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

760 " My dear papa," wrote Caroline a few hours before their arrival, " how can I give you any idea of the univer sal joy of old and young, rich and poor, bad and good ? To have seen, and heard, and felt it, is indeed a thing to be thankful for. I will not inquire into the causes of the joy, bnt its expression was unspeakably grand, and it appears to spring from a good and pure source. An ad vanced guard of thirteen Cossacks entered the city yester day evening, with long flowing mantles, and adorned with the spoils of the French—at any rate adorned with parts of the French military dress. Every throat was strained to welcome them, and every heart thanked God in heaven, and the Russians on earth. Never, dear papa, have I seen such a union of hearts, the feelings of thousands all cen tred in one point. Ah ! could we but so centre ourselves in the best point of all, what a glorious Church we should form ! The Cossacks advanced at a gallop, their lances lowered, and waving their caps, and looking wonderfully honest and friendly. The people crowded round them, bringing brandy, cakes, and bread. People who were yes terday quite desponding, are to-day full of hope and cou rage. if the depths of the soul were more frequently stirred, it could not bat be attended with good results." But the Russian force was too small to hold the city, when Davoust, at the head of 6,000 men, advanced to recapture it. Perthes then threw himself heart and soul into the defence of the city. The Burgher Guard was formed, and he held an influential post in it. He ex posed himself to danger wherever it was to be confronted ; for twenty-one nights he never rested in bed. While exposed to the fire of the enemy, Caroline, surrounded by her child ren, trembled for his fate. In the distinct and graphic picture presented to us of this household, we see the hopes and terrors which agitated thousands of German homes in the great struggle. The burghers could not with stand their enemy when left unassisted to fight itheir battle. When the success of the French became certain— To escape a prison and a rebel's death by the hangman's hand, Perthes himself drove on through Rahlstadt under cover of the night. A fugitive and a rebel, with heavy liabilities to meet, and a wife and seven children to comfort and support, Pcrthes had need of all his courage to face his difficulties. His first care was for his creditors he could only meet their claims by assigning to them his debts : He works from morning to night (wrote Caroline) with the exception of an hour after dinner, which we devote to thinking over our position, or rather to sleep; for we rise at four o'clock, and require some repose during the day. Perthea is perfectly clear and calm, and, I may say, in some respects more cheerful than formerly, and so am I, while he is with me. Meanwhile, all his stock at Hamburg had been confiscated by Davoust. The city was doomed to suffer terribly : What Davoust did may perhaps find its excuse in his position as a beleaguered general, but the manner in which he did it could only have been devised by the rage of a dis appointed villain. He began his cruelties with the robbery of the Bank, and the moat cruel treatment of the burghers. On the week following the Christmas festival, the suburbs. all the surrounding villages, and the fine country houses on the Alster, were set on fire after only eighteen hours' notice, and 20,000 people were driven out of the city desti tute and homeless ; first the young and strong as dangerous, and then the old and weak as superfluous. The children were next brought out of the orphan•house, the infirm poor from the almshouses, the criminals from the prisons, and all were driven outside the gates, and there left to their fate. At mid-day, on the 30th December, Davoust gave orders that the hospital, in which were 800 sick and idiots, should be vacated and set on fire, and by the same hour on the following day it was in flames, but not till, through the incredible exertions of the burghers, the helpless inmates had all been removed, while bands of drunken soldiers were struggling with the sick for their clothes and their bedding, and scenes of reckless plundering were being enacted on every side. The troops at the same time set fire to the ad joining houses, and gave themselves up to deeds of un mitigated atrocity. The intense excitement, and the bitter cold of a Rummy night, cost 600 of the sick their lives. The Russians at length advanced in force ; the French withdrew, and on 31st May, 1814, Perthes with his family returned to his home:— Even to render the house habitable was a difficult undertaking. The pleasant and beautiful apartments on the ground-floor had for many months been used by French soldiers as guardrooms, In the middle of the largest room was a huge stove; trunks of trees had been dragged in through the windows to feed it. All the wood work that could be pulled down had been burnt; the smoke had found an outlet through the windows. The upper part of the house had been inhabited by General Loison, but even there the soldiers had conducted them selves so riotously that the whole house was little better than a heap of filth. All the furniture had been taken away ; some of it, by kind friends who had concealed it where they could, and the rest by the French prefect. There was not a single habitable room—dirt and rubbish, a foot high, covered the floors. Chairs and tables, beds and bedding, and the whole apparatus of the kitchen, had THE PRESS. to be replaced; while the want of money and the heart breaking spectacle of numbers of hungry and sorrow stricken exiles flocking into the city, made the strictest economy a duty no less than a necessity. It was a heavy recommencement for Caroline; but before winter all was once more in order, though not without considerable labour and anxiety. The greater portion of his valuable stock had been preserved. Despotism has its limits. First the creditors of Perthes asserted their claims to his property; and when an order was issued that his fine collection should be sold to pay his creditors in the first instance, the catalogue took such time to complete, that Davoust had to withdraw before it was finished. From this time the life of Perthes was tranquil and domestic. He took a warm in terest in all religious, political, and literary subjects, and for this reason his life largely re presents the intellectual life of Germany until the date of his decease in 1843. He left Ham burg in 1822, to establish himself in Gotha, where he founded a business for the publication of religious and historical works. His beloved Caroline was taken from him in 1819; he was equally fortunate in a second marriage, which gave him a second family. There is some thing touching in his description of the effect of multiplied domestic ties in loosening the attachments of humanity. He wrote shortly before his own death : Births and deaths, deaths and births amongst children and children's children have compassed me round during the last few months, and I have had to look upon many a sick and dying bed. My affection for my descendants in dividually is not diminished by their rumber; but the wind and weather of a long life has hardened my physical frame against sorrow, and my soul has learnt resignation to :he loss of its dear ones. Now that I know I must soon follow, the death of others makes quite a different im pression upon me to what it did in youth, when, though one indeed acknowledged, one did not feel one's-self mortal. Were the life of man much further prolonged he would cease to be human in the sense we now attach to the term. While residing at Gotha he had excellent opportunities of observing the Royal Family. In 1839 he wrote : Late in the summer the ducal household came to Reinnardabrunnen, and with them the Crown Prince from Dresden, and Prince Albert from Italy. Their father has good reason to be proud of them both. The ardour, frankness, and healthy judgment of the Crown Prince de lighted me uncommonly ; Prince Albert is, without doubt, a highly gifted and thoroughly cultivated young man ; handsome and elegant, courteous and benevolent. His thoughtful, cautious temperament, will lessen the difficul ties of his future position. We have the Duke of Meinin gen, too, and the King of Saxony ; and sometimes no fewer than fourteen princes go out hunting together. These meetings between the house of Saxony and the neighbouring princes should oftener take place. Taken together, they are not without significance in German rela tions, and these wise, restless Coburgs, will tell upon Europe too; they do not, indeed, form any very comprehensive plans, but they know, as few men and princes do, how to seize the passing opportunity, and use the present moment. They have already secured the thrones of Eng land, Belgium, and Portugal, for their own house, and they have an eye on those of Spain and France as well. His own death was exceedingly painful, yet his spirit was sustained by its religious con victions. New light, according to the sublime image of Waller, was let into his soul through chinks that time had made Physical suffer ing lost its hold on him as his end drew near; " his dreams were not distressing but delight " ful ;" "he lay peaceful and joyful ;" and when he breathed his last prayer, the specta tors felt "as blessed as though our Lord " Jesus Christ were with them in the room." The strong natural sense and refined senti ment of Perthes led him to a conservative tone of thought and feeling. He distrusted equally individual ascendancy and democratic rule, as fatal to that highest kind of liberty through which each man may assert his natural place in the social system. He freely hazarded all that men hold most dear to over throw the despotism of Napoleon ; and later he opposed the ideas of the illuminati and the secret societies as contrary to the instincts and social wants of mankind. It seems to have been one of his fundamental principles that society required government, but govern ment which, while preserving order, gave free scope for the development of all industrial and intellectual activity. The portions of his correspondence printed here give a high conception of his sagacity. We have always held that to try principles by SATURDAY, extremes is to try them by a most unfair jury. Perthes writes acutely:— To insist on carrying out a principle to all its lagical re sults, is almost always a highway to error. Every truth, even a sacred truth of revelation, when defined by a formula, and carried out to the utmost by the human understanding, becomes an untruth. A rigid consistency is, in fact, one of the mainsprings of Rationalism. We doubt whether any principles will bear being pushed to suppositious extremes. Here is a good rule for young men of intellectual character: There can be nothing more perilous than'constant inter course with commonplace men ; even if the character do not sustain direct injury, a dry, dull, reserved condition of mind is induced, more or less inimical to freedom. Holding government of some kind to be a necessity, he held that every government must have embodied forms and persons. The fol lowing passage is admirable : Men must be governed, and they wish it too; but, as they can be governed only by men, every government must de. pend on some human accessory, be it a seneschal or a scullion, a major's wig, or a corporal's staff. It is useless to fret and kick against the pricks ; and, though you were to set up among us a political idol from France or America, it would only be a new Baal, that would burst when his time came. There is vital truth in the reasons alleged for the unfitness of the German mind to act by means of deliberative assemblies:— The German is slow in judgment, because he decides, not like the Frenchman with the understanding alone, but with his whole nature ; and he wants practicality, because, instead of contenting himself, like the Englishman, with the obvious and immediate, he takes into account, and wishes to make allowances for, a thousand remote and profound considerations connected with the subject, all of which the Englishman simply lets alone, proceeding, in fact, as if they did not exist. In order to judge correctly, and act with vigour, the German needs, above all things, time and compt.sure: the forms, however, now demanded for discussions in the Chambers, oblige the deputies to de cide, within a few hours, on matters with which they are but imperfectly acquainted; they, therefore, enable a few fluent speakers to take the members who are not so gifted, and who are always the majority, by surprise ; their theatrical character is distracting ; and they give an unfair advantage to the narrow-minded, the crafty, the malicious, and the rabid, provided only such persons understand the art of managing a great assembly. Whatever constitution may be good for the Germans, one that allows such scope for declamation is undoubtedly bad. His opinions of the Prussian and Austrian Governments were both favorable, though in different degrees. Of Prussia he wrote about 1830: The result of my observations is, that in Prussia the German nation is bursting out into a second youth. Prussia is thoroughly German, and accordingly, along with all that is great and good, along with abundance of thought and knowledge, appears a want of practicality, a waste of power and labour, the ideal aimed at being pitched too high for the fact. Unless the history of Europe take some unex pected turn, northern and central Germany will all be incorporated into one Prusso-German State : and, from the way in which affairs are conducted in the smaller German States, this result would be no misfortune. Of Austria : If people determine to call Austria a despotism, it mast be admitted that it is one of a singular kind, the pressure being all upwards, not downwards. Perhaps in no other State in the world is the internal Gover.iment so moulded and guided by ancient customs and institutions which have their origin in popular life. Restricti3ns and limitations of all sorts to which the Austrians have been long aceus• tom* d, and which they have therefore learnt to bear, they easily endure ; but it is almost i:npossible for Government to introduce any innovations, because an unexpressed but universal opposition of rich and poor, high and low, is at once raised against it. With exquisite acuteness he wrote of Louis Philippe's monarchy :—" Such crowns are more "fatal to monarchy than republics themselves." His protest against the hero-worship which has found such favour in our day is admirably expressed : The whole world is sighing now for great men; that is, in spite of liberalism, all are sighing for a master. This feeling is as old as the human race ; but, as the govern ment of powerful individuals is always arbitrary, we have to thank God that, in the cause of human freedom, monarchs, i.e., fictions of powerful individuals, have been found out who render the really powerful individuals harmless. A similar idea is expressed by Mr. Grute in his " History of Greece." Our fiction of a constitutional monarch, invested with all the attributes of ssvereignty, yet divested of de spotic power, would be supposes have appeared incredible to the States of antiquity. The whole book is full of matter. It is a publication fitted for all classes of readers, as all may find in it something to admire It is equally instructive as a reflection of German life during the most momentous half-century of the modem world, and as the picture of