most ostentatious parade of the national cockades that flash across our eyesight.

The fate of this cockade has been a very strange one, by the way, in latter years. The red, black, and gold combination was long formally proscribed in universities, as deleterious and dangerous, and typical of the forbidden Burschenschaften: it was worn only in secret and by stealth, by recalcitrant would-be revolutionary students. All on a sudden it has been raised on high in flag and banner, waving not only in revolutionary procession, but from palace walls, and tops of public buildings. The cockade has not only been authorized, but enjoined; and in a late reactionary movement in Berlin, -when, out of jealousy and spite towards a central power, that had chosen its executive head from southern and not northern Germany, a considerable public feeling was exhibited against the imperial national flag, and in favour of the Prussian colours exclusively-the government,

or

rather the king himself, was obliged, for fear of an outbreak of the students, to command the resumption of those colours in flag and cockade, which, but a little while ago, he himself had proscribed. The pride of the young soi-disant heroes at being openly able to parade that symbol which they cherished only heretofore as fancied conspirators, may be easily conceived; and now these boy-men find that they can dictate to the princes of the earth, not only upon the matter of flags and cockades, but upon matters of far graver note, there is no knowing to what height of presumption this pride may not still further lead them.

If, now, we look around us to note the general physiognomy of the people, we shall find many other little traits, that mark these revolutionary times in Germany. The common people, more especially upon the Rhine, and in many parts of the duchy of Badenthe common people, formerly so smiling, so ready, so civil, perhaps only too obsequious in their signs of respect, have grown insolent and rude: ask them a question, and they will scarcely deign to bestow upon you an answer: in many instances they will shrug their shoulders, laugh in your face, and then

turn their back upon you. On the contrary the public officials, the government beamten, have considerably lowered that arrogance of tone for which they formerly possessed a not unmerited evil repute, and will answer your inquiries with civil words and smiling faces. Such, however, is the natural see-saw movement of manners in revolutionary times, in the lower and lower-middle classes; and as far as regards the latter effect of revolutionary movement, no tourist in Germany will be disposed to complain of the change.

Over the middle and upper classes, at the same time, there has fallen a very visible gloom. That uncertainty of the future, which is proverbially far more difficult for moral strength to bear than any certain evil, has had the very evident effect, to the least observant eye, of depressing the spirits of "all manner of men." The hope appears to exist only in the theoretical fancies of the excited liberal politician, the enthusiasm only in the wild dreams of the declaiming student. The prevailing impression is one of all the dullness of doubt and the stupor of apprehension. Talk to people of the state of the country, and they will either shake their heads with a grunt, or openly express their fears about the future: and those fears are none the less active because they are so vague -none the less depressing because they wear the mysterious, visionary, and consequently awful form which the dim distance of complete uncertainty imparts.

Another change, again, in the manners of the people, is in the politicizing spirit, so uncongenial in times gone by to the Germans, which, in most great towns, seems now to have so completely absorbed them. It is to be found not only in the low clubs, and in the insensate pothouse debates, but in the eagerness to crowd round the revolutionary addresses, which are posted by ultra-liberals at street corners, in the anxiety to read the last revolutionary disquisition of the new radical journal, in all its glory of large sheet and full columns, which has taken the place of the innocent and patriarchal little Volks-blall, that was before the study and delight of the humble burgher; and in the mali

cious enjoyment with which the political caricature, railing at prince or men in power, is studied at the shop window, and the feverish importance that is attached to it.

All these characteristic signs and changes will meet the eye of the tourist if he even go no further than the confines of the Rhine, and the old city of Cologne. There at once is that depression visible to which allusion has already been made. It is visible in the aspect of the fallen halfruined shopkeeper, of the disconsolate master of the hotel, and, above all, of the anxious labourer upon the progress of that mighty work, the completion of which evil times seem again to render an impossible task-the Cologne cathedral. Funds for the further progress of the great undertaking already begin to fail; and these are not times to seek them from the munificence either of states or private individuals. The Baumeister, who has spent the greater part of a life upon the wonderful task of working out the completion of this miracle of Gothic art,-whose whole soul has been concentrated upon this one object, the breath of whose very existence seems to depend upon the growth of this foster-child of his fancy, for which alone he has lived,-now shakes his head, like the consumptive man whose presentiments tell him that his last hour is nigh, and who despairs of escaping his doom. The revolutionary wind has blown like the plagueblast over the land: he feels that his hand must soon fall powerless before the neglect, or even ill-will of the new-born age of revolutionary liberty, and that he must disperse abroad that band of artist-workmen whom he has fashioned and educated to the noble work, and whom, in their completeness of artistic intelligence, none perhaps, in future years, may be able again to collect together. The cathedral, however, has proceeded to a certain point, at which the whole interior may be enclosed; and there, in all probability, the progress of the works will be checked for the present. The consecration of the new part of the building, in this state, has already taken place; but, even in these ceremonies, the revolutionary modern spirit of Germany has not forgotten to assert its influence; the deputation

sent to them by the Prussian Assembly refused to join to itself a Catholic ecclesiastic; and yet it was seriously proposed at the same time, by the arrangers of the ceremonial programme, that the monarchs who were expected to be present upon the occasion should mount upon the roof of the cathedral, and there take an oath to preserve the unity of Germany, which oath was to be blessed and ratified by the Pope, who was to be invited to come over to Cologne for the purpose. The Pope has had other deeds and other revolutionary tendencies to bless or to ban in his own dominions; but this little trait, culled from the first programme of the consecration of the Cologne cathedral, may be taken, at the same time, as a slight specimen of the wild poetico-political freaks of the theoretically revolutionizing Germany.

Let us wend our way a little further. Without attempting to take any precise survey of Prussia and Austria, the continued fermenting and agitated state of which countries is the topic of every-day newspaper notice, and consequently without venturing upon any description of the poisonous and ulcerating sores continually breaking out upon the face of the fair and once healthy cities of Berlin and Vienna, the ignorant tumult of the parlia mentary meetings assembled in them, the noisy fermentation of the ultrarevolutionary and republican clubs, the symbolical but dangerous demonstrations of hot-headed students and other unripe and unquiet spirits, the continual struggle and clash of parties accusing each other reciprocally of utterly subversive or counter-revolu tionary and reactionary tendencies, and the constantly threatened danger of fresh convulsions, with further ruin to trade, and consequently to the wellbeing of the country at large-without, then, painting to ourselves a wellknown and notorious picture, let us cast our eyes over the outward aspect of some of the smaller states.

Nothing, in the first place, can be more uneasy and disquieting than the appearance of the Duchy of Baden. In Heidelberg, ultra-revolutionary students have come to a total schism with their moderately and vaguely revolutionary professors; and it is at present difficult to see how any understanding is to be effected between

teacher and scholar so as to render the university a seat of learning of any other kind than that of subversive principles. In this part of Germany the revolutionary fermentation appears far more active, and is far more visible in the manner, attitude, and language of the lower classes, than even in those hotbeds of revolutionary movement, Austria and Prussia. To this state of things the confinity with agitated France, and consequently a more active affinity with its ideas, caught like a fever from a next-door neighbour's house, the agency of the emissaries from the ultra-republican Parisian clubs who find an easier access across the frontiers-not without the cognisance, and, it would now seem, as was long suspected, with the aid also of certain influential members of the Provisional Government of France -and the fact also that the unhappy duchy has been, if not the native country, at least the scene of action of the republican insurgents Hecker and Struve-have all combined to contribute. It is impossible to enter the duchy and converse with the peasant population, formerly and proverbially so peacefully disposed in patriarchal Germany, without finding the poison of these various influences gathering and festering in all their ideas, words, and actions. The prostration of spirit, generally speaking, among the middle and trading classes, the discouragement, the uncertain fear, are even still more apparent here than on the lower Rhine; and the gloom appears the greater, from all we see and hear, the higher we mount upon the social ladder. The proud and exclusive German nobility, who have so long slept cradled in the pride and exclusiveness of their courtly prerogatives and privileges, now waken to see an abyss before and behind them, a precipice at every step. How far they may have merited the terrors of utter ruin to their fortunes as well as their position, by their long contemptuous exclusion from their intercourse and society of all who had not the magic key to secure admission to them, in the shape of the privileged particle denoting nobility, whatever was the talent and the worth of the despised unprivileged-and to this state of things even up to the present day,

there have been very few exceptions at German courts, and much less in German high Society-how far they have themselves prepared the way for their present position, by their wilful blindness to the progress of ideas in the world, are not questions to be discussed here. Their present apprehension and consternation are very apparent in every word and action, however much the younger generation, and especially those of it who may be military men, may bluster and talk big, and defy; they fly away to their country-houses, if they have them, économize, retrench, and pinch, in preparation for that change in circumstances and position which seems to be approaching them like a spectre. The little capitals of Carlsruhe and Stuttgardt, with their small ducal and royal courts, certainly never exhibited any picture of great animation or bustle even in their most flourishing times; but the gloom that now hangs over them is assuredly very different from the peaceful, although somewhat torpid quietude in which they heretofore reposed: their dulness has become utter dreariness; their lady-like oldmaidish decent listlessness a sort of melancholy bordering upon despair. Princes and people look askance at one another: people suffer; and princes think right to retrench. The theatres of these little capitals are about to be closed because they are considered to be too expensive popular luxuries in the present state of things, and onerous appendages to court charges. Sovereigns cut down their households and their studs ; and queens shut themselves close up in their summer residences, declaring themselves too poor to visit German watering-places, and support the expenses of regal toilette. In Stuttgardt these symptoms are all peculiarly visible. Spite of the long-acquired popularity of the King of Wurtem berg, as a liberal, well-judging, and rightly-minded monarch towards his subjects, the wind of revolution, that has blown in such heavy gusts in other parts of Germany, has not wholly spared that kingdom; and before accomplishing the intention attributed to him of retiring, in order to avoid those revolutionary demands which, in spite of his best intentions, he de

clares himself unable conscientiously to meet, the present king puts in practice those measures of retrenching economy, which add to the gloom of his capital and the disconsolate look of the courtattached and commercial portion of his subjects. It is scarcely possible, however, to suppose that the King of Wurtemburg can seriously think of abdicating in favour of a son whose youthful actions have always rendered him highly unpopular, all the more so as he is married to a Russian archduchess, whose birth must render her suspecte to the liberals of the day. Another cause, which contributes to the melancholy and deserted air of these capitals of the smaller German courts, is the retirement of the ambassadors and diplomatic agents of the other German courts, who, if not already recalled from their posts, will probably shortly be so, to meet the views of German unity, which needs but one representative in common. This unhappy look of the little German capitals is one of the most melancholy signs of the times in these smaller states. In Hanover and Brunswick the apparent resolution of their present rulers to resist the power of the new Central Government of would-be united Germany, occasions agitation, uncertainty, and fear, which make themselves as fully apparent in outward symptoms as elsewhere. Bavaria alone appears to preserve an exceptional position. Bavaria also has had her revolution to be sure; but, strange to say, the revolution was occasioned by the manœuvres of the anti-liberal, or, in that country, Jesuitical party, against the liberal tendencies of a wild woman's influence over the mind of the king; and, singular as was the nature and cause of this revolution, singular has remained the situation of Bavaria, quiet, unagitated, and seemingly contented, in the midst of the convulsive hurlyburly passing everywhere around it.

After this cursory survey of the outward aspect of a great part of Germany, let us turn our eyes to Frankfort, the present central point of all interest and attention; for there sits the General National Assembly; there is to be brewed by whatever recipe, or in whatever manner it may be, that fancied panacea for all evils, the

Union of Germany: there, then, we may probably best learn what revolutionizing Germany would be at, or, at all events, best see the means employed to arrive at something like a consummation. Let us first look at the cooks at their work; and then taste the nature of the brew, as far as their political culinary efforts have gone to "make the medley slab and good."

Let us enter, then, that plain, dry, and harsh-looking circular building, which is the Lutheran Church of St. Paul; it is there the Assembly holds its sittings. The interior arrangement has been fashioned entirely upon the plan of the French Chambers. The President's tribune, the lower tribune of the orator before it, the gradually rising and diverging amphitheatre of seats for the members, are all entirely French in their plan. Completely French also, and with similar desig nation, is the political shading of the members according to their seats; the Droit, the Centre in its variety of progressing nuances, and the Gauche and Extreme Gauche have the same signification in the German Assembly as in the French. Nor does the resemblance cease here; the constitution of the Assembly, in its various elements, has a strong affinity to that of the present French National Assembly. The majority of the members are evidently concentrated in the different shades of the Centre. The old conservatives of the right have but little influence, except as a make-weight against the ultra-liberals. The centre consists chiefly of the old liberals, and opposition leaders in the different chambers of such of the German states as possessed constitutions of one modification or another-men who have now, in turn, in their position towards the ultra-revolutionary spirits, that tendency which may be called liberal conservative: they are the men of progress, who, in the present hurricane of revolutionary ideas, endeavour to guide the helm so as to avoid the very rocks they have had so great a hand in raising, and to restrain the very waves which their own breath has so greatly contributed to lash into fury! They are the Odillon Barrots, and suchlike old liberals of Germany. They find that the task before them is

one of far ruder difficulty than in their theoretical fancies they had first imagined; and many of them there may be, who cannot but acknowledge to themselves, however little they may be inclined to acknowledge it to the world, that the business of a vast nation is not to be conducted by inexperienced heads, however talented, however well they may have conducted the business of a counting-house, or taught theories from a professor's chair-in fact, that theory and practice will not walk hand in hand without a long process of amalgamating experience. The left is occupied by the men of revolutionary utopics and crude subversive opinions; and in its extreme by the ardent republicans and tribunes of the people, whom the revolution has caused to spring out of the political soil like mushrooms. These are the men who complain, in speech or in journal, that the Assembly is wasting its time in vain vapid disputations-an accusation, by the way, by no means unfounded—and yet themselves, whenever they mount into the tribune, indulge, more than any others, in declamatory would-be poetical phrases, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," and containing not one practical idea, or feasible proposal. They seem to think that, by ringing the changes upon certain pet words, such as patriotism" and*“ nationality," they have said great things and done great deeds for the good of the country; and, as far as such clap-trap efforts to gain popular applause go, they may fairly be said to obtain their ends. In this again they have a strong "cousin-german" resemblance with the French ultras in a similar positionand no less so in their endeavours to overawe and browbeat the majority of the Assembly by noisy exclamations, and even uproarious riot. The German ultras, however, have succeeded, to a great extent, in a manœuvre in which their French brethren have failed, although supported in it, at first, by a certain reckless member of the Provisional Government-that is to say, in packing the public galleries with acolytes, said to be paid, who, while they applaud all ultrarevolutionary speeches "to the echo," endeavour to put down the conservative orators by tumult, or violent

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hissings, and are of course vaunted forth in the ultra-liberal journals as "the expression of the will of the nation." Be it said, at the same time, en passant, that this manner of applauding by the clapping of hands, and expressing disapproval by hissing, has been borrowed from a habit of the members of the Assembly themselves, which has certainly a very unparliamentary appearance and sound to English eyes and ears. This use of the public galleries, which, in spite of the regulations of the Assembly, it has been found impossible altogether to put down, has assuredly a certain influence in overawing and intimidating some of the members of the majority. Two causes, however, have contributed to preserve the Assembly from utter anarchy and confusion. The first of these, a negative one, consists in the fact that Frankfort is not a great noisy stirring capital of a great country, where a mob is always at hand to be used as a tyrannical influence by the leaders of the people, and that there are no suburbs filled with a working population, whence, as in Paris, an insurgent army may be suddenly recruited to work mischief, when it may have no other work to do. The second, a direct and active one, arises from the personality of the President of the Assembly; and certainly it is in the personal qualities and physical advantages of the Herr von Gagern, as much as in his position, and from the esteem in which he is held, that his power to dominate, control, and will to order, very greatly consists.

The President Gagern, long known as the most talented and leading opposition member of the Darmstadt Chamber, has passed his life in his energetic attempts to further those constitutional liberties, which he would now check with powerful hand, that they may not go too far. Disappointed and disgusted with his fruitless efforts to promote what he considered the interests of his country, the Herr von Gagern had retired, for some time past, into private life, when, upon the breaking forth of the revolutionary storm, he was called upon by his prince to take the helm of affairs, and, as minister, to steer the bark along the current by which he might avoid the Scylla of