance with Western cultivation in opposition to the barbarism that menaces them from the East; the return of Russia to that position to which its cultivation and the character of the nation entitle it: the alteration of the present dependence of Germany on Russia, into that of the dependence of Russia, as the receiver, upon West as the donor; the settlement of the question, whether the masses must rule over cultivation, or cultivation over the masses. The position of the world and the weight of England render it almost an impossibility for Germany to join Russia, while it is bound by all the fibres of its existence to English civilisation; but, on the other hand, the interests of the dynasties cause it to appear equally impossible for the princes to desert the cause of the Tzar. The impending struggle will entail the settlement of this important question, through which an entirely new order of things may be anticipated.

This the dynasties appear to comprehend more clearly than the nation, whose more intelligent representatives do not yet understand the full extent of the conflict that the principles, which sought and did not find a settlement in Germany in 1848, have retired to the two ends of Europe, and here are opposed to each other. The struggle is inevitable, and no neutrality will be possible. But fruitless are the hopes that Russia will accept the intervention of the German courts, or be induced by them to withdraw or make any concessions. The brother-in-law of the Prussian king, the friend of the Emperor of Austria, would perhaps do so, but the Tzar of all the Russias cannot. The great politicians of Vienna and Berlin, who believed in the disinterested nature of the Russian assistance, must see this illusion vanish, and derive the conviction that the growth of power, which they have given Russia by their un-German policy, will turn directly against the interests of the West, which are based on a common foundation, and against those of their own countries, and bring into a clear and dangerous light the antagonism of the national and

dynastic interests. They must perceive, not merely that they have played into the hands of Sclavonism, but that they are now incapable of checking its progress, and it is only the folly which seems to be peculiar to the defenders of a bad cause that tries to make the Palmerston policy responsible for the extension of the Russian power.

The majority of the intelligent Germans still delude themselves with the hope that Austria will have the power and will to represent the interests of Germany in this struggle. This illusion, which is the consequence of the apathy originating from the shipwreck of 1849, may possibly entail a multitude of misfortunes on Germany; but it is the last illusion which Germany will have to overcome. It is superfluous to prove that it is an illusion. The Optimists would not allow themselves to be convinced by arguments: facts, we fancy, will soon prove the truth of our remarks.

Those who are free from this illusion-and their number will rapidly increase-will await the development of affairs with the greatest apprehension. For if the opposition against Russia is not sufficient inducement to the nation to collect in a firm bond and attain a new national life, then this hope will for ever be a chimæra, and those were right who prophesied the dissolution of Germany and the extension of neighbouring states by the appropriation of her various components. Then the Continent will sink for ages into a death-sleep, and the dictum will be most rapidly and fully verified-that "the history of the world is hurrying towards the West."

HITHER AND THITHER.*

THE late Mr. John Fitchett of Warrington, attorney-at-law, made it the great end and object of his life to produce as much blank verse, upon the subject of King Alfred, as would fill six closely-printed volumes, in royal octavo; and then died, leaving to his kind and talented executor the task, which he accomplished, of completing this awful labour in a forty-eighth book, of two thousand five hundred and eighty-five lines. We might seem to be quoting from some quaint fiction; but the facts are incontestable; for the mighty work (after two years had been consumed in passing it through the press) was actually published by Mr. William Pickering, Aldi discipulus Anglus, in the year of Grace 1842. It may be presumed that, with Mr. John Fitchett, this race of authors has become extinct. Men of talent and leisure can now find higher employment than writing forty-seven books of blank verse; and there are few persons so unoccupied as to read them. Our comfort as intelligent beings, as well as the proper economy of our time, is beginning to make it necessary that all books shall be kept within some reasonable dimensions. Three-volume novels must be abolished by act of Parliament; it might even be well to

Hither and Thither; or, Sketches of Travels on both sides of the Atlantic. By Reginald Fowler, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. London: Frederick R. Daldy, 10, Paternoster-row. 1854.

impeach Sir Bulwer Lytton; and, at a time when men are in the habit of merely adding their personal adventures to the facts of their predecessors, there is no class of books to which a statutory limit should be more rigidly applied than to Books of Travels. Travelling itself has undergone a revolution, and so must its records. Once it was otherwise. Though we have now been long accustomed to the useful Hand-books issued from Albemarle-street, there are persons still living who commenced their grand tour with Reichard's Guide; which opened, as they may remember, with one or two dismal chapters on the dangers the traveller was about to encounter, and the precautions necessary for avoiding them. He was recommended to have a servant who (not metaphorically, but literally) could bleed him. He was to have double-barrelled pistols, and was instructed how to carry them; but his valour was to be tempered with discretion, as he was informed that it was a very delicate question to determine when he should make use of them; and when he had escaped the dangers of the road, he was to pay as much attention to the locks of his rooms as to those of his double-barrelled pistols. In those primeval times, pages interminable could be filled with a narrative of way-side adventures. Every town that was passed through had its history and description, and every suspected imposition was treasured as an incident:

Wheresoe'er we turn'd our view,

All was charming, all was new.

From many places we were so long excluded, that they were re-opened to us as undiscovered countries. It is now very different. The road from London to Naples is as familiar as the pavement of Piccadilly. The Overland route to India is better known than the country which lies between the Mansion House and the East India Docks. Intermediate distances are annihilated. The United States are explored during the Summer holidays. Greece and Turkey serve for a vacation ramble. Abyssinia has become common-place; and the far-off Himalayas are taking customers from the Alps. Still, however, even on the most beaten track, there will always be something to be observed and reported upon. The question is how it may best be done. Writers such as Mr. Curzon and Sir Charles Lyell travel with a specific object, and we receive their works without too minutely inquiring whether the attraction is in the subject or the author. It is the same with the Tours of Mr. Laing, and those of our botanists in India and China. They have a speciality. But the traveller whose object is self, in its various forms of health, amusement, economy, or notoriety, must conform to the plan of the writer whose work is now before us, and select, from his Note-book, only its more interesting portions. In this way-though with a title rather more odd than suggestive-Mr. Fowler has produced a very agreeable volume. We do not mean to say that he has at once achieved perfection; but when he thinks anything worth describing, he certainly describes it well.

After some 66 free-hand" sketches of Madeira, Lisbon, Gibraltar, Cadiz, and Seville-to which we shall again advert―he crosses the Atlantic. In his own words, he proceeds "from Rome to New York;" and though we are not aware of any such direct communication between the harbour of the Ripa Grande and the commercial capital of America;—and find,