grazing the wall, and gliding over the snow. Rasinski rushed after them, stumbled over an object in his path, fell, and, in his fall, his pistol went off. Ludwig and Bernard, close at his heels, would have stopped to help him up

666

Forward, forward!' he cried: follow and catch them.'

"They hurried on, but only one figure was now visible. They called to him to stop; he heeded them not. A shot fired by Bernard missed its mark, but the whistle of the bullet discomposed the fugitive, who, in stooping his head, slipped and fell. Ludwig was upon him in an instant, inquiring who he was, and why he fled. The stranger, who wore a sort of long black caftan, replied in piteous and terrified tones.

"God of my fathers!' he cried : 'have compassion, gracious sir! Why persecute the poor Jew, who does harm to no one?'

"Paul, a light!' cried Bernard, who just then came up. Let us see who it is that is in such haste to crave mercy. His conscience seems none of the best.'

"Paul lifted the lantern, casting the light full on the Jew's visage. "The devil!' cried Bernard. should know that face.

'I Where have I seen the accursed mask? To be sure, those red-bearded Lithuanians are all as like each other as bullets. But I greatly err, Jew, or you are the spy with whom we have an account to settle, that has stood over for the last five months.'

"A shout from Rasinski interrupted the speaker.

"Hither, friends!' he cried; 'your help here!' The three hastily obeyed the summons, dragging the Jew with them in spite of his struggles and cries.

"Here has been the most villanous crime the world ever witnessed!' exclaimed Rasinski, pale with horror and indignation, as his friends joined him. Behold our comrades, driven out naked in this deadly cold, plundered, strangled, hurled from the windows! Inhuman monster!' he cried in a terrible voice to the trembling Jew, if you have shared in this work, I will have you torn by dogs. See! here they lie. Horrible, horrible!'

"In a nook formed by the recession of a house from the line of street, lay eight human bodies, half naked, some with only a shirt or a few miserable rags to cover them. Over one of these unfortunates, who was still alive, Rasinski had thrown his furred cloak, to protect him from the piercing cold. Ludwig and Bernard shuddered at this lamentable spectacle.

"God of Abraham!' cried the Jew, 'to thee I lift up my right hand, and swear that I am innocent of this deed. May I be accursed with my children and my grandchildren if I know aught of it! May the ravens pick out my eyes, and the flesh of my hand wither, if I speak not the truth.'

"He was amongst the murderers,' the wounded man faintly gasped out: 'he was about to cut my throat, when the fall from the window did not kill me, and because I called for help. Only your arrival saved me.'

"Fiend, inhuman fiend! the unspeakable misery that might draw tears from a demon could not touch you.' Thus spoke Rasinski between his set teeth, and raised his sabre to split the skull of the Jew. In convulsions of terror the miserable wretch embraced his knees, and prayed for pity.

God-Jehovah-mercy,

Connt, mercy!'

noble

"Ludwig held back Rasinski's arm. Sully not your good blade with the monster's blood,' he said, earnestly and solemnly. Leave him to the justice of an omnipotent Avenger.'

"You are right,' replied Rasinski, quickly resuming his habitual composure. Think you I have forgotten?' said he, with an expression of the deepest loathing, to the Jew, who still clasped his feet in agony of fear. I know you well for the base and double traitor who once already escaped well-merited death. Nothing could save you now, were it not that even a villain like yourself may be made useful. Begone, and warn your fellowassassins, that if to-morrow I find a single dead body, a single mark of violence in one of their houses, I lay the whole quarter in asbes,-men, women, and habitations; and I myself will be the first to hurl the suckingbabe into the devouring flames! Away,

dog! Yet will I mark thee, that thou mayest not escape.'

"And raising his foot, he stamped thrice upon the face of the prostrate Jew, who bellowed like a wild beast, whilst his blood reddened the snow. Nevertheless, the murderer managed to scramble to his feet, and reach an adjacent house door, where he stood knocking and calling upon his fellow Israelites for help and compassion."

Count Ségur tells us, that the Jews enticed the unfortunate wounded into their houses to despoil them, and afterwards, in sight of the Russians, threw them, naked and dying, out of the doors and windows, leaving them to perish of cold.

We approach the final chapters of Mr Rellstab's romance. Bianca, whose quality of a Russian noble suffices to protect her and her attendants, remains with Ludwig, Marie, and her brother at Wilna, after the French leave it. They then post to Germany without further adventure. Their last sight of Rasinski is when, mounted on a Cossack horse, by the side of Marshal Ney, he heads a scanty but determined band, covering the retreat of the French. He subsequently falls at Leipzig, fighting with his wonted gallantry under the orders of his countryman Poniatowski.

From the glimpses of the plot and numerous extracts we have given, the reader will have small difficulty in

forming his own estimate of the faults and merits of "1812." We have already commented upon both upon the spirit and power often conspicuous in the dialogue and description, as well as upon the excess of forced coincidences, and upon the occasional long-windedness and super-sentimentality. However the interest may here and there, by reason of prolixity, be found to flag, the book, when once begun, is not likely to be laid aside unfinished. This alone is saying much for a historical romance in four very long volumes. There are not many German writers, in that style, of whose works we would venture the like prediction. And just at present Mr Rellstab need not apprehend fresh rivals. The year 1848 is unfavourable to German literature. The country is far too busy revolutionising to care about belles-lettres. Fictions are ousted by realities, novels by newspapers, trim octavos by uncouth twopenny pamphlets, polemical and satirical, attacking and defending, supporting and tearing to pieces, the numerous schemes afoot for the regeneration of Fatherland. In due time it will be seen whether the literature of the country is to share the general improvement so sanguinely anticipated from the recent changes in a system, under which Germany undeniably has long enjoyed a very large share of tranquillity and happiness.

MANY a confirmed wanderer upon Continental highways and byways may have been long since wearied by the conceitedly-vulgar airs in which old Father Rhine has indulged himself in latter years, and heartily tired of his bald vineyards, his melodramatic old ruins, and the make-believe majesty of his so-called mountains. But still there remained a sort of spurious halo about his very name; some kindly reminiscence of the time when, as an enthusiastic youth just escaped from the supposed commonplace of England, one gazed for the first time upon this famed show-stream of the Continent, and wondered, and admired, and poetised in spite of one's-self, may have cast a charm of early memory upon its overrated allurements; and, of a surety, there must have been brought a comfortable glow of pleasure to the heart of any one, except that nearly-exploded animal, the exclusive exquisite, either male or female, in witnessing the happy gaping faces of the touristic hordes, who paddled up and down the well-known old banks -a feeling of ease, comfort, and even homeishness, in the modern luxuries of the hundred palace-hotels of the Rhenish towns and villages, in the contented aspect of the thriving landlord, welcoming the guests who brought him wealth, and in the ready alertness of the active and obsequious waiters. Well, Germany has taken into its head to follow in the lead which distracted France gave, when it madly beckoned with frantic finger to all the Continent to follow in its wild dance. Germany has caught the St Vitus of revolution, and danced off, if not as distractedly, at all events in less connected step, and less defined figure, than its neighbour: and in this revolutionary frenzy Germany has assumed so ungenial an aspect a manner so doubtful, so unpromising, so uncertain, as regards the next step it may be inclined to take in the jerkings of its abrupt and unregulated dance-that the gentle tourist-seekers of ease and pleasure have turned away in disgust from this heavy Meg Merrilees, who has forgotten even her scraps of song, and her long-pretended

VOL. LXIV.-NO. CCCXCV.

spirit of romance, and declined to visit her until she shall have somewhat recovered from her drunken fit of revolution, and become more decently behaved. The Rhine, then, has lost the last charm of foreign bustle and movement, with which he decked his old head, as with a crown of wild flowers, not unbecoming his gray hairs. He looks sad, sober, discontented, disappointed, mourning his lost old joys, and his lost glories, of which young Germany, in its revolutionary excitement, has despoiled him. His hotels are empty; landlords, too, have a forlorn air, and take to rattling their last groschen in their pockets; and unhappy waiters get fat upon their inactivity, but, at the same time, pale with ill-humour at their diminished trinkgelder, and apprehension of losing their places altogether.

Travellers' visits have grown, like those of angels, "few and far between;" and as angels do the poor scanty tourists appear to be regarded as munificent beings, in fact, from whom too much cannot be demanded and expected; for the Rhenish hotel-keepers, in pursuance of the system adopted by Parisian shopkeepers, in these days of revolutionary scarcity and destitution, seem determined to make those unhappy beings, who fall into their clutches, redeem the debt they appear to consider due to them from those absent tourists, who have not come to enjoy all the splendours prepared for them. Since Germany, with its newborn cry for imperial unity, has appeared inclined to turn back again, in new revolutionary spirit, to old feudal times, the Rhenish hotel-keepers seem to think that they ought to appear in the characters of the old robber-knights. This consideration, perfectly personal to a poor tourist, who has lately paid his löse-geld at many a modern robber's stronghold on the Rhine, brings him round, however, to the question which he has been putting to himself, at every step he has been taking in Germany"What would revolutionising Germany be at?"

What would revolutionising Ger2 B

many be at? It is a question easily put, but very difficult to answer. The old joke, lately "freshed-up" to be applied to the French-namely, that "they don't know what they want, and won't be easy till they get it," may, with still deeper truth, be applied to the Germans. In spite of much inquiring conversation with all men of all ranks, and in all positions of life, it has been quite impossible for an unimaginative English understanding to discover exactly, in the midst of all the vague rhapsody, florid discourse, and poetical politics with which it has been assailed, "what they want." To judge by the fermenting spirit every where prevalent, the bombastic and unpractical dreams -for plans they are not-formed as regards the future, it would be difficult also not to suppose that "they won't be easy till they get it."

What would revolutionising Germany be at? In spite of all one sees and hears, or rather does not hear, it is impossible not to recur to the question again and again; for, after all, in Germany we are among thinking men, and, children as they may be in political life, thinking men they are; and, surely, thinking men must have some definite end and aim to which their thoughts, their hopes, their aspirations, and their efforts are directed. All the Utopian schemes, all the unpractical theories of all parties, who put themselves forward in the revolutionary movement, be their tendencies monarchic, constitutional, or republican, aspire, then, to the setting up of the ill-defined idol of modern German political fancies"German unity""One great and powerful united Germany "One great united German Empire "—or whatever name, designation, or varied shade of name the idol, whose pedestal is "Union," may bear. This was the great fancied panacea for all evils, for which men clamoured, when, in imitation of that distracted city of Paris-so worthy of imitation, forsooth-they got up revolutions, and tried their hands at building barricades. This has been, in truth, long since the watchword of the German student, when, in the recesses of his beer-cellar at the university, he collected a set of fellow fancied enthu

siasts around the beer-jugs, imagined this species of club to be a wonderful conspiracy, because he designated it by the forbidden name of "Burschenschaft," and deemed himself a notable and formidable conspirator, because he drank off his krug of beer to the cry of "Perish all Princes-es lebe hock das Deutsche Vaterland!" The princes, by the way, were highly complimentary to such conspirators, in considering them dangerous, and forbidding the existence of the Burschenschaften, which were pretty safetyvalves enough to let off the exuberance of studentic steam. Whether the cry for a "United Germany" first proceeded again from the mouths of these fantastic enthusiasts, who, when they found out, to their surprise, that the parts they had been acting in their mimic dramas of the beer-cellars might be acted to the life and under the open sky of heaven, became in most parts of Germany the leaders of the mobs, or the heroes of the barricades, matters but little; nothing is more like a flock of sheep-although the term of "a pack of wolves" might often appear more applicable-than the general herd of men in moments of revolutionary excitement; whatever conclusion, however far-fetched and fantastic, any old revolutionary bell-wether may jump at, the flock is sure to follow and jump after him. It matters, then, but little how or by whom the cry of "United Germany" was first raised-the whole revolutionary flock immediately set up the same "baa !" and in each convulsion of each German State, great or small, in which a revolution may be said to have taken place, among the grievances which mobs, deputations, or delegates laid before German princes, as necessary to be forthwith amended and rectified, was the immediate and indispensable want of a "United Germany." A somewhat more decided and definite step towards the possible realisation of this tolerably vague and indefinite desideratum, in the amendment of people's wrongs, was taken by the call for the meeting of one united German parliament, for the purpose of considering and regulating the affairs of all Germany in this revolutionary crisis; but more especially of effecting that union in

one empire, under one head, or under one form of government, which appeared to be the great desire of those who now put themselves forward as the expression of the will of all the German nation, either as a whole, or in its parts; and which seemed to be considered as the great unknown remedy for all evils, real or imaginary. The meeting of the first illegal and self-constituted body, which, in its impatience to be ruling the destinies of the nation, assembled at Frankfort under the name of a Vor-Parlement, or preliminary parliament, and, although originally only emanating from a club of revolutionary spirits at Heidelberg, contrived to impose itself upon Germany and its princes, and sway the destinies of the land, in opposition to the old German Diet assembled in the same place the proceedings of the Ausschuss, or select committee, which the members of this Vor-Parlement left behind them, to follow up their assumed authority, when they themselves dispersed, the constitution of the present National Assembly, sanctioned by most of the German princes, and acknowledged as fully legal and supreme in its authority, its members being elected by universal suffrage,-and its meeting in time to put a stop to the wild democratic tendencies and reckless proceedings of the Auschuss, are all matters of newspaper history, and need here no further detail; they are mentioned only to show what revolutionising Germany fancies and pretends it would be at, as far as any idea can be formed from its actionsand the means it would employ to arrive at its ends. We have got thus far, then, in the solution of our question. Revolutionising Germany desires, above all things, one great and powerful union of all its several parts, -the how, when, where, &c., being as yet very indefinite and unintelligible; and the General National Assembly is there to settle those important preliminaries. Let us content ourselves awhile with this very vague and uncertain answer, and return to old Father Rhine and his neighbourhood, to have some further idea of the physiognomy of the country under the present revolutionary auspices, and with the soothing hopes

of the realisation of the grand desideratum of union before the country's eyes. After taking this superficial survey of the "outward man," and judging as far as we can of his character and temper therefrom, we may then speculate, perhaps, a little upon his tendencies in his present course; and even go so far as to attempt to take his hand, and try a trick or two of palmistry in fortune-telling-not pretending, however, in true gipsy spirit, to infallibility in foretelling the future, however knowingly and mysteriously we may shake our heads in so doing.

Although the Germans cannot be said to have the capabilities of acting any new part, that they may pretend to take upon themselves, to the lifeand even to the death—with all that reality and energy for which the French have such an inborn talent, yet they may be looked up to as a still more symbol-loving people than the latter; and although perhaps not quite so much "up to" correctness of costume, at least quite as fond of parading the dress of the new part upon all occasions. The first thing, consequently, that strikes the tourist, on entering the Germany of 1848, is the ostentatious display of the new-old imperial, so-called national cockade, the red, black, and gold colours of the old German empire. It is not only upon the caps of vapouring students, who begin to consider themselves more or less the masters of the world, or upon the hats of hot-headed, soidisant enthusiastic, poetico-political young men that the new cockade is now to be seen; it stares you in the face from the head and breast of almost every man you meet-graybeard, middle-aged, or youngster. It is generally from the centre of the cap or hat, and thus just upon the forehead, that it glares upon you, like the dark, red, gleaming eye of a new race of Cyclops: almost every male individual looks like a political Polyphemus. The soldiers are, one and all, adorned with two cockades, the one of the colours of the individual country they serve, the other of those of Imperial United Germany. They have thus two staring, distorted, and unmatched eyes, one over the other, in the centre of their foreheads. With their two eyes they ought, one would