The Sun.
London, England, 1837-07-17 00:00:00

LITERATURE

SOUVENIRS OF A SUMMER IN GERMANY.
In 2 Vols. London, Colburn, 1837.
If the Journals of Gentlemen Tourists are often the
most instructive, those of the Ladies are an hundred
times the most entertaining. Their perceptions of
whatever is obvious in nature, art, and society, arc so
much quicker than the faculty of observation in men—
their sensibilities are so easily affected by extern al
scenes and occurrences capable of association wit:t
preconceived feelings and ideas—and their first impres-
sions of whatever is grand, mysterious, uncommon, or
ludicrous, are expressed with such earnestness and vi-
vacity, that it is really a pleasure of no ordinary kind to
read them. There are exceptions on both sides, we
admit, but o:► the part of the Ladies the work before
us does not supply any. It is in fact a charming spe-
cimen of the most agreeable of the class of books
to which it belongs—graphic, gossipping, full of
arnus;ng personal anecdote, with here and there
a dash of that humanizing, subdued, religious melan-
choly, which flows so naturally and impressively from
a female pen. We must, however, acknowledge that
we are best pleased with the arch and lively sallies in
which the writer is so fond of indulging. Her percep-
tion of the ludicrous in men, manners, and works of art
is so acute, and her descriptions of such objects are so
happy, that we could not find in our heart to criticise
them with severity, though some of them are far
from faultless. The following descriptional anecdote
of an historical picture in the Museum at Brussels
will convey an idea of the writer's manner when in a
lively vein :

" Ono reom in the Museum is devoted to the productions of
living masters, and in the event of the artist's death, his works
are removed into another salon. A picture here amused me
very much ; the subject the interior of a cottage at St. Jean,
after the battle of Waterloo. A group in the foreground re-
presents a young man who has been wounded, stretched on.
the floor, and while his wounds arc being dressed, a young
girl is assisting and bending over with anxious looks. There
are several other sufferers scattered about ; and so far, so good.
" But in the back-ground, full before the eyes, appears a
most unpicturesque object ; a regular French bed, with white
dimity curtains, and therein comfortably ensconced between
the blankets, well tucked in, and with a very becoming night-
cap, is seen a gentleman with his head on his down pillow,
and the clothes arranged under his chin in a most interesting
manner.
"' Who is that gentleman lying so snug in his French bed ?'
I asked Guillaume.
4" 0 that is Milord Anglesey, after his leg was taken off;
they could not put him on the ground like th others, un mi-
lord ! veus concevez 1"
Or, better still, the annexed description of the per-
sonal appearance of a German postilion :
" Our little postilion pricked up his ears at these words—he
was a wrinkled, mahogany-coloured, dried-up little fellow,
with twinkling eyes, and a huge pair of brass ear-rings, that
eaeh looked nearly as large in circumference as his whole vi-
sage. When perched up on his horses and encased in the great
boots, that were so ludicrously dispreportioned to his spider-
legs, he reminded you of an old brown shrivelled walnut in its
shell, or a smoked herring, that had been hung up six months
to dry in a cottage chimney."
The following is not altogether so ludicrous,
though by no means an inviting picture, of the ac•
commodation and society to be met with at a fifth-
rate German Inn, boasting of possessing the
best of both :
" At the head of one of the tables sat the host, a tall, gaunt,
bony-looking man with a coarse red face, and a head of mat-
ted hair that looked as if he had swept the floor with it (not,
however, that the floor showed any symptoms of having under-
gone that operation for a month at least). He was dressed in
a very nondescript garment, which might have been meant for
a dressing-gown, but looked as though it had been manufac-
tured out of an old woman's cloak ; a grey, rugged, pepper-
and-salt kind of article, the sleeves of which reached to about
halfway between the wrist and elbow. The bony hands which
these scanty dimensions disclosed to view, were evidently suf-
fering from an affection of hydrophobia, while the face to which
they belonged seemed to labour under as strong an aversion to
cold steel, as theirs to cold water. Indeed, when these' great
unwashed' seized a chicken by the legs, and twisting it round
laid it on its side for dissection, the act by no means increased
the desire to partake of it. The sole waiter on this inviting
table d'hote was a poor, civil, overgrown boy with drooping
eyes and a hanging lip, the son of the host ; and the beg;
society' consisted of two men, one of them a greasy, purple--
faced old fellow, who sat down to dinner in grey worsted Iru„-
tens The table-cloth was—but I cannot describe that--still. ~,"
it to say, that so near the Spa, it was plain that very little
water, and still less soap, ever found their way into the Belly
Vue."
We should have sooner observed, that the Tour of
which these volumes give so charming a description,
was made in the summer of last year. Its claim to this
praise rests on the freshness of its description of life—of
manners—of individual peculiarities,and not of scenery-
for the author has no talent for cooking up a landscape-
This however is but a slight drawback, or rather no
drawback at all in accounts of rambles in Germany-
Against the correctness of the fair writer's opinions
respecting the Continental observance of the Sabbath,
and the inattention of the Catholic priesthood in Bel-
gium to the spiritual welfare of the poor committed to
their care, we, with all becoming courtesy, enter our
protest. The volumes are dedicated to Lady Chatterton-