The Press. — London, England, 1856-08-09 00:00:00

I AUGUST 9, 1856• Nittraturt. Memoirs of _Frederick Perthes. From the German of Clement Theodore Perthes. Two Vols. Edinburgh : Constable. IT is not uncommonly the case that the life of a private individual is for the term of his active existence a type of the life of his nation. This was peculiarly the case with Frederick Perthes. His career was bound up with the political fortunes and literature of Ger many for the half century following the French Revolution of 1789. For nearly the whole of that time he was one of the principal booksellers and publishers in Germany; he patriotically opposed the despotism of Napo leon, and was compelled to fly from Hamburg to save his life. All his goods were confis cated, and, from being a wealthy trader, he was reduced to beggary. When better times came round he resumed his business, and again became one of the centres of the literature of his " Faderland." His profession brought him into contact with the most eminent German writers of iris time. We do not hear that he ever wrote for the press himself, but his correspon dence seems to have been extensive and un ceasing, and these volumes sufficiently show that his mind was comprehensive, penetrating, and refined. He was born of a good family in 1772, but his father died early, leaving his family " almost destitute." The boy was cared for by his uncle ; his education was necessarily scanty, and at the age of fourteen he was taken to the fair at Leipsic to seek a master. The first person to whom he was brought asked him to conjugate amo, and, finding this too great a demand on his learning, refused to engages him. Ultimately Adam Bohme, a bookseller at Leipsic, consented to engage him un the condition that he went home for a year, as he was " too delicate for work yet." When the year had elapsed the boy was apprenticed to Bohme, and left home to com mence the great journey of life. Bohme was a strict, but not unkind master : He laboured uninterruptedly every day from seven in the morning till eight at night, with the intermission of one hour at noon. He never played, never entered a publiahonse, never received company at home, and drank nothing stronger than water. Perches had a fellow-apprentice ; they fared hardly : Their master's house was in Nicholas•street, and there they had an inner chamber up four pair of stairs, so over crowded with two beds and stools, the table and the two trunks, which constituted its whole furniture, as scarcely to admit of their turning in it. One little window opened on the roof; in the corner was a small stove, heated during the winter by three small logs of wood, doled ont every evening as their allowance. Every morning at six o'clock they both received a cup of tea, and every Sunday, as a provision for the coming week, seven lumps of sugar, and seven halfpence to purchase bread. " What I find hardest," said Perthes to his uncle at Schwartzburg, " is, that I have only a halfpenny roll in the morning—l find this to be scanty allowance. In the afternoon, from one till eight, we have not a morsel—that is what I call hunger ; I think we o ight to have something." The letters sent home by Perthes during his apprenticeship show that his mind dawned early, and that his inclinations all leant to virtue. He was very desirous of improving himself, but he could not afford to pay for lessons, and had not much time at his dis posal. He studied philosophy, however, which had the good effect of opening his in telleet, and of teaching him the value of thought. In 1789, when the politics of France began to powerfully stir men s minds, Perthes was seventeen. He shared in the hopeful dreams which the first acts of the revolution universally excited. In 1799 he wrote to his uncle : I believe that humanity is now involved in a chaos from which it will emerge with splendour, having made a great step towards perfection. But in the spring of the following year he was less sanguine I cannot contemplate the political world without sorrow. In France a raging, blinded people; here among us a set of perjured tyrants. I used to believe that even if the individual man fell, the race, at least, would gradually attain to a high development; but this, too, seems a dream. Confusion to the French bloodhounds who so outrageously dishonour the sacred cause of freedom ! These notices have their worth as showing the current of sentiment in the ingenuous THE PRESS. mind of youth at the time. The sentiments of Perthes in Germany were shared by Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey in Eng land; and the opinions of the former seem to have undergone much the same course of modification as did the latter. The master of Perthes had several daughters ; the youngest, Frederika, loved to amuse herself with the apprentices. Perthes conceived a violent passion for her. His attached friend and fellow-apprentice, Nessig, was ensnared by the same little beauty, who seems to have been something of a coquette. Perthes re solved to conquer his passion ; but she had wound her chains round him too tightly to be soon broken : In 1702, while this straggle was going on, Perthes one day found himself placed opposite to Frederik', at a dinner given by Biihme in honour of some strangers who were visiting Leipsic. She paid him the most marked attention, and drew him in to every conversation ; he was animated, and took wine, and when after dinner she happened to draw near, and reach over his chair to take something from the table, approaching him so closely that he felt her heart beat through her blue silk dress, he could command himself no longer, but rushing out into the dark night, wandered for hours through the fields like a maniac. " I felt as if annihilated," he wrote a few years later ; " in that hour the sanctuary of my thoughts lost its purity; I deter- mined to take vengeance on myself—l resolved never again to look into the maiden's eyes—l could not resist, however —I looked, but found there nothing but a deathlike cold ness. She was no longer the same ; she was cold as ice, and hard as iron. Then began a desperate struggle with myself, in whizh I called all my energies, all my strength of will to my aid, and succeeded—not indeed in annihilating, but in overcoming the passion for a time." In the end, Perthes resolved that he would endeavour to win her for his friend Nessig, and to this resolve he adhered for some years ; but when he had succeeded in establishing himself in business, and when Nessig also was in a position to offer her a home, they laid their claims at her feet, inviting her to choose between them : Each made an offer of his hand ; the choice was to rest with her, and the rejected was to withdraw in peace, and, in all fidelity, to live and labour for the beloved pair.— " Frederika," wrote Perthes, " listened without changing colour, remained silent for a short time, and then, with deep earnestness, replied, I love Perthes, I love Nessig; bu: my hand I can give to neither.' And now," proceeds Perthes, " I feel sad and perplexed ; for is it not I who have called forth this decision of Nessig's destiny ? " Perthes was at this time four and twenty. He thought himself doomed, as thousands of youths have thought before and since, to per petual sorrow and desolation. A better destiny was in store for him. Even before his apprenticeship had expired he had attracted so much favorable notice, that Hoffman, a Hamburg bookseller, wished to engage him as an assistant, and persuaded his master to set him free before his time. Bohme consented, gave an entertainment in his honour, and then presented him with the symbols of freedom, a sword and a slap on the cheek. Pertbes went to Hamburg, remained with Hoffmann four years, and then, obtain ing a loan of a few nundred pounds, estab lished himself in business at Hamburg. He had formed the acquaintance of some distin guished Germans, and had gained their esteem by his quick sensibility and noble aspirations. Friedrich Jacobi and Specter were among his early friends, and as his busi ness extended he became known to all the distinguished writers who at the close of the last century raised German literature in every branch to the highest excellence. ani pro foundly impressed the mind of all Europe. On a visit to Holstein, he became acquainted with Matthias Claudius, the excellent and patriotic editor of a periodical celebrated in its day, the Wandsbeck Messenger. The eldest daughter of Claudius was two years younger than Perthes when he first met her : Although there was nothing remarkable or dazzling in her general aprearance, notwithstanding her fine regular features, her slender figure, and her delicate complexion, yet the treasures of fancy and feeling, the strength and repose of character, and the clearness of intellect which shone in her deep hazel eyes, gave her a quiet but irre sistible charm. Throughout her whole life she inspired unbounded confidence in all Who app.'ached her. To her the glad brought their joys, secure of finding joyous sym- pathy, and to many of the afflicted, both in body and in mind, she ministered consolation, taught resignation, and inspired them with fresh courage. Accustomed to the simple life of her parental home, contact with the bustle of the outward world appeared to her as fraught with danger to her childlike simple walk with God. Household duties, study, and music, occupied her time. When more ad- Yawed in life she retained a rich clear voice, and a fine 759 musical taste. She was acquainted with the modern lan guages, and had gone far enough in Latin to enable her subsequently to assist her sons. The result may be imagined. The union was in every respect a happy one. It is with marriage that the romance of fiction usually ends. It was with his marriage that the romance of Perthes' life began. For some years his business was fairly pro sperous, though disturbed by the political troubles of the time. His family increased around him, but in the father he never lost sight of the citizen. The aggression of France inspired him with indignation and alarm. He had " grown up with a true Kaiser-loving heart." In 1804 he wrote to Jacobi, " Our " hearts must and should be filled with shame, " burning shame, at the dismemberment of " our fatherland." This sentiment increased, when Hamburg, having long been suffered to remain independent, was at last, in 3810, de clared to be incorporated with the French empire. Some months previously Perthes had commenced a periodical, the National Museum, intended to support national sentiment, and to embody the patriotic thought and intellec tual energy of Germany. It could no longer be continued. Perthes was in despair at the darkness of his country's fortunes, and more especially when he saw some of the most eminent of his compatriots inclined to accept Napoleon as the man destined by Providence for universal rule. The intellectual mind, always too prone to acknowledge and worship successful force, sunk down in Germany before the French emperor's wonderful successes. Johannes Muller was one of those who, after Austerlitz and Jena, thought that further re sistance to Napoleon would be rebellion against Providence. "It is God," he said, " who sets up Governments ; who then is at " liberty to set himself against them ?" This doctrine was not accepted by Perthes. He was impressed with a profound conviction that the system of Napoleon could not last, and he looked to the awakening of German nationality as the means of its overthrow. He hoped most from Prussia, as Prussia was the real representative of the Teutonic race. With French domination, the trade of Ham burg was almost annihilated : Owing to the general insolvency which followed the issue of the French regulations, Perthes's personal losses involved all that teu years of toil and anxiety had realised. In Mecklenburg alone he reckoned his losses at 20,000 marks. • * • • • • • Trade and shipping were annihilated; of the 422 sugar boiling houses, but few now stood : the printing of cottons had entirely ceased ; the tobacco-dressers were driven away by the Government. The imposition of innumerable taxes, door and window tax, capitation, and land tax, tte., along with the vexations that attended their collection, drove the inhabitants to despair. Charitable institutions, such as the orphan-house, the hospital, and the alms houses, were deprived of their revenues, and their very existence was threatened—landed property was depreciated in value, and the interest of the public debt could not be paid. The once proud and flourishing city now presented the appearance of complete decay. Harder trials were at hand. The destruction of Napoleon's grand army in Russia inspired hope of deliverance throughout Germany, and nowhere more warmly than in Hamburg. The Ft ench garrison was feeble; the burghers were numerous and determined. Perthes was one of the most active in organising resist ance, but he experienced even more than the ordinary vexation of the leaders who at such times attempt to guide the convulsion and control the effervescence of popular move ments. Individual jealousy and hatreds, and irreconcileable differences of political opinion, prevented concerted action. The sage coun sels of Perthes were disregarded ; the burghers from want of military experience were power less against regular troops, and they were compelled to look for their deliverance from without. It is curious to mark the enthu siasm with which the advance of Russian troops was then hailed. On the 23rd of February, 1813, the wife of Perthes wrote to her father : Yesterday morning there were Cossacks at Perleberg. seventpsix miles from this,—ah! that I had a thousand voices to sing " Benedictus qui venit " The city is all alive, and assuredly some great step is about to be taken. On the 12th March following, the French evacuated the city, and the Russians entered it :