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phenomenon which it continued to exhibit at intervals while they remained in the neighbourhood.

One of the moft ftriking natural curiofities in Iceland, is the Ilverevalle, or roaring mountain. Through an aperture in the rock, of three or four inches in breadth, a thick smoke rushes, with a noife loud enough to drown the ftrongest human voice at the shortest distance; and the blast is fo prodigioufly ftròng, that small ftones, which they attempted to fling into the aperture, were driven out to a confiderable diftance. It fhould be observed, that the whole of this furvey of Iceland was made before the year 1760, and confequently before the great discoveries in aerial chemistry; fo that the report of Meffrs Olafsen and Povelfen contains no fort of information refpecting the gafeous productions they met with; nor indeed do they feem to be informed even up to the ftate of chemical fcience of that period. The Academy of Copenhagen appears to have had it in contemplation to procure as much knowledge for as little money as poffible. The Iceland travellers are perpetually complaining of bad and broken inftruments, and do not appear to have been poffeffed even of thefe in great abundance.

The character of the Icelanders is good. They are calm, difcreet, orderly, and serious in their religion, capable of great labour of mind and body, and accustomed to live upon little; not abounding much in men of genius, but producing, in the various univerfities of the North, many zealous and indefatigable scholars, who have ftruck with fuccefsful vigour into the most intricate and untrodden paths of literature. They are as fond of their country, as all mountaineers are faid to be. Not that we are thorough converts to this fuppofed connexion between altitude and patriotism; but we leave the hypothefis as we find it.

The potato, that modeft vegetable of Catteau, has with fome difficulty found its way into Iceland; but they have in vain. attempted to introduce the culture of grain. The Danish government has even been at the expence of fending over Jutland farmers for that purpofe; but the corn has either never appeared above ground; or appeared, and never ripened; or ripened, without growing hard enough for thrashing; till, at length, the most fanguine improvers have been compelled to relinquish the undertaking; finding it eafy enough to drill a field, but impoffible to prepare a climate for their crops. Meffrs Olafsen and Povelsen think that the foft corn might be baked after reaping, as it is in the island of Ferro. But this is bad policy; for if price is difregarded, any thing may be grown any where. The object is not to produce, but to produce with economy; and where the

difficulties

difficulties are fo great in effecting any one object, it is better to relinquish it for another more adapted to the genius of the

-climate.

Nothing is more ftriking, in this publication, than the decay of power and population in Iceland. But it has been for centuries the prey of famine, epidemic difeafes, and murrain among the cattle. Every canton in Iceland contains veftiges of deferted farms; but towards the north, there are whole cantons entirely deferted; and others in the diftrict of Skagefried fo languidly cultivated, that they may almoft be faid to be abandoned. In the canton of Flioten, there have been twenty-five large farms abandoned fince the beginning of the laft century. The caufes of this melancholy desertion, befides the phyfical ones we have already mentioned, are, the avarice and negligence of the Danish government: for, at the period to which this report refers, the improvements in the Iceland commerce, fuggefted by Bernstorf, had not taken place. The trade with that country was a monopoly farmed out to a fet of merchants, who, of courfe, fold to the Icelanders the worst commodities at the highest prices; and the people, who could fcarcely contend with the evils of climate, were doomed to ftruggle with all the difcouragements of a bad government. The demand for men is fo eafily fupplied, and the blanks occafioned by unufual mortality fo foon filled up, that political ceconomists would hardly allow the various peftilences, by which Iceland has been affected, to be a fufficient explanation of its prefent reduced population. But this question is quite a relative one; and the rapidity with which human life. is renewed, must be proportionate to the advantages of the particular county in which the experiment is to be tried. A country, with every blefling of climate, foil, and government, may fill up the vacancies occafioned by a peftilence in fifteen years, which fuch a country as Iceland could not fupply in three hundred. It is true, that nature always reproduces, but with fuch different degrees of facility, that a ferious mortality may, for a great length of time, be a very fufficient explanation of a decayed population. Independently of all this, there are strong, but flow caufes, always at work, to difpeople Iceland, Holland, and the fag-ends and corners of the earth. They are originally peopled only by

the

The diftrefs in Iceland is frequently fo great, that their cows and fheep are nourished with the head, entrails, and fins of fish, and, in years of lefs fevere diftrefs, with the fifh themselves. Mr Stroem, in his Sundmamornia, has a very long and minute difcuffion upon the use of the heads of red herrings, and dried ftock-fifh, in feeding cows, p. 381.; a topic, in rural economy, ftrangely overlooked in this country.

the victims of perfecution; and there is always a strong temptation to quit them, in proportion as the facility of communication increases among civilized people, and as peace and liberty are to be enjoyed in more beautiful climates. Patriotifm, refulting from early affociation, and from principle, prevents any thing like exact proportion between population and the maximum of moral and phyfical good which human beings can ob tain. But, cæteris paribus, there is a flow tendency in mankind to escape from the violence and fterility of nature to the fcenes of her goodnefs and glory; and this, in the courfe of ages, will leave Iceland to the feals and the bears from whom it was originally wrested, and to whom it had better always have been left.

Meffrs Olafsen and Povelfen may perhaps be extremely dif pleased with the low eftimation in which we hold the object of their furvey; but we fairly own, we owe to these Reporters fome little grudge for their mercilefs and needlefs prolixity, which we only remember to have been exceeded by a very worthy country clergyman, who left behind him sketches for a hiftory of his parish, amounting, in bulk, to two large quarto volumes, and which his executors, who were luckily not of the fame parish, with much wifdom committed to the flames. Upon many important topics, the education and the commerce of Iceland for example, these travellers are very deficient. They have found out the fecret, if any fecret it be, of writing much without writing to the purpofe, and of exhibiting quantities of truth without affording fatisfaction. As a book of reference, their report is not without its value. Thofe who collect libraries will do well to add it to their maís. He who has no particular purpofe in peruling it, but wishes to gain information about Iceland, without paying too dearly for it in patience and time, had better liften to the warning voice of Reviewers, and decline acquaintance with Mefirs Olafsen and Povelfen.

ART. VIII. Georg Chriftoph Lichtenberg's Vermifchte Schriften, nach deffen tode beraufgegeben. Göttingen. 1803. Göttingen. 1803. 5 bände. The Mif cellaneous works of George Criitophe Lichtenberg, published after bis death. Göttingen. 1803. 5 vol. 8vo.

GERE ERMAN literature has fcarcely ever been fairly appreciated in our country; it is either harfhly and injudicioufly cenfured, or foolishly and ethufiaftically praifed; it has had partisans and opponents in plenty, but few intelligent judges. Nor is it perhaps very wonderful, that a juft opinion fhould not be im

mediately

mediately formed by foreigners upon the merits of a class of writers that have been known at home for little more than fifty years. It is generally known, that the authors of Germany after the revival of letters, compofed for fome centuries chiefly in the Latin tounge, and neglected their own. In these circumftances, they could not easily become popular; and although they difplayed aftonishing perfeverance and great learning and acutenefs, together with as much invention, perhaps, as any of their neighbours who devoted themselves to fimilar ftudies, their labours appear to have been rewarded by the general derision of Europe. A German or Dutch commentator became proverbial for dulnefs. When they at last became ambitious of the higher rewards of literature, and began to compofe original works in their vernacular tongue, they had innumerable difficulties to encounter. During the earlier part of the last century, and the whole of the foregoing, every circle or petty principality had its peculiar dialect, fcarcely intelligible to the inhabitants of the adjacent territories, and full of phrases completely foreign to the more remote provinces. The two grand divifions of Roman-Catholic and Proteftant, or Auftrian and Pruffian, oppofed a strong bar to the internal intercourse of the nation, and to the cultivation of its language. No common metropolis exifted, no national theatre, parliament, church or law court. Each nation detefted the political and religious eítabli ment of its rival, and communicated to the individuals of which it was compofed, a degree of hatred, greater even than that which has fo long divided the Englith and French. The fmaller states, nearly three hundred in number, adopted the animofities as well as the politics of their fuperiors; and it is fo far from being wonderful that Germany fhould be behind the other great European ftates in the cultivation of its language, that our astonishment fhould rather be excited by the view of the improvements which the last fifty years have produced. We must not, however, compare the German ftyle in the middle of last century, with the ftyle of England, France, or Italy, at the fame period, but rather with the French in the reign of Henry IV., the English in that of King James I., and the Italian in the fifteenth century, when their first great poetical compofitions, which usually fix the language of nations, had just begun to produce their effect. The works of Haller, Klopstock, and Wieland, did this for the language of Germany; and established, for their fucceffors, a ftandard of claffic vigour and elegance only about half a century ago.

The Germans now, however, write as correctly as any other nation. Some of their claffical authors do great honour to mo

dern

dern literature, and prove that the opinion of the great Pruffian Monarch was fallacious, when he declared it impoffible to compofe a work of tafte in his native to gue *. Had he been as familiar with the volumes of Wieland, Goethe, Garve, and Herder, as with thofe of Voltaire or D'Alembert, he would fcarcely have made this affertion. The difficulty of their language, and their unhappy practice of tranflating every publication that became popular among their neighbours, made it generally believed, that the Germans poffeffed no ftores but what were borrowed either from the ancients, or from Britain or France; and that neither instruction nor amusement were to be derived from their original compofitions. Some admirable effays of Mr Leffing, however, found their way to England, and conduced, along with the illuftrious names of Haller and Klopstock, to convince the few who could read the originals, that the Germans could not only tranflate, but write what was worthy of being tranflated. During the American war, the intercourfe with Britain was ftrengthened by many well known causes. The German officers in our fervice communicated the knowledge of their books and language. Pamphlets, plays, novels, and other light pieces, were circulated in America, and found their way, after the peace, into England. The name of Leffing, revered by every well-educated German, became almost as familiar, as that of Addison or Fielding, and paved the way for the lefs refpectable works of Schiller, Kotzebue, and Iffland. These authors, perhaps the most popular dramatic writers of the prefent day in Germany, are well known over the North of Europe; and the works of the two former are at least fufficiently known and admired by the inhabitants of this country. Sheridan has condefcended to be the imitator of Kotzebue; and Schiller, unquestionably a man of uncommon genius, is the avowed model of those poets, novellifts, and playwrights, who, without any genius at all, have fucceeded in captivating the public attention, by an engaging difplay of furious lovers, frantic heroines, blafphemers, fatalifts, and anarchists of every defcription.

It is curious to obferve the viciffitudes of literary fashion, and the alternation of national imitation. The Germans were flavish tranflators of our belles lettres, philofophy, and history, for a century. A fimilarity of national tafte prompted them not only to admire Shakespeare, Milton, Shaftesbury, and Locke, and our hiftorians Hume, Robertfon, and Gibbon, who are as well known, and as much relifhed in Germany as in Britain, but also to adopt the prejudices which have bestowed a certain degree of reputation

Effai fur la litterature Allemande. Berlin 1780.

on

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