The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

excellent—and the excellence of the method is a
fair guarantee for the accaracy of the results :

Twenty years ago (she says) Hewitt dwelt three years
in a German village, and wrote of the rural life of the
people. We have done the same, though upon a
different plan, and, profiting somewhat by hi* advice and
experience, executed our task in a different way. We
have dwelt a little while in many villages, instead of a
long time in one, and having no house of our own, were
obliged to dwell with them (sic) night and day, and thus
became initiated into their ways of thinking anl,l living,
as would be impossible in mere casual visite.
Of the two methods—Howitt's and our autl49es
—we certainly prefer the latter. Germany, ti
purely a " geographical expression "—it • is: f,s,r
too complex a structure to admit of being
classified after a single fragment, like . some
geological formation, 'however perfect that fret&
ment may be. For this reason Miss Johnson
book is as superior to Howitt's in the amount of
information conveyed, as it is inferior to the
latter in composition and style. In respect to
information, indeed, the American lady's book
may be said almost to exhaust the subject... It
would be difficult to indicate any side of peasant
life which she does not treat of—and treat of, too,
au fond. Dress, food, manners, amusements,
housekeeping, morality, education, agriculture,
commerce—all are passed in review with a pro-

fusion of illustration, detail, and even, where the
occasion is supposed to require it, of historical
developments, almost encylopedic. Indeed,
when we mention that this book, instead of being
an expansion of the jottings down of a diary,. is
a selection from "memoranda which would• fill
"three folio volumes," some idea may be formed
of its teeming abundance of matter.
The social contrasts between her own country
and the scene of her inquiries appear to strike
Miss Johnson with a farce which places vividly
betbre us the sharp line of demarcation between
the New World and the Old :

How can it be possible (she exclaims, with amusing
naivete ), when God made of one blood all nations under
Heaven, that they cast make themselves Co different, not
only in tongue and tint, but in all thought and action ! In
all that is within and all that is without, there is scarcely a
human re,temblance between the American and the German (!)
This is certainly going far—very far ! The
observation, however, is made on the fair
enthusiast's first stepping out of the boat which
lands her at Bremen. May it not be presumed
that her most recent corrective of the desagremens
of a sea-voyage had been sought in Baron Mun-
chausen's description of his visit to the moon ?
Whatever the probability of this conjecture, it
is certain that we find no subsequent allusion to
the self-manufactured anatomical distinctions
between the American and the German, so
curiously hinted at in the above passage. Among
the elaborately delineated moral distinctions, the
one which first strikes Miss Johnson—and, we
trust, every English as well as every American
traveller—is the inferior position of women, in
Germany. A woman and a donkey harnessed
together in a plough is not, Miss Johnson'assures
us, an uncommon sight in this, , the most
"educated " portion of Europe ! • • • "
Women are hired out by the year to do house and farm
work, receiving fourteen dollars Asr kfull year's service of
this kind ! Woman is thus degiaded from her true posi-
tion; and we need not describe the:condition of the homes
where women spend half their time in the field. • When
they work u hard, and do the same things, they are:not
treated as the equals of their lords. -Often they walk and
drive the oxen, with a genuine thrust and flourish of,the
goad-stick, while the men are sitting at their ease- in the
cart, smoking, and perhaps swearing at their teamsters:" .
A young man of the peasant class tells me that •there
is no respect paid to women among them—they strike a
woman just as quick as they woald strike a man, and, as
we have seen, impose upon her double burdens. if under
any circumstances favours are to be shown, the men receive
them.

In Russia and all middle Germany (says our author in
another place) cows are yoked to draw the plough and the
cart, as oxen and horses are elsewhere. The yoke is fitted
to their foreheads, and with their heads all labour is per-
formed. We alluded to this peculiarity to a youug peasant,
who said, " Yes, cows and women have to do a good deal
with their heads in this country ; " and these two facts led
a lady to exclaim, " she should not like to be a cow or a
woman in Germany! "

Head-work, among us, is esteemed at once the
obligation and the prerogative of the more
robust eex. The Germans seem to understand
both the term and its application differently.
We may add, from personal knowledge, by way
of appendix to the above, that, even among the
better classes, it is customary in Germany for the
ladies of the house to lavish upon their male
guests all those fetch-and-carry assiduities of
which in England they are themselyes the exelu••