The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1880-09-22
For the Central Presbyterian.
DR.. Dabney's Recent Letter
about Germany.

MesSrS. Editors, careful per-
usual Of DR.. Dabney's letter in your pa
per of the lst inst, find it even more
Objectionable and unjust than l thought
1T to be last Saturday when my attention
had first been called to it. He does not
confne himself to Bad Liebenstein and
the surrounding poor villages in the
Thueringer Valid, but what he sees there
he holds to be true of Germany gene
rally, and seems to think that after a
four weeks sojourn he has fathomed
everything to the bottom Everything
there, according to his opinion, is in the
worst possible condition. But still worse
he sees in the German emigrant most
dangerous foe who is about to transplant
all the curses of his old home to his new.
AS German, and as pastor of Ger
man congregation, allow me a few re-
marks about DIR. Dabney's letter. | do
not doubt, Messrs Editors, your assur-
ance, that the doctor is very learned and
very earnest, but | am still less in doubt
that his views Of Germany are very pre-
JUDGED and one-sided.
In the first place the doctor finds, after
a months careful observation, that the
well-known love of the Germans for the
fine arts makes them neither beautiful,
nor refined, nor virtuous. To prove this
he states that the females he finds. in the
art galleries copying the masters, are very
ugly; and from the fact that during a
garden concert he saw a fashionable
young man eat hunk of raw fish, " and
drink glass of beer, he reaches the con-
clusion that the Germans lack refinement
That the @sthetical German culture is ir-
religious, and therefore impure and
immoral, DR.. Dabney seems to take as
granted, without needing to prove it. I
would most seriously advise DR.. Dabney
instead of four weeks of superficial obser-
walton to devote four years of careful
study to the German masters of art. and
then tell us what are the grand funda-
mental thoughts of a Sebastian Bach,
Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, or of Corne-
Illus, Kaulbach, Rietschel, Fdhrich, Rich
ter, and so many others.
1t is true, and a deplorable fact, that
the peasant women are very hard worked,
and DR.. Dabney may even find them in
Vienna and some other places carrying
mortar, bricks and stones to the new
buildings in course Of erection. But the
poor people are driven to this hard work
by dire necessity, and very fortunate
circumstance it is that they are not afraid
nor ashamed of hard work. The German
nation is q plodding, Woodworking ma
ton, and owes everything it has and can
boast Of to this trait. You will rarely
find the noble ladies in their proud an
cestral halls on your afternoon calls.
without their knitting or sewing, while
in the forenoon you may find them with
their daughters in the kitchen performing
work, which many an American lady of
humble origin might think scarcely lit for
her colored servant.
We must bear in mind that DR.. Dabney
writes from enc Of the poorest districtsin
Germany, well known for its over-popu-
lation and its poverty, and that he takes
that district as representative Of the NOR
al, physical, religious and intellectual
condition Of all Germany. His "dehb-
crate conviction, that the German bottom
class is in every respect far beneath the
negroes Of 1860, and that the little peas
ant landowners, next above them might
possibly rank with our negroes in intelli-