The merchant remarked to me, that the only nobles of Bremen were merchants, and that it would be good for the whole world if there were no others. I hardly joined in the opinion, particularly when I saw these nobles going in crowds to see their soldiers relieve guard, thus doing homage to their own mercenaries. The love for military foppery and glare seems, indeed, so common to the Germans, that even the citizens, both of Hamburg and Bremen, who are in all their pursuits so different from soldiers, admire, and in a manner worship them. The noble merchants of Italy certainly improved their country, but apparently only to reduce it to slavery. It is of little consequence what trade men follow, whether they are soldiers or merchants; if they have power they will abuse it, and the merchants of Genoa, of Venice, and, indeed, of Hamburg and Bremen, seem only to have acquired wealth, that they might riot in the fulness of arbitrary will. The former were more tyrannical and aristocratic than any mere nobles; and if the latter have not been so, it has been owing to their power having been much more limited.

The inhabitants of the mercantile town of Leipsic were less informed in polite literature than those of Dresden. The same fact appeared true of those of Hamburg; and in Bremen, I could find only one decent bookseller, and but one circulating library. The mass of the people, in mercantile towns, have too many occupations to be enabled to read, while the idlers, who live in the train of a court, the minor artists, who are nourished by its wants and its rewards, often depend on reading not only for amusement, but for that improvement which is useful in their employments. Merchants are warmly interested in every change of other countries. It is of little consequence to those of Bremen, whether sculpture and painting, and poetry, flourish in Britain or not, but our custom-house regulations, our progress in the improvement of machinery, by which our cottons have almost superseded in the markets of the west the linens in which they deal, are of great importance to them. They care very little about either the magnetism or the theatres of Prussia and Bavaria, but they must know accurately the tariffs of the monarchs of these countries. They have no circulating libraries; but they have two or three clubs in which newspapers may be read. The difference between the literary attainments of the inhabitants of mere mercantile towns, and of towns which are the residence of courts, appear to be very strong in Germany. At the table d’hôte at Bremen, where between twenty and thirty people dined every day, and who were mostly inhabitants of the town, there was no sort of conversation, but of their own trade or their amusements. At the theatre, two or three persons, of whom I asked the name of the author of a little musical piece I saw represented, knew nothing about it. Leisure is necessary for the cultivation of literature, men have recourse to it as an amusement, but the leisure, which is possessed by the dependants of a court, is purchased by condemning to severer toil the great mass of the society, and literature itself is not worth having at such a price; the graces it bestows are worthy of all admiration, but they are only the elegant coverings of a feeble frame, whenever they are thrown over it by the hands of sovereigns. There is, probably, a stronger mind altogether in mercantile towns than in the others. Both Hamburg and Bremen have been famous for astronomical observations, and for mathematics. Dr Olbers, so well known as an astronomer, lived in Bremen, and in Lilienthal, not far from the town, is the observatory of Mr Schröter, in which a celebrated professor at Göttingen, Mr Harding, acquired the principal part of his knowledge.

I left Bremen on Wednesday, and passing through a flat country, first marshy, then sandy, and at length boggy, reached Oldenburg, the principal town of the dukedom of the same name, at evening. Much of the country was uncultivated, but an extensive tract of moor near the town was in part recently inclosed, and was then inclosing. The excellent appearance of the corn in those places which had been cultivated was a proof that the whole of the moor was fit for cultivation. It was evident, also, that it might be cultivated with a reasonable profit, that the labour and the seed were returned to man with an usurious interest. It was all claimed by the sovereign as his domanial property, and the cultivators were obliged to pay him a certain sum for permission to cultivate it. About eight shillings an acre was given as purchase money, and about three shillings per acre was to be given yearly as rent. The country had before this produced nothing but peat. It was a spongy elastic bog, which the industry of man might fertilize, but which of itself supplied nothing but fuel.

Oldenburg is a neat little town, with a good public walk, and a tolerable large palace, but it has no theatre, no university, no excellent situation, nothing to make it desirable as a residence. It contains 5000 inhabitants. The whole dukedom only contains 217,000, scattered over a surface of 1840 square geographical miles. The greater part of it is a flat sandy or moory country. A small part of it, where it borders on Osnabrück, is hilly, and the borders of the Weser and of the sea, particularly that portion called Jever, are good fruitful marsh lands; but the remainder of the country, without being quite so barren as the sands of the province of Lüneburg, is a desolate neglected waste. How much this may be owing to nature, and how much to a very complicated government, which directs a large part of the capital and revenue of the country to the support of amtmen, consistorial counsellors, counsellors for the poor, and all the multiplied officers of a German government, and which directs all the talents and ingenuity of the country, to fit themselves for these offices, is somewhat difficult to decide; but there is reason to believe, had ingenuity and capital not been so misdirected, the whole land might have been brought under cultivation.

The revenue of Oldenburg is supposed to amount to 1,200,000 florins, or L. 120,000 per year. L. 3000 of this is raised by a royal toll on the land at Wildeshausen, and L. 6000 by a toll on the Weser at Elsfleth. The army amounts to 1650 men. The states of this country have been so long in disuse, that no public records remain of any having ever been summoned. According to the general principles which have been followed in all the countries of Germany, there can be no doubt that meetings of the states were formerly held in Oldenburg, but little or nothing is known concerning them. The country, separated in a great measure from the more flourishing and enlightened parts of Germany, is yet sunk in apathy and ignorance. I could find but one bookseller in the town, and he had no works whatever relative to the country, more than an almanack, describing the court with all its officers. The schools of Oldenburg, and the manner of instruction which is followed in them, resemble those of the other parts of Germany; but in all other sorts of learning, particularly in all that relates to politics, it is much behind.

A dreary walk, on the following day, brought me into East Friezland. On the road some spots were now for the first time inclosing, and there were some marks of an increasing cultivation and improvement. The magistrates have the power, both in Oldenburg and Friezland, of ordering out all the owners of land, for twenty days in the year, to mend the roads. The evil of this practice is considerably greater in the former country, in which the magistrates are appointed by the crown, than in the latter, where they are elected by the land-owners. I saw a large party of men and women employed in this labour. Each owner of a spot of ground must send one person, or go himself. The opulent farmers send a maid servant; the poor man must leave his own work to go. The soil was sandy; there were no stones to mend the road with. All that the people did, or could do, was to clean out the ditches on the sides, and throw the loose sand into the middle of the road, to be washed back by the next heavy shower of rain. It is evil enough to be compelled to do useful works, but it is rather too much to compel people to waste their time in doing what is at most but of very little service. The people of Holland, who were once free, and who still possess that spirit of enterprise which is given by freedom, have paved most of their roads with small bricks. The dukedom of Oldenburg has conveniences for making bricks, but there the peasants are still employed throwing loose sand out of the ditches to be washed back again by the next shower.

There are comparatively few nobles in Oldenburg, and the greater part of the land is held immediately from the grand duke. The good plan has been here followed of building the farm houses in the neighbourhood of the land which each farmer cultivates. The houses are, however, generally small, thatched, and very dirty. The few people I saw were ill dressed and ugly. The women wore, in general, hats like the men, and, dressed rather after the English manner, reminded me of the degraded females of our sea-ports.

Rather a large extent of moor separates Friezland from Oldenburg, and I was sensible of a great difference of appearance in the houses of the former immediately on entering it. They were, many of them, built of brick, and the roofs were covered with tiles. They were larger, cleaner, and altogether better-conditioned than the houses of Oldenburg. At the house where I slept, which was a small one, fine gilded cupboards were filled with old-fashioned china. Two large coarse china vases stood on the table. The fire-place was lined with Dutch tiles. Plates, pans, and kettles, were all kept very clean and bright, and were ranged on the wall with great art and order. The whole of the house, even to the coffee, which was execrable, shewed that the manners of the Dutch had extended to the borders of Oldenburg, and had there stopped. On the whole, however, a great improvement was visible. It was immediately obvious that the people of Friezland had something more than the mere necessaries of life, while those of Oldenburg appeared confined to the gratification of its most simple wants.

Much of Friezland, particularly where it borders on Oldenburg, is sand and bog, but man is extending his empire over both. All the banks of the Ems, and the borders of the sea which belong to Friezland, are some of the finest marsh lands of the world. The ground is so good that it does not require all the manure the farmers have to give it, and those who live in the fertile part exchange manure for peat, which is chiefly dug in the Hoch Moor, a district bordering on Oldenburg. To facilitate this exchange, canals have been dug from the Hoch Moor to the Ems. The manure is thus employed to improve the sterile, sandy, and moory districts, which are inclosing and cultivating, while the extensive market which has thus been opened for the peat, has given a value to what was before a desart. After the wastes I had passed of the provinces of Lüneburg, and Bremen, and of Oldenburg, in which the extent of improvement was the erection of a new sheep hut, or the inclosure of a few acres of ground, it was pleasing to see the spirit of enterprise of which the improvements of Friezland were evidence. The canals were made by a subscription company, a degree of exertion, which is not common in any country where departments of a ministry direct the course of trade, and where making canals and roads are numbered among the duties of the monarch.

Between where I slept and Aurich, I saw a small spot of ground newly inclosed. The garden was dug and planted, but the house was only half built. A man and a woman were sawing trees into timbers for the roof. The woman was beneath; they were a couple who were just fixing themselves here, and who were building their own house and cultivating their own land. Had they been young, many happy days might have awaited them, but they were at that season of life when man should think more of rest than of toil,—when his house should have given protection to his children, instead of being then first to be roofed in for himself.

Aurich, though not so large as Embden, has always been the seat of government of East Friezland, and was formerly the residence of its counts. Their palace is now a barrack, though Aurich still remains the chief place, and is now the seat of the provincial government, and of the chief tribunal of this province. I saw nothing so curious here as an establishment for the poor. It was a house, to which a spot of ground belonged, on which three cows were fed. A sum of money was given the people to buy bread, but the younger ones, and those who were able to work, provided for the rest, and did all the work, such as milking the cows and cooking, which was necessary to nourish the rest, and keep the place clean. Forty-two old men, women, and children, were all huddled together, but the place, though small, was clean. A canal (not the one before mentioned) connects Aurich with Embden. It has also been made by subscription; but, in consequence of its not having been carried so far as was intended, it is said not to pay the share-holders. The changes which took place in the political situation of Friezland had hindered the original plan from being fully executed. The canal was to have extended to Witmund, and perhaps, ultimately, to the Weser, though this part of the execution would have depended on the sovereign of Oldenburg. Had the plan been fully executed, there is little doubt it would have improved the country, and that the subscribers would have been paid a proper interest for their money.

I went in a track-boat, by this canal, to Embden. There was some company present that rather reminded me of England. It will not be asserted, I hope, that I wish to throw a stigma on my country by any unnecessary severity of remark, but I was reminded of England by the conduct of some women who occupied the fore part of the boat. They were half tipsy; they sang, and were riotous, and mocked at every traveller on the road. It is only when we see such conduct that we recollect we have before not seen it for a long time. In truth, a riotous and a drunken woman is almost an unknown character except in the sea-ports, and among the lower classes of Britain. There is something either in the greater inequality of the different classes of our people, or in the force of our moral opinions, which condemns the sinning part of our population to a state of rough brutality,—of profligate and boisterous licentiousness,—of active and devilish vice, which glances in rags, in filth, and drunkenness, on the eye, and sounds, in imprecations, on the ear, and which I have never seen in any other part of the world but in Britain. Single specimens of this sort of character may be seen in Paris, but it is found in masses only in the neighbourhood of Wapping, of St Giles, and of our sea-ports. Our activity is conspicuous, not only in virtue, but in vice, and the latter is carried to loath-some excess. Licentiousness, and perhaps cruelty and revenge, may be the characteristics of other people, but it is only in our country that hard and disgusting brutality is combined with profligacy. This sort of character may be owing, in both countries, to commerce, or to activity of mind, but much of it is to be attributed to a severity of opinion, which not only condemns the sin, but has no charity for the sinner. Calvinism is the predominant religion of Friezland, and it too frequently classes enjoyment as vice, and pushes those who have made one false step into the abyss of misery. In other countries frailties are regarded with more tenderness, and those who are addicted to any one vice are not compelled to be utterly vicious. To whatever causes the difference of character which has been mentioned may be owing, it is, I think, certain, that one reprobated vice brings after it, in our country, many other vices, and more misery, than in other countries. This is worthy the attention of the moralist and the philosopher, as it may lead to some more accurate knowledge of the causes of crime, and the means of preventing it.

There was also a man in the boat who fully convinced me that these women were strongly marked exceptions to the generality of the people. He was a tradesman who had been settled at Embden forty years, a calm sedate man, who had read the Bible and the history of his country very attentively,—who had laboured hard to rear his family, and had taken much pains to teach them morality. There was a carefulness and a self-denial about him, together with an ease and openness that shewed he sailed with the current of opinion, and that his virtue was also the virtue of most of his fellow citizens. He had accustomed his children, he said, to many little privations, that they might be better enabled to brave the evils of life. To submit, without necessity, to any privation, is in general no part of the character of the Germans. I saw one of his daughters at Embden, and she appeared to have done honour to her father’s precepts. She was a careful good wife.

There was another rather strange character, a Dutchman, who had long been an officer of the French armies, and had acquired all the confidence and presumption of French officers, without any of their graces or their gaiety. He had an affectation of being above decency, which shewed itself in indiscriminately talking nonsense to every person. He was a blackguard of another sort, differing from the women in outward polish, but not in sentiment. Both parties only served to make the old tradesman more conspicuous, and, without their riotousness, his calmness would have attracted no observation.

It was evening when we reached Embden. The town-house is a fine old building. The inhabitants appeared mostly very good-looking, and were all very cleanly dressed. Short white or coloured jackets, with black petticoats and black silk aprons, a white clean cap, pinned close to the head, and ruffs about the neck, was in general the dress of the females, though many of the better sort were clad after the fashions of France or England. The older women wore a more ancient costume, of which the principal part was a hat that was as large as an umbrella.

Sunday in Embden was observed as Sunday is observed in England. No business was done. The people all went to church, and partook of no amusement but a walk.

The walls of the town inclose a much larger space than the houses at present occupy; formerly, also, the people were not so conveniently and spaciously lodged as at present, and it is, therefore, probable, as is asserted, that Embden once contained many more inhabitants than at present. In 1649, they were estimated at 20,000, and at present at 12,000. Embden was once a powerful member of the Hanseatic league, and was then an independent city, keeping sometimes the prince prisoner, and always bidding him defiance. It retained the greater part of its power and privileges till 1749, and it only fully lost every shadow of freedom and independence when the government of Hannover gave it, in 1818, an entire new constitution.

Its trade was formerly much greater than at present; from the beginning of the seventeenth century it appears to have declined; under the prohibitive system of Buonaparte, it made a rapid progress, and its merchants rapidly made fortunes; the general peace had again very much diminished their trade, and made them at the moment full of discontent. The harbour of Embden is said to be growing shallower, and projects have been formed by the present government to remedy this. It has proceeded so far as to appoint an engineer, and to take into its own hands the tolls which formerly belonged to the town. Magnificent schemes have been talked of, but there is a want of funds to execute them. The trade of Embden will hardly recover under the fostering care of the Hannoverian government, but while its port remains large enough for a single vessel to enter, Embden has so favourable a situation, that it will always have a considerable trade.

The same extraordinary manner of building farmhouses, which I have mentioned, when speaking of Hadeln, also prevails in Friezland, and, from the wealth of the farmers, is very conspicuous in the vicinity of Embden. That a common German bauer, whose corn is thrashed so soon as it is housed, who has perhaps only a pair of horses and cows, should find it convenient to cover all his worldly possessions with one roof, is not surprising; nor did I observe that their houses were enormously large. But, when I saw the same mode practised in Friezland by the largest farmers, I was astonished at the strangeness and the magnitude of the buildings. The rich farmers of Friezland, who have some of them fifty cows and sixteen horses, and whose dwellings are spacious, cover the whole with one roof. I have counted fifty windows in the dwelling part of the house, and attached to this, and under the same roof, were the stalls for fifty cows and twelve horses. The dwelling is at one end, at the other end is the stable; on the sides between the two ends are the stalls for the cows, the middle is the thrashing-floor, the barn, and the place where the carts and the farming instruments are kept. At the outside of the end farthest from the dwelling is the dunghill. In short, the whole farm-yard, and the dwelling of the family, with the exception of the dunghill, are brought under the same covering. The inhabitants say this is a cheaper and better plan of building than any other, that all their conveniences are at hand, and that, when built of bricks, and covered with tiles, when the stalls are nicely paved, as they are in Friezland, it is a better mode than ours of having separate buildings for stables, barns, and cow-houses. The danger, however, to which the property is exposed in case of fire, seems a strong reason against it. From the specimens I saw of farm-houses in Friezland and Hadeln, there is no objection to it on account of cleanliness. The dwelling is far removed from the animals, it has always a separate entrance, and no people are more conspicuous for cleanliness than the Friezlanders. I have since seen, that the same plan is followed in some of the provinces of Holland, particularly in West Friezland, and there the houses are equally large.

The Friezlanders are more Dutch than German, and distinct in their manners and language from the latter, though East Friezland has always formed a part of the empire. Numerous mills for sawing, for making oil, and for spinning, stand on the walls of Embden, and in the neighbourhood of the town; they are all built after the Dutch manner, and are proofs of the industry and enterprise of the people. The dikes with which the greater part of Friezland is protected, and in a manner won from the sea and the river; the manner in which the inhabitants are obliged constantly to struggle against this element; the canals I have already mentioned, and numerous others which have been dug from Embden to all the villages in its neighbourhood; are, all proofs of the same admirable qualities. The agriculture of the Friezlanders is excellent, and they are, in all respects, a more enterprising people than the greater part of the Germans. They are stouter and better-looking,—they are better clothed and better fed,—they hold themselves upright and manly, and they pride themselves on being superior to the Germans. After seeing something of both, I join in their opinion. One of the causes of this superiority has already been mentioned; the Friezlanders were originally a separate tribe, and were every where distinguished by the form of their government, and by the division of their landed property from the rest of the Germans. Friezland, like Hadeln, is divided into farms of from 400 to 50 acres, which are, in general, possessed in full property by the persons who cultivate them. The farmers owe no feudal services, and they have no labourers but those they hire. There are nobles in Friezland, but they are not numerous. That part of the feudal system which considered a certain class of men as the property of their lord has long been abolished, or never found its way into Friezland. Every man was his own master, or, as a respectable merchant of Embden said, a king in his own house, and if an action were to be done for the common good, and by general exertion, it could only be done by the consent of all. The land owners, or the farmers, had a vote in the election of their own priests, of their own tax-gatherers, of the people who looked after the dikes, and they elected the persons who were to administer the taxes. There was a regular parliament for the management of public business, to which the towns sent fifteen deputies, and the owners of land, or third stand, 180. They were, therefore, adequately represented. At the head of the government was a Count of Friezland, and constant disputes between him, the nobles, the town of Embden, and the parliament, till the very last moment of the independent existence of Friezland, shew that no one party had obtained the possession of uncontrolled power.

In 1744 the family of the Counts became extinct, and Friezland then fell under the dominion of the sovereign of Prussia, who held it as a fief of the empire. It stood in the same relation to him as Hadeln did to Hannover. Under him the inhabitants preserved some of their privileges. A particular treaty regulated the number of men, and the sum of money Friezland was to pay its sovereign, but the manner of levying both was to be left to the states, and it was to remain free from the conscription of Frederick, and his arbitrary taxes. The sovereign appointed some of the principal officers, but the greater part of the inferior ones, particularly all those connected with the administration of the revenue, were as formerly appointed by the states, or elected by the people. The monarch did not long respect the treaty which he had made with his subjects. In return for the money and the soldiers they were to give him, he sent a commissioner to administer the government, and take care of the interests of the crown. Notwithstanding the solemn assurances which had been given that all the privileges of the people should be secured to them, this commissioner told the states, when they refused to augment their tribute of men and money, “If you will not do as my master wishes, I will leave you tomorrow, and he will send in my place a few regiments of soldiers, to facilitate giving a subsidy, and sending recruits.” Such was the exchange. The Friezlanders gave their wealth and blood for such protection as a royal commissioner could afford, and they were only employed to exact still more wealth and blood. Common men can easily appreciate such governments, but by some people they are called paternal. Under their own Counts, the freedom of the Friezlanders was preserved; it was much diminished when the mighty sovereigns of Prussia became the masters of the country; it was entirely destroyed by the occupation of the French; and is only very partially restored since the country has been added to the dominions of Hannover. The full property of the soil still remains to the farmer. The inhabitants still preserve some minor privileges, such as those of electing local magistrates, and of appointing their own clergymen; but the former parliament has been amalgamated in the parliament for the kingdom of Hannover, and the government has taken the whole direction of the affairs of Friezland on itself.

The public spirit of this people is visible in the construction of canals and dikes, and their prosperity in the extent of their commerce, and the goodness of their agriculture; and we see their morality and happiness in their general comforts and appearance. Friezland, after Hadeln, is the most prosperous looking part of Germany, and here, as there, the people have always managed their own affairs. They have erected works of public utility, superior to any which have been erected in the much governed lands of Germany. When the canals of Friezland, which extend every where, are compared to a single one which the government of Hannover attempted to cut in Bremen sixty years ago, we may conclude that the real business of men, what promotes their prosperity, is always better done by themselves than by any few separate and distinct individuals, acting as a government in the name of the whole.

The minds of the inhabitants of Friezland have been chastened by disasters, and ennobled by a continued independent national existence. Every other country of Germany has been bought and sold, or bequeathed as an inheritance: but Friezland has always been nearly of its present extent, and the people have always lived and fought as Friezlanders. They have a regular and a continued history of their exploits, and are ennobled by knowing that they are the descendants of men who have always been independent. But their pride has been humbled and chastened, while their minds have been strung to new toils by disasters which were inflicted by the hand of God. Their country is on a level with the sea, and it requires constant care, and great labour, to preserve it from being overwhelmed. Their history is full of sufferings, but none equals that which was occasioned by the great flood of Christmas 1717, when a large part of the land was inundated. The farm-houses were swept away, and the people whom the water spared perished from cold.

I left Embden on Tuesday, June 23d, crossed the Ems at Petkum to visit a large district that was embanked during the time the country belonged to Prussia, and therefore called the Prussian Polder. It is celebrated for its very great fertility. Unfortunately it came on to rain, and continued to rain the whole day. I recrossed the river at Weener, and reached Papenburg to sleep.

The roads are very often made on the top of the dikes, which exposes the traveller to all the fury of the tempest. In the midst of a very heavy shower, and when the wind was so strong that it was with difficulty I could keep my umbrella spread, and nothing was heard but the rain blowing against it, I was surprised by a voice close to my ear, and, turning my head rather frightened, was still more surprised to see close to my shoulder a pair of bright eyes, and rosy cheeks, speaking health, animation, and the pleasure of exertion. It was a lovely looking young woman, who, laughing, told me we might go together. I embraced the offer with great pleasure, as I measured a tall and graceful form; and, clasping my arm round her that I might shelter her better, I blessed the storm that had forced so handsome a companion to seek the shelter of my cotton roof. We walked two miles together, and before we parted, the rain, which had driven every other person within doors, had made us quite intimate. She was well dressed, as the Friezlanders generally are, and full of animation as a French woman. I have seen nothing in the character of a countrywoman half so amiable in all Germany, and I was sorry when she arrived at the farm-house to which she was going, and when I was again obliged to pursue my walk alone.

CHAPTER IX.: papenburg—schauenburg lippe.

Celebrity of Papenburg.—Origin.—Meppen.—Nature of the country.—Increase of inhabitants.—Dirtiness of women.—Meddling of government.—Lingen.—Westphalia.—Osnabrück.—Ancient abode of the Saxons.—Memorials.—A linen hall.—Gardens.—A triumphal arch.—Relics of Charlemagne.—Literature of small towns.—Justus Möser.—Tolerance.—Penitentiary.—Soil of Osnabrück.—Suhlingen.—Nienburg.—Prison.—Counties of Hoya and Diepholz.—Loccum.—Mineral waters of Rehburg.—Schauenburg.—Lippe.—Arrive at Hannover.

There was perhaps no town of Europe that grew more suddenly into notice and eminence, during the late war, than Papenburg: Its flag flew on every sea, and protected the property of every nation; but naval officers often looked in vain in their gazetteers and charts, or hunted over their geographies, for the name of the mighty place whose trade then appeared to be greater than that of all the rest of the world. Papenburg has not yet been a century in existence; and its flag only became known to the world, because the ministry of Great Britain was pleased to allow of its neutrality. It is not one of the least of the evils of modern war that thousands of men have been constrained by it, for the protection of their property, to be guilty of perjury, and that this perjury has often been sanctioned by courts of justice and the ruling powers of several nations. The inhabitants of Papenburg amount to 3000, and they may possess at most 200 small vessels, which may enable the reader faintly to imagine the quantity of perjury which must have been necessary to swear to those papers which made some thousands of vessels, during the late war, into Papenburgers. On this account Papenburg is famous in history, and in the records of the courts of admiralty of Great Britain. It ought, however, to be known from the nature of its origin, and from its prosperity.

All around Papenburg the country is a complete bog, and the peat is in places many feet thick; it seemed to render cultivation hopeless, and to condemn the neighbourhood to perpetual sterility. There was, however, no difficulty in digging a canal from this storehouse of fuel to the Ems, and the peat then found a market in Embden and Holland. Towards the latter end of the seventeenth century, the proprietor of the country, Frey heer von Landsberg-Veelen, made a canal of about seven miles in length, from the Ems to the moor where the peat was abundant, and encouraged people to settle there, by allowing them to dig peat and build houses without paying him any thing more than a nominal rent, and a certain sum for the goods they sent by the canal. There are now several canals, large enough for vessels of 150 tons burthen, and their whole length may amount to eighteen miles. Without any other encouragement from the proprietor than that he assisted to make these canals, and allowed the people to profit by their own industry, and without any streams of royal bounty, Papenburg grew up from such beginnings, and increased to its present size. It has been one of the most prosperous little towns of Europe, and now contains more than 3000 inhabitants. It is an instance of what the unfettered industry of man can effect. By the sides of these canals there are now several ship-yards where vessels are built and fully equipped. Without having any natural products whatever but peat, the Papenburgers have become a carrying people, so far as their means extend, to the rest of Europe. Their houses are in general neat and well built, and I have seen no little town, where there was altogether a greater appearance of comfort and prosperity. When this has been accomplished in a waste, what might we not expect throughout Europe, if all its inhabitants enjoyed, as the Papenburgers did, the privilege of freely exercising their industry, and of having all its fruits for themselves? Papenburg was formerly in the dominions of the bishopric of Munster, and it now forms a part of the kingdom of Hannover.

I walked on the following day to Meppen, the principal town in the circle of the same name, and which is the most desolate part of the dominions of Hannover, and perhaps of Germany. The greater part of the circle is either morass or sand, fertility being only found in the vicinity of some little streams. Much of my day’s walk was through a country wholly of sand. It was loose, and in some places in motion, and in others blown together in hills. It was sometimes collected in fantastical forms, and had the appearance of snow after a heavy storm. In many places, where the sand had recently been again dispersed by the wind, turf and heath could be discovered, which shews, in some measure, that the waste is of modern formation. It is said to increase, and sometimes to carry barrenness over cultivated fields, compelling the farmer to change his residence, and reducing him from affluence to wretchedness.

Barren as Meppen naturally is, the number of the inhabitants has increased one third within thirty years. All the moors, particularly the Burtanger moor, on the west side of the Ems, reward the labour which is employed in cultivating them. Within thirty years many new villages have been built, and much of these moors brought under cultivation. Many people have settled on them, and there can be no doubt, if the same system be pursued, that, in the course of a few years, a great part of these wastes, particularly the moors, may be made subservient to the nourishment of man.

The system is a very simple one, and very similar to that which made Papenburg a flourishing town. There is far less of the cunning of ruling craft wanted than is supposed to make men prosperous. Meppen formerly belonged to the bishop of Munster, and he allowed any persons who chose to fix a habitation on these moors, and cultivate any part of them, on condition of paying, at the end of ten years from the time of their first settling, a small rent. The first ten years they were to pay nothing. Two thirds of the rent which they were then to pay was to be devoted to public services, such as making roads, drains, constructing parish churches, and other works of utility. From tithes they were to be entirely free, but each settler was to contribute a small quantity of corn, and a small sum of money, for the support of the parish priest. There was one oversight committed. The moor touches on Holland, and the best channel by which its superfluous water could be drained passes through that country. No agreement had been entered into with the Dutchmen as to the manner in which this was to be done, nor were any measures taken to ensure them from damage. Disputes between them and the new settlers were the consequence, and the latter had broken the dikes down which the former had erected to keep the water from coming into their land. This was a fruitful source of quarrels, which foresight, and the common interest of the two parties, could easily have prevented.

I have recently brought under the notice of the reader three instances of increasing cultivation; the two latter of which, where the people had no rents, no tithes, and few government expences to pay, may almost equal the increase of population in some parts of America. It is an extra-ordinary fact, that, with thousands and millions of acres of ground yet uncultivated in Europe, in the neighbourhood of a good market, with implements, and capital, and manure, at hand, that people should be enabled to transport themselves to America or to Russia, and there grow rich by cultivating land not better than that which lies waste in the countries they leave. The German peasants go in thousands to the Black Sea, and from there send corn to Italy, France, and Britain, when there are whole counties of waste acres in their own country, that might be easily cultivated. I believe this arises from no natural advantages belonging to Russia or America, but from the artificial disadvantages under which the labouring classes of all the old and multiplied governments of Europe live. The settlers in Russia and America enjoy nothing more than the inhabitants of Europe but freedom, at least for a season, from the expences of government, and of maintaining idle people. There are few spots which, like Meppen and Papenburg, can be cultivated without paying rent and tithes, and when these are combined with interest of capital, the expences of government, and the increased price of the articles consumed, which is occasioned by pre-existing rents and tithes, nothing is left to the labourer to reward him for his industry. The clear fact is, without sifting it from its first concoction to its last fineness, that in Europe there are so many unproductive persons who are supported at the expence of the productive ones, that those latter never receive the tithe of those fruits which nature bestows on them. It is a sad feature of society, that he who produces every thing receives almost nothing, while those persons who produce nothing revel in superfluity. Industry is the slave of idleness, and, from being constantly associated with poverty and contempt, it has become more shunned and abhorred than crime. There can be no rational hope for the permanent improvement of society, no dependence on gaols and gibbets, to prevent all the crimes which now arise from a violation of artificial property, till individual industry shall form the basis of property,—till labour shall be opulent and idleness have nothing;—till this principle be so fully established in society as it is in nature, we shall expect in vain that men should prefer labour to idleness, to cheating, or to thieving.

This was St John’s day, and as the people here are Catholics, they all went to church. The women were all clothed in a coarse red woollen cloth, with large gipsey straw hats. It rained, and the whole of them had made a sort of umbrella of their outer petticoat, by throwing it over their shoulders and heads. When they were abroad, and the air blew on them, they looked tolerably clean and fresh, but within doors, when they had resumed their working dresses, they were dirty and disgusting. I have seldom seen European women who appeared more negligent than they appeared to be. I had occasion, from its raining, to enter one or two cottages for shelter, and the women, whether young or elderly, were half undressed. They wore no stays; their linen was dirty; their gowns only half tied; their bosoms were naked, and two or three ragged aprons covered one another; they wore no shoes; their skins were unwashed, and their hair dishevelled. One amused herself with that species of hunting which is so common in Italy, and with which Laura, according to Petrarch, appears sometime to have amused herself. Another took snuff, and wiped herself with her woollen apron. Their houses resemble their persons. They have holes instead of windows; in the brightest day darkness is in them. The furniture consists in a table, a loom, two or three wooden stools, a few pewter plates and basins, with one or two kettles. Dirty as they are, the females wear on gala days gold ear-rings and silver clasps, that go over the head and keep the hair together. Vanity provides ornaments for a dirty person before necessaries for the house. Cleanliness makes both mind and body healthy, and perhaps there is nothing which can give a greater degree of permanent pleasure to the individuals of both sexes than the cleanliness of each. To introduce so much luxury among these people as would make them attend to their persons and dress, would be rendering them the most essential service. They are not idle. They are merely negligent, slovenly, and dirty. When I recollected the clean inhabitants of Embden, the contrast appeared great, and I had again reason to praise wealth and freedom. Yet in this country, where every body is poor, there are no beggars, no alms houses, no paupers, and few persons who are fed by the bounties of others.

At Meppen I heard rather a curious instance of the care of the magistracy for the morality of the people. It had been customary, on feast days and Sundays, for the poorer sort of people to meet and dance and amuse themselves, in what manner, and so long as they pleased; but the magistrates thought it would be better for their health and morality, if they were to separate at an early hour, and they consequently forbade these assemblies to be continued beyond ten o’clock. The people, who had been accustomed to remain longer together, in some measure resisted, and the whole town had been thrown into disturbance by the officiousness of the magistrates. This is a minor example of governing folly. To prevent one man from getting tipsey, or one woman from enjoying a stolen embrace, which, after all this interference, may happen, and which might not happen without it, dissension and discord are introduced through a whole town, and the community suffers more from the irritation of opposition and the punishments inflicted, than it could by any possibility have suffered if things had been left to themselves. Magistrates and laws very often make those crimes, to repress and punish which they afterwards derive most of their importance and utility.

I shall say nothing of a walk for two days through such a desolate country as I had recently passed, till I reached Osnabrück. Lingen is the only town worth mentioning that lies between the towns of Osnabrück and Meppen. It is built on the Ems, and formerly boasted a university, which is at present gone to decay. It is a clean town. The houses were rather built after the Dutch manner than the German. The farm-houses and windmills, which resemble a huge box, placed on its end, made me thoroughly sensible how much the Friez-landers have surpassed the scattered inhabitants of Westphalia. Notwithstanding the remarks of the Germans, the satirical description of Voltaire is still tolerably correct. He says, “Dans des grandes huttes qu’on appelle maisons, on voit des animaux qu’on appelle hommes, qui vivent le plus cordialement du monde, pêle mêle avec d’autres animaux domestiques. Une certaine pierre dure, noire et gluant, composée à ce qu’on dit d’une espèce de seigle, est la nourriture des maitres de la maison.” This “pierre dure et noire” is the celebrated pumpernickel, a black bread made of rye, with nothing separated from it but the husks of the grain. Each loaf is made of a bushel of meal; it requires twenty-four hours to bake, and it keeps good a month or six weeks. The houses are somewhat as Voltaire describes them, and of the people I have already spoken. In the neighbourhood of the town of Osnabrück the soil is a good clay, the land rises into hills, and is diversified with wood and water, but a great part of Westphalia is sand or moor. The houses are thinly scattered over it, and the inhabitants, yet devoted to the Catholic religion, are some of the least cultivated of the Germans. Their general food after black bread is pancakes made of the grits of buck-wheat, and meats, particularly pork and sausages of all kinds, dried amidst the smoke that hovers in the upper part of the house. The pancakes are generally eaten for supper. The customs of Holland are, however, advancing. Tea or weak coffee is very often used twice a day. One or other is the usual breakfast.

Many of the poorer inhabitants of Westphalia make a summer excursion into Holland, where they find employment as labourers. They return to their homes in winter, and then chiefly employ themselves in knitting or weaving. Though they are absolutely poor, yet they are probably content. There are no lordly castles, or splendid houses to excite desire, or to provoke envy. All are equal in poverty. Inequality of condition, and not a want of mere luxuries, renders men harsh, uncivil, and sometimes brutal. In this sandy desolate country I had frequent occasion to apply to the peasants for direction to find my way, and their assistance sometimes went beyond the bounds of common civility. They more than once accompanied me a considerable distance to put me in the right road, and always in a cheerful kind manner.

The town of Osnabrück and its neighbourhood was one of the principal seats of the most ancient inhabitants of this country. Here lived Herman, the conqueror of Varus, and here he sacrificed the captive Romans on the altars of the Saxon Gods. And here Wittelkind, six centuries later, fought the last of the battles of independence. He was conquered, and Westphalia added to the empire of the Franks, and brought under the dominion of the church. It is to this part of the country that all the recollections of early national independence attach, and Herman and Wittelkind are the great heroes of early Saxon history. The country about Osnabrück seems to have been well calculated for the residence of an independent people; and even now there is something in its wood covered and broken hills, and in the deep shade of the forests, that recalls the supersitions of the ancient inhabitants. The country hilly, rugged, and yet fertile, and surrounded on all sides by sands or morasses, offered a secure retreat and a sufficiency of nourishment to a savage people. It was one of the last civilized parts of Germany, and still retains many of those peculiar privileges and usages which were common to the ancient Saxons.

There are several piles of stones, or rude masses of granite, yet in the neighbourhood, which are thought to be monuments of the ancient Druids. Those which I saw appeared to have been washed to their place by some extraordinary convulsion of nature. They were on the top of a hill, called the Piesberg, close to the town of Osnabrück, and there so placed as to form a sort of cave in the hill. Two masses of granite lie partly buried in the earth, and on the top of them lies another mass, that may be nine feet square, and three feet thick. Neither of them bear the least mark of the labour of man, yet it is possible man might have placed them there; at least the present generation loves to lend to the rude monuments, whether of art or of nature, the fables of superstition, and stones and blocks become hallowed to the mind from being associated in its imaginations with the practices, and deeds, and sufferings of past generations. It spreads its own poetical feelings over inanimate objects, converts a rude stone to an altar, a knoll of trees to a sacred grove, and peoples the wild with beings of its own creation. No place could be better fitted for such imaginations than the country around these stones. They were on the top of a wood-covered hill, other hills equally covered with wood surrounded and rose above it. When I visited it, the last rays of the setting sun glowed among the trembling twigs of the white birch-trees that covered the hills. The perfect seclusion, and the mossy bed at the foot of the stones, tempted to repose, and to indulge in indolent imaginations. The noise of a distant forge was heard, and sometimes of waggons passing on a road not far beneath. Some of the changes which had taken place in society since this was the favourite seat of the Saxons, passed through my mind. I contrasted the present with what I knew of the past situation of man. I could not doubt that his mechanical ingenuity, and with that his comforts and conveniences, were wonderfully improved, but they were combined with a loss of individual independence, with a sort of political degradation in the mass of the society, that almost made me give the praise of superiority to the barbarous equality and rude freedom of the ancient Saxons.

Osnabrück contains 9000 people, situated on a small river called the Hase; the palace, the townhouse, the court of justice, the cathedral, are all good buildings, and there are a great many good-looking private houses belonging to merchants. Though not the largest, it is undoubtedly the best situated, and the handsomest town of his Majesty’s German dominions. It is a place of considerable trade, from being in the centre of a country where a great quantity of linen is made, and which is brought here for inspection and sale. The coarse linen called Osnabrück was formerly very much in use, but its place is now in a great measure supplied by cheaper articles made from cotton. The hall in which the linen is measured, stamped, and sold, is called a linen legge. There are persons appointed by the government to inspect the linen brought for sale, to stamp it, and to declare to what class it belongs as to fineness and size. Their marks are so much relied on, that it is said the linen is afterwards bought and sold without being further inspected. The merchants at Bremen and Hamburg, and the West Indies, who deal in it, buy it according to these marks, and not according to any opinion they form of its value. Some instances have, however, lately been discovered, in which they have been forged, and which may bring the whole into disrepute.

A great number of peasants, all cleanly dressed, had brought their webs on Saturday for inspection and sale. Some waited the selling rather anxiously, but most of them were free and full of speech. They were happy to see one another, and they overflowed with words. Two men measured every web, it was then rolled up, its quantity marked on it, and the inspector decided to what class it belonged. When a sufficient number of bolts had been collected, the inspector turned auctioneer, and sold them to three merchants who were assembled to buy, he sometimes bidding himself. There was little competition; the merchants appeared to buy at their own prices. They gave from sixty pfennige the ell for the coarse linen to eighty-two pfennige, for the finest which was sold, that is, from 8d. to 10d. per ell; formerly the price was 3d. or 4d. more per ell. This diminution of sale price, while the cost of production remains the same, all of which is suffered by the peasantry, who are generally the growers of the flax, the spinners, and the weavers, combined with a general rise in the price of most commodities, makes it appear true what the peasants said, “That linen does not now pay them for their labour.” The peasantry, who are obliged to have their linen stamped, find no other market for it but in the same hall; they are entirely at the mercy of the inspector and the capitalists, and I was not surprised to learn that most of the good houses of Osnabrück had been built by linen merchants. The peasants have the power of taking the linen away if they do not like the price, but they said they should then find nobody to purchase it, and its sale is necessary to their subsistence. The capitalist has an advantage against which they cannot contend, and he grows rich by merely buying and selling, while the manufacturers remain poor. The establishment of such linen-halls in most of the towns in the neighbourhood of which much linen is made, is thought a measure of great wisdom, and is proportionally praised by most German authors. Westphalia, which is itself so barren, formerly owed much of its prosperity to the manufactory of linen, but the present price barely pays the labour, and there can be little doubt unless a cheaper method is found out of making it, that cotton will ultimately banish it entirely from the market. The machinery of England has injured the Continent by enabling us to undersell its inhabitants, but their indolence is to blame, and not our energy. The inhabitants of Westphalia deserve our pity, for it will be long before they can find any other species of industry by which they so profitably occupy their time in winter as making linen.

I do not know how to express my notion of the quietness, amiableness, and general content of the German character, in any other manner than by repeating the facts on which it is founded. One of the most conspicuous of these is the numerous little gardens, with arbours, and hills, and walks, and flowers, that surround all German towns, and in which the greater part of the inhabitants may be seen every afternoon smoking their pipes, and cultivating their flowers and fruits, or reposing in their summer houses, sewing or reading, or more lovingly with their arms encircling each other, walking to and fro, and communing, though undisturbed, not unseen, or taking their evening meal under the trees, or singing as if all were happy. All round the walls of Osnabrück, such images as these of peace and amiableness were to be seen. At one place, however, they were rather disturbed by a new gate having been erected in the form of a triumphal arch to the honour of the Landwehr of Osnabrück, who were at the battle of Waterloo. A Herr von Gurlich had erected this, and had inscribed his name on it, that, by honouring others, he himself may be known to posterity. It is a pity that a remembrance of war and deeds of carnage should have been allowed to be reared amidst such scenes of domestic bliss. But the respect and reverence which the Germans entertain for the military is one of the worst features of their character. If a man have served as an officer, no matter whom, he is honoured, while an honest tradesman is the object of contempt. Their love of gardens, and of flowers, and of domestic bliss, is their natural character; their respect for soldiers is the result of the medals and fictitious honours by which men are still bribed to be the instruments of death in the hands of ambition. I looked at the enjoyments of others, and then sojourned with my host into his garden. The evening was calm, and the whole scene one of content and peace.

I have rarely beheld the gardens which surround the towns of Germany without wishing the environs of our own masses of bricks, and clouds of smoke of our manufacturing towns, might also be divided into gardens, where those who pleased might find a healthy amusement in the cultivation of their own cabbages. It is at least a pity that those who might be disposed to spare some hours from the alehouse, cannot have an opportunity of devoting them to so pleasing and softening an occupation as rearing a few flowers and fruits. Such a division of the lands in the neighbourhood of large towns might not add to the quantity of productions, but it would to the health and the morality of the people. There is one great hindrance to the completion of such a wish. In our country, unhappily, every little spot must be protected from depredation by walls or hedges, or man-traps and spring-guns; in Germany, they are often unenclosed, and yet they who plant the cabbages, or sow the potatoes, have the pleasure of consuming them.

For the gratification of the curious reader, I must mention, that in the cathedral at Osnabrück an ivory comb and staff, and a crown, said to have belonged to Charlemagne, are preserved as religious relics.

Osnabrück is an instance of what I have before met with in Germany, that is, a small town which, without either having a university, or being a royal residence, is yet in some sort celebrated for its literature. It was formerly the residence of the Prince Bishop, but no court has been kept to bring with it polish and refinement since the days of Ernest Augustus, the father of George the First. The nobility of the province have in general resided here, and it has always been the seat of the government, and tribunal for the province. The last has had an influence on the reputation of Osnabrück, for Justus Möser, who is celebrated for his apothegms, as the Franklin of Germany, and who was one of its classical historians, was president of this tribunal. He is known among his countrymen as the noble Herrliche Justus Möser, and we must allow them to be the best judges of his merit. His political writings are praised, but it is the advice which, as a man of rank, and many occupations, he gave in small sentences to the peasant and the citizen in the “Weekly Intelligence” of Osnabrück relative to education, to clothing, to diet, to managing their houses, that have gained him the most credit, and that did him the most honour. Literary men so seldom bend their minds to any useful thing of this kind, and the literary men of Germany so seldom trouble themselves with any of the affairs of life, that this example to the contrary merits to be recorded. This gentleman was one of that numerous class of enlightened men who improved the language and literature of Germany between the years 1760 and 1790. Most of his works were written between these two epochs. Till lately, a periodical work on agriculture was published at Osnabrück, which is now suspended, but which, it was hoped, quiet would allow to be again resumed. Three or four tolerable booksellers’ shops, two Latin schools, and the conversation of its people, shewed that Osnabrück has not yet lost all its claim to literary reputation. This love of literature in small towns where there are neither universities nor courts, is an evidence of its general diffusion.

The half of the inhabitants, both of the town and province of Osnabrück, are Catholics, but they live in such harmony, that it is necessary to make inquiries to learn that they follow different religions. The people are themselves ignorant if one sect has more privileges than another. The judges are half Catholics and half Protestants. The cathedral is Catholic, and there is a Catholic bishop, who has united himself with a Bible society, composed chiefly of Protestants. The bishop must not be confounded with the Prince Bishop of Osnabrück. The revenues of the country belong to the latter, or rather at present to the government of Hannover, but the real consecrated bishop is chosen by his own prebends, subject to the approval of the government, and enjoys a fixed and not a very large income.

There is a Zucht-house, or penitentiary, also at Osnabrück, but because Monday was a feast day, I was not permitted to see it. It is an airy spacious building, in which the prisoners were confined in rooms, each containing sixteen or twenty persons. The only work they do is spinning; they are nourished independently of what they earn, and their labour has little value. To compel them to work, while their nourishment does not depend on what they gain, is one means of reducing the price which is paid for the labour of people who have to nourish themselves. There can be no question that the forced and cheap labour of prisoners helps to reduce the rewards of the free labourer, and to enrich the merchant at his expence. Condemning criminals to labour, therefore, produces poverty among honest labourers, multiplies pauperism, increases inequalities of condition, and remotely augments crime. The earnings of the people thus shut up were as nothing. They do not pay the apothecary, said the keeper.

The northern part of the province of Osnabrück is moor, or a sandy soil, that naturally produces little more than heath. The southern part is hilly, and has a good clay soil on limestone. Coals are found and worked in one or two places in the province, but more are worked in the territories of Prussia, a little distance from Osnabrück. Lime is burnt in several places. The greater part of the hills seem to be an aggregate of loose stones, and similar ones appear at one time to have covered the whole country. As they are removed, a good stiff clay soil, approaching, in its colour, to red, remains. It is easy of culture, and fruitful, and, though much of Osnabrück is barren, it is far from being the worst part of the dominions of Hannover.

From Osnabrück I turned my face again towards the town of Hannover, and, passing through part of the county of Diepholz, and the little town of the same name, I reached Suhlingen on the evening of Monday, June 29.

The name of the county of Diepholz is known as the title which the Duke of Cambridge generally uses in travelling. The long straggling village, or town of the same name, is rather famous for a manufactory of coarse cloth. About eighty persons, each for himself, are employed in this manufactory. They complained much also of the decay of trade, but men complain from disappointed hope, and, while hope outruns reality, there will always be a subject of complaint. Suhlingen is celebrated for the convention concluded there in 1803, between the Hannoverian army under Count Wallmoden and the French army under Marshal Mortier, and which conferred no honour on the former. The king refused to ratify it. It is also famous in the statistical accounts of Hannover, as a town where much iron is manufactured. I had heard of prodigious manufactories of sickles, scythes, and knives, and deemed it a sort of Carron. There are four master smiths, who, besides working themselves, employ each of them four or five journeymen. They do the common work of the place, such as shoeing horses, mending ploughshares, &c. and may, moreover, make about 6000 scythes in a year. This is one of the great iron manufactories of Hannover. The journeymen live with the family of the master, and earn also eight pistoles, about L. 6, 13s. 4d. per year. This was not the first time I had been deluded by statistical writers, and it is only when we have seen with our own eyes that we know what is meant by their exaggerated language. A few weavers who make a little coarse linen form an extensive manufactory. Four common forges make a town into a Carron or a Birmingham, and catching a few trout and sending them to Hamburg, which we should regard as a precarious means of procuring a miserable subsistence, is called a flourishing commerce.

Nienburg is a decent town, situated on the Weser, and on the road between Bremen and Hannover; but, though its situation is thus advantageous, it has very little trade, from the greater part of the country about it being thinly inhabited and badly cultivated. The inhabitants are generally so poor that they have nothing to give for superfluities, and, consequently, can buy nothing. I met a gentleman at the inn who was going to the sea for the benefit of bathing, but who was obliged to wait several hours for post horses. The posts are not better regulated, therefore, when monopolized by the crown, and when under its control, than when they are conducted by individuals, who establish them for the sake of profit.

I visited another prison, in which men are confined who have been condemned to labour and imprisonment for a certain term of years. If the two previously mentioned at Celle and Osnabrück had some advantages of situation and appearance, this was a wretched place. It is an old tower, which was once a part of the fortifications, and, as they have been destroyed, it stands isolated, and is, as it looks to be, a ruin. There were four apartments, one over the other. One of them was occupied by the keeper; in the other three 117 persons were confined. A great part of them were at the moment out at work. The sick, and some who had been at work, were in the house. The irregular form of the building made the rooms of a strange three-cornered sort of shape. In every apartment was a wooden bench, like those in guard-houses, on which some beds were strewed, and a few of the sick and lazy were lying on them. All sorts of filth were lying on the floor, and clothes of various kinds were hanging from the ceiling, or against the walls. A few miserable half-clothed beings mourned rather than cursed their fate. They complained of want of medicines and food, and of a want of medical attendance. One was writing; some were reading; some were calmly talking with one another, or anxious to address me. It was altogether a miserable habitation, but there was no noise, nor confusion, nor imprecations. The only keeper I saw was a woman, who took no precaution to lock the door behind her when she entered, and who spoke to the prisoners like familiar acquaintance. From not knowing her subjects so well as she knew them, I was afraid of an insurrection, but they wanted courage to attempt an escape. There was no classification of prisoners; those who had been detected in their first essay at guilt, and old hardened offenders, were shut up together. The depraved might not only teach vice to the innocent, but encourage them to commit it, by pointing out the methods by which they might escape the vengeance of the law. All distinction of crime also appeared likely to be obliterated by indiscriminate punishments. The soldier for desertion, and the profligate thief, were condemned to the same gaol and the same labour. There was no place for the prisoners to take exercise; they never breathed the fresh air but when they went abroad to work, and every one but the sick wore shackles.

The torture was not at this time abolished in Hannover, but none of the prisoners would confess that it had been inflicted on them; they all said their crimes were too trifling, though they all knew what it was. They complained, however, of the arbitrary will of the magistrates, to which they attributed their punishments much more than to their own crimes. Such assertions cannot be disproved where the trials are secret, but they may be by publicity of procedure. I am far from pitying the man who suffers in consequence of his own crimes, but I doubt if the criminal is rightly punished by being condemned to a gaol; and when I have sometimes seen the misery it incloses from the world, and have for a moment extended my thoughts to all the sufferings of our race, I have doubted if more be not inflicted on us by the pride or vanity of what is called Reason than by our own most violent and degrading lusts.

Nienburg is in the county of Hoya, which, with the county of Diepholz, through which I had just passed, are usually spoken of and described together in statistical accounts of Hannover, and I shall, therefore, here add a short description of them. They are generally flat, without being absolutely level. The soil is chiefly sand, sometimes coarse, approaching to gravel; heather covers the greater part, morasses and bogs are numerous, and much peat is dug for fuel. On the Weser and on the Aller there is good marsh land and meadows. In Diepholz there is a lake called Dummer See, Dull Lake, which name it deserves. It is surrounded with swamps, and looks something like the poet’s description of Lethe. A great part of these provinces are waste and uncultivated. From brick earth being found in several places beneath the surface, from trees growing luxuriantly, there is reason to think a moderate portion of labour might so improve the soil, as to render it productive. Habitations are thinly scattered, and the people have the character of being the most boorish, ignorant, and guzzling of all the inhabitants of Hannover. My own experience allows me to say nothing on this point. The houses which I saw were invariably badly built, the people badly clothed, and shewing several signs of poverty and wretchedness.

From Nienburg I walked, by the banks of the Weser, to a village called Leese. Much tobacco was cultivated in this neighbourhood, though, owing to very dry weather, neither it nor any other plant or herb was looking well. The soil was sandy. A due proportion of water is a desideratum in all agricultural undertakings, and it may be hoped this will, at some future time, be absolutely at the command of the agriculturist. In this neighbourhood was one of those very large royal farms which will afterwards be described, the tenant of which was riding about in a sort of wicker carriage to inspect his workmen. The landlord at Leese hired the tithes of the village. He also was an agriculturist.

There was formerly a monastery at Loccum, to where I walked from Leese. It is now secularized. The buildings, however, remain. Some prebends still enjoy emoluments from its revenues, and the abbot of Loccum is the highest and only dignitary of the Hannoverian church. The abbey is situated in a fruitful and pleasant country. While the good fathers who once possessed it were careful to promise the joys of heaven to the people, they took those vulgar ones which the earth could bestow to themselves.

In the course of my walk, though there was here no high-road, I had two or three peasants for my companions. With one I walked, and with another I rode in his waggon. One I found glad that the services he used to pay his lord had been commuted into money. He knew, and described very well, in what manner both tenant and lord were injured by the former being obliged to do the work of the latter. It was badly done, and the teams, and servants, and people who did it, got into slovenly habits, that they afterwards carried into their own occupations, and thus idleness and negligence were the consequences of compelling some men to labour for others. Another peasant was the enemy of improvement; he liked things as they were, and thought no good would come from dividing and inclosing commons; he was a loyal good subject, who loved the taxes and the conscription for the landwehr, and the king and his ministers, and all which they commanded.

Rehburg, through which I passed, is one of the most famous and fashionable watering-places of Hannover. The Germans seem to have a greater taste to visit such places in the summer than we have. There is hardly a person of respectability who does not go to some mineral-well every year, and those who cannot go have the water brought to them in bottles, that they may at least drink the precious beverage. The waters of Rehburg are of sovereign efficacy against the gout. The situation of the place is probably more efficacious. It commands an extensive view over a large lake, Steinhuder Meer, and an interesting country. The wooded hill at the foot of which it stands is laid out in agreeable walks, all planned by the architect of the crown, and the buildings, which are also under his care and superintendence, are neat and convenient. The government monopolizes the mineral waters, and only allows them to be used under the direction of the physicians it appoints. Its subjects are deeply indebted to it for the care it takes of their health.

The little principality of Schauenburg-Lippe intervenes here between one part of the dominions of Hannover and another, and it was necessary, on leaving Rehburg, to traverse a part of this to arrive at Wunstorf, which is also Hannoverian. This independent principality lies in the midst of the territories of Hannover, Prussia, and Hesse Cassel. But its sovereigns have long had a reputation of being equally free from ambition and servility. Their dominions have not been enlarged, neither have they been incorporated by any larger state. They amount only to 120 square miles, and contain 30,000 inhabitants. The revenue may amount to L. 20,000 Sterling. It is a fruitful and well cultivated little district. States, or a parliament, have always been in use here. They are composed of deputies from the nobility— Rittershaft, —and deputies from the towns; and their servants, not the servants of the sovereign, receive and dispose of the produce of the taxes. United with Lippe, Detmold, and the principalities of Hohenzollern, Liechtenstein, and Waldeck, it has a seat in the diet of Germany.

Near Wunstorf stands a monument erected to the memory of the Danish General Obentraut, who was killed in that neighbourhood in the year 1625, in the thirty years which ravaged the whole of Germany. After having hastily traversed most of the provinces which compose the north-western part of the kingdom of Hannover in five weeks, I again reached the town of Hannover on Wednesday, July 1. I had had friendly salutations at parting, and I was kindly welcomed back.

CHAPTER X.: kalenberg—the harz.

Frey schiessen.—A national amusement.—When introduced.—Opinions of electioneering squabbles.—Mr Malchus.—Alfeld.—Eimbeck beer.—Italian and German manners.—Göttingen.—Sudden prosperity.—Situation.—Walks.—Club.—Schwarzberg-Sondershausen.—The Harz.—Osterode.—Clausthal.—Mint.—Washing and smelting houses.—A mine.—Inhabitants of the Harz.—Goslar.—Ilsenberg.—A monument.—The Brochen.—Extensive view—Lauterberg.—Manufactory of iron ornaments.—Herzberg.—Münden.—Tomb in garden.

Few persons except those who are whirled along at the will of postillions and their horses, and who, with the aid of fur caps, comfortable cloaks, and an easy carriage, enjoy the inestimable advantage of performing their journey asleep, can have travelled in the north of Germany without having sometimes seen targets nailed up over the doors of farm-houses. They indeed do not so much need occupation as the solitary pedestrian, who is constantly casting about for a moment’s amusement, or an extraordinary sight, and he has, consequently, no right to suppose that what the slowness of his weary steps allowed him to see at every village, ever glanced on the eye, or caught the notice of travellers in carriages. I can only affirm, therefore, strictly, that I frequently saw them, and on asking what they were, I was told they were like the fox’s brush or outstretched buzzard, which sometimes ornaments the barn-doors in England, memorials of the skill, the victory, and pride of the owners. The Germans have a national amusement called Scheiben schiessen, shooting at a mark, or Frey schiessen, free shooting, which most generally takes place about the month of June or July, and is attended with so much carousing as to deserve mentioning here. The people collect in bodies, and march in a military and triumphant manner to some particular spot, at a distance from the town or village, and every man who chooses to buy the privilege with a florin, lays his rifle on a rest fixed for that purpose, and shoots at a mark. The mark is sometimes a fixed target, but it is sometimes made to move quickly past a small opening. The marksman is placed at a convenient distance, his rifle is loaded for him, at a signal given, the Scheibe, as it is called, is put in motion, and he hits it if he can. Sometimes the mark is a stag chased by dogs; indeed, an instance was mentioned to me of the valour of the Germans being called on to shoot at a wooden representation of Buonaparte, followed by a Cossack. He who misses the stag or Buonaparte has a proportionate fine to pay, and woe to him if he hit the faithful dog, or the valiant Cossack. He who hits the mark has a due share of honour, and he who is so skilful as to drive his ball through the centre, receives the wooden image itself as the reward of his skill. This is then nailed up over his door, or placed at some conspicuous part of his mansion, and is very often its brightest and only ornament. It remains year after year, more similar trophies are sometimes added, and the front of the house then becomes covered with the memorials of village war.

Frey schiessen was introduced in the year 1450, soon after gunpowder came into general use, in order to learn how to shoot steadily at men. It was first practised in the North of Germany by the citizens of Brunswick, who, in all matters of discipline, and in the formation of troops, are said to have set the princes of that period a good example. Before then, similar practices with other arms appear to have been common, but then, for the first time, shooting with muskets was introduced amongst the people. It has now, however, degenerated into a mere amusement, which, though very national, is permitted only once a-year. The Germans display in it, as in other things, their great characteristic of shunning bodily exertion. When we compare it with cricket, or golf, or boxing, or any of the manly pastimes of our country youth, we laugh at that revelry which accompanies it, which was originally intended to congratulate the victor, or soothe him after his toils. It is now a sort of saturnalia, when those who have been sober and sparing all the year indulge in licentiousness. It is to the Germans what Greenwich fair is to the citizens of London, or the fête of St Cloud to the Parisians. Every body must partake of its festivities. Those who never go abroad through the rest of the year go to this feast. The pennies which poverty can save are hoarded for a debauch, and those whose profligacy has spared nothing pawn their furniture, their clothes, or their ornaments, that they may say, like their neighbours, “I too was at the feast; I swilled in the same room with the herr von,—and I destroyed a certain portion of viands better than ordinary, and I was filled both with joy and with meat.”

Every village has its own schiessen. I had seen several, and heard of more in my route, but it would have occasioned repetition to have mentioned them, and I deferred it till my return to Hannover, where I knew I should see one in its greatest perfection. It was the 19th of July, in the morning, that the citizens of the new town of Hannover, in an appropriate costume, with music and flags, marched in gay procession from the town to Herrenhausen, a palace of the sovereign about one mile and a half distant; booths were erected, and a proper place made for the shooting. The orangery was cleared out, one end of it was fitted up as a ball-room, and the other as a tavern, the fountains of the royal gardens were made to play, and great importance was given to the whole by one of the cabinet ministers, who is the chief of all that relates to the royal domains, taking the direction on himself. For this attention, however, the citizens with their music go at the end of the three days which the shooting lasts, in solemn procession, to return him their thanks, and “bring him a vivat.” Even this amusement is under the direction of the government.

I visited Herrenhausen on each day the shooting lasted, and partook of the feasting and revelry. The gay ball-room in the orange house was for the dancers of a better condition, and sundry other places were fitted up for the poorer citizens and peasants to hop and whirl in at a cheaper rate. Refreshments of all kinds were abundant, and there was a great deal of guzzling. People of all distinctions go, and carry their families with them. I saw a judge smoking his segar, and swallowing the wing of a fowl,—the master of the horse drinking punch,—the secretary to the consistorium enjoying a pasty with his wife,—nobles, gentlemen, tradesmen, musicians, were all mixed together, and there were no distinctions recognized or preserved.

I witnessed neither riot nor disturbance, neither quarrelling nor abusive language. There was much licentiousness, but there were neither disputes nor fighting. No fair in England, in which the people had a full swing for their gluttony, could have lasted three days without many hard knocks and broken heads. I am far, however, from attributing this in the one case, as is usually done, to the care of the police, and in the other to the want of a police. It is more to be ascribed to the natural character of the two people, which is visible in children so well as in men;—to the gentleness and general quietness of the Germans, and to the boisterous, perhaps turbulent, energies of our countrymen. In fact, we have a police whose character has been written in the blood of innocent men, for it sold them to death and the infamy of the gallows. Nor do I believe any extension of its powers would prevent one crime, or hinder one disturbance. It is certain that every policeman must be paid from the produce of the labourer, and because his occupation is disgraceful, he must be well paid, and in proportion as a police is numerous, so is the labourer reduced to poverty; the inequality of his condition is farther augmented, and this causes more crimes than the best organized police can suppress.

About this period the general election was going on in England, and I was rather surprised at the opinions I heard expressed on the subject. The Hannoverians were quite shocked at reading of our riots; they spoke of them as disgraceful to a Christian country. “What, did the government do nothing to stop such barbarities? Where was our police?” “Such scenes were a shame to civilized man.” Nothing excited severer remarks than the practice of spitting on candidates. It was so odious in their estimation, that they were “surprised every vagabond who did it was not apprehended, and most severely punished.” It is good to hear and to record the opinions of foreigners on such things, and we perhaps regard them with too little attention when they thus sink us, in the estimation of other people, to a level with barbarians. Some of the practices of that time were the insults of the meanest and most dastardly souls, of a poor spirit that was fretted and vexed, that was more like a passionate spoiled child than like a man. They were odious, and excited abhorrence in the minds of all the quiet, orderly, well disposed Germans. They and other people attribute, wrongly perhaps, all such outrages to our political liberty; it would still be worth having, though it did cause them; but, calm and contented as they are, they do not think so, and they would rather continue to support a system of political degradation, than incur the possibility of being exposed to similar outrages. It would not be an easy task to ascertain what portion of such outrages are caused by liberty, and what portion by inequality of condition; by our practices being in opposition to our principles; by our preaching liberty, and by our condemning a part of the society to political degradation, but it would be an important one from its results. It would probably rescue liberty from the odium that is now thrown on her, and endear her more to all men, by proving that the vices which are called her offspring are in truth the children of oppression and of slavery.

I finally quitted Hannover on Monday, July 27, and, again passing the town of Hildesheim, before mentioned, I reached Göttingen in two days. In the province of Hildesheim there is a nobleman’s seat, which is considered as a phenomenon in this country for its elegance. In fact, country seats, except the palaces of the monarchs, are very rare. The nobles are too poor to support them. A Count Brabeck had, however, fitted up one at Soeder, which is said to unite all sorts of elegancies. It was rather out of my road, and I merely mention what I learnt from others. It is at present in a dilapidated state. It was in Hildesheim that Mr Malchus, who is celebrated in Germany as a financier, and who now is, or was recently, the chief minister at the court of Wirtemberg, first distinguished himself. Hildesheim was then in possession of Prussia. Some disputes arose between that power and the nobility, and Mr Malchus, who then filled a subordinate office in the province, wrote a work on the subject, which got him great credit, and laid the foundation of his future fortune.

At Alfeld a party of women were beating flax to separate the husk from the fibres. The instrument employed was a sort of block, with a deep groove, or a box. A wooden chopper was fixed, by one end, to this block, in such a manner that the other end could be lifted up, and it fell into the groove. The flax was held in the left hand, and thrown across the block and the groove; the chopper was worked by the right hand, and, constantly falling into the groove, bruised the flax against its edges. The women sat. A similar method was long followed in Britain: A man threw the flax over the edge of a stool, and, as he turned it with one hand, beat it with the other, with a sort of wooden sword. The man, however, stood. The instrument was simple and rude, but I believe there was no other till the invention of Mr Lee. It will be long, very long, before his invention is adopted in Germany. There are so many prejudices there against machinery, that, in some places, it has been forbidden to mow corn, because reaping it requires more labour and employs more people.

Eimbeck, a little dirty black town on the road, deserves to be mentioned as having been once celebrated for its beer. It was the Burton of Germany, and its beer, like London porter, was sent all over the empire. A barrel was, in the fifteenth century, what a few bottles of real Tokai are now,—a present for a prince. The affairs of Germany were then settled at Speirs or Worms, by the princes of the empire, over foaming draughts of true Eimbeck. It was the beloved drink of the sovereigns. The citizens shewed their admiration of the doctrines of Luther by sending him some of their best, and, as he could not himself go to Eimbeck, to give the words of salvation for the liquor of earthly life, he is said to have deputed two of his most faithful and thirsty disciples. One of the very largest houses in Hamburg, and still called the Eimbeckischen-Haus, was built on purpose to sell this beer. If what I drank might be taken as a specimen, the princes must have had execrable tastes, and very strong stomachs. It resembled the other wash in use in Germany denominated beer, and which is only adapted to the powerless smoke-dried palates, throats, and tastes, of the Germans. In the neighbourhood of Eimbeck much tobacco is cultivated.

The whole of the dominions of Hannover which lie to the southward of the capital are hilly, and even mountainous. Some parts of the road to Göttingen are amidst craggy and well wooded hills. The vallies are well cultivated, and the country and the travelling were much more agreeable than in the flat sands of Lüneburg, or the moors of Bremen. The province of Kalenberg, in which the town of Hannover is situated, lies between the flat sands and the hills, and partakes of the characteristics of both. Where it borders on Lüneburg it is sandy, and contains several bogs, but its south and western parts are hilly and fertile. The soil is a light-coloured loam or clay, very easy of culture. Fine forests of beech or oak cover the hills, and they abound in limestone and coal. Both are worked in several places. On the Leine are excellent meadows. The peasants have long enjoyed some advantages similar to those enjoyed by the peasants of Brunswick, and they are reputed to be more polished, better fed and housed than those of Hoya or Bremen. The soil of Hildesheim resembles that of Kalenberg, but is in general stiffer, it approaches a red colour, and is more productive. It is an irregular and beautiful country. One of the principal rivers from the Harz, the Innerste, which is there employed to cleanse the metallic ores from the earth, by the well-known process of washing, passes through the province of Hildesheim, and is said to desolate the land in its vicinity by depositing, in its progress, the separated earth and sand. These dry, and are afterwards blown over the surrounding country. The provinces of Göttingen and Grubenhagen, including all that part of the mountain of the Harz and the Eichsfeld which belong to Hannover, form the most southern part of the kingdom. They are rich in minerals and forests. The soil in the vallies is a stiff clay, and they are watered by an abundance of little streams. These are some of the most picturesque and productive provinces of the monarchy. With the exception of Hildesheim and the Eichsfeld, they have long formed part of the German dominions of our sovereign, which are not so entirely a flat and desolate sand, as they have usually been described to be.

As a specimen of the occupations of the people, I may mention meeting on my way an old man, who told me he owned about eight acres of land, which he cultivated in the summer; in winter he wove; and he was, moreover, the butcher of the village.

The poetical imaginations of the Italians, for which they are so much praised, never allow them to speak of things as they are, and the poor beings, whose greatest pride is that their forefathers performed great deeds, deluded by the admiration of unreflecting strangers, take credit to themselves for a disposition that makes them despicable as men. The vivacity of their imaginations, which is, however, seldom shewn at the present time by any proud specimens either of eloquence or of art, justifies to the whole of them their disregard of truth. An individual of this nation, whom I met on my way, was a good specimen of his countrymen. He betrayed his origin by his falsities so well as by his pronunciation. He had not spoken five minutes before he said what I knew to be untrue, and I left him to grope forward as he could, with his weary and sore feet. The Munchausen family are distinguished nobles of Hannover, and the Memoirs of the baron were originally written and published in Germany; yet the Germans do not resemble the Italians. They rather deserve the names they generally give themselves, of “Aechte, Biedere Deutscher,”—Honest true Germans.

Göttingen contains 10,000 inhabitants. The streets are well paved. Two thirds of the houses are modern; the remainder have been altered and improved to resemble the others. Without having any very good buildings, it is altogether a neat clean-looking town. The Lying-in hospital, though handsome, cannot be called more than a very second-rate sort of building; but the Observatory, which is out of the town, and which was designed by an architect of the name of Müller, seemed to me to be a model of good taste. It is extremely well adapted to its purposes; it is remarkably simple and chaste, and is not disfigured by a multitude of ornaments, which, in architecture, whenever they are useless, are absolutely ugly.

Unfortunately I have too often had occasion to speak of decaying towns, and it is with pleasure I now have to mention one, which has rapidly increased, and which owes the greater part of its neatness to its prosperity. It would be more pleasant could I trace the increase of Göttingen to natural causes, which having a permanent existence, might ensure a continuance of prosperity. But it has been occasioned by the patronage of the sovereign,—by a capricious feeling in an individual, which his predecessor may not inherit, or which circumstances may not allow him to follow. Göttingen had been lying in a state of ruin ever since the thirty years’ war, when George II. and his minister, Munchausen, selected it, in 1733, as a proper place to establish a university. It was its fallen and ruined state, and its favourable situation, which made them think it deserved the fattening stream of royal bounty. Of so little consequence was Göttingen before that period, that many of the professors who were invited to it are said hardly to have known in what quarter of Germany it was situated. The first instruction was given in store-houses, and the inhabitants are said to have regarded the first anatomical professor with great horror. They nicknamed him a man-flayer, and could not be bribed to light his fire, or to bring him wood and water. Since then the town has constantly improved, and the university has constantly, till 1818, increased in the number of its students, and in the reputation of its professors.

Sovereigns, in Germany, change their residence, or the direction of their bounties, and cities follow or grow up at their command. It is beautiful to see new and comfortable houses rising at the royal will; and that song of praise, which promises immortality for the magnificence, is most sweet; but it is deplorable to see neglected fields, houses sinking in ruin, and subjects living in poverty and filth, all to gratify the vanity of their guardians. While Göttingen has grown in size, its manufactories of cloth, of leather, and of beer, have all gone to decay. As an independent town, it appears to have enjoyed, prior to the sixteenth century, a degree of comparative importance, greater than it at present enjoys.

It is situated at one end of a very long valley. The little river Leine flows through it. The neighbourhood is fruitful; the hills offer some delightful walks, and many picturesque views. The ruins called Hardenberg, the Plesse, the Gleichen, Hanstein, and Berlepsch, are all the remains of old castles, and all objects of the visits and curiosity of the students. They each afford a delightful summer excursion, which serves to give both health and knowledge by exciting the mind to learn the state of society when these castles flourished, and to trace the events which are connected with them. There are many other pleasant walks about Göttingen, and the town is altogether a retired quiet place, well adapted for study. It is its unsiversity, however, the Georgia Augusta, as it is called, for which it is famous. At this moment it was threatened with ruin. The students had withdrawn themselves from the town; they had declared no foreign student should go there to study without being infamous. A royal commissioner, supported by troops, was examining the conduct of the students, and, for the first few days after my arrival, all study was suspended.

There is at Göttingen one of those clubs which I have frequently mentioned as a common feature of German society, and, a day or two after my arrival, I received a very polite invitation to frequent it during my stay. It was a pleasant society, composed of professors, clergymen, lawyers, soldier officers, and merchants, all mixing indiscriminately with each other. There were the usual amusements, and the usual reading resources, and I daily profited by the politeness of the members. One of them deserves to be mentioned. He was of the medical profession, but lived much more on a small fortune he possessed than by his practice. He was regularly at the club after dinner, though he seldom joined in any of the games either of billiards, chess, or cards. His dear delight was to smoke his pipe, look over the play, and say a few soft and placid things to every body near him. Another of his delights was to befriend every stranger,—to point out the journals they wanted; to get any books for them which belonged to the society; to inform them how they might amuse themselves; to introduce them to persons to make up a party; to suggest taking refreshment. In short, he delighted to do acts of kindness, in a gentle, quiet, unassuming way. He was a neighbour of mine, and every morning, as soon as it was day-light, he was leaning out of his window and smoking. He remained there regularly several hours. These morning hours, he said, were “the solace of his life. He was then more pleased than he could express. The tobacco was so balmy in the fresh air. He would not give up his peaceful contemplative morning pipe for any other pleasure that could be offered him.” Let not the boisterousand the turbulent despise such placid and such homely joys. Those persons are happy who can find pleasure in such trifles, and who can look with philosophic ease on all the cares, and turmoils, and affections of life. Many of the sorrows of more bustling men scarcely deserve commiseration, for they are occasioned by the restlessness of their own passions, and not by some natural causes which they themselves have no power to avert.

From Göttingen I made an excursion with some friends into the territories Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, another of those little independent principalities which were once so much more numerous than at present in Germany. This is a fruitful fine country. A great part of it comprises what is called la Campagne d’Or; but the people are probably as rude and as ignorant as in any part of Germany. The princes are said once to have been celebrated for learning. At present they are known only as good huntsmen. The court is not polished, and the country, removed from any of the great roads, seems left to itself. It has always been governed by the will of the prince. The police, particularly the police of the forests, is extremely rigid, but the roads, the villages, the houses, are rather in a shameful state. Where men are governed by an individual, he sets bounds to their improvements, and stamps a character on the whole. The adjoining state of Saxe-Weimar, which is only twice as large as Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, is one of the most polished of Germany, while this latter is one of the most unpolished. It contains 368 square geographical miles, and 45,000 inhabitants. The revenue amounts to L. 27,000 per year. The prince is an independent sovereign, and a member of the Diet of Germany.

I made also an excursion from Göttingen to the Harzberg, the highest mountain of the north of Germany. It appears to form no part of any of the great chains of Alps, but it can only be regarded as the northern point of those which extend through Europe, and it appears isolated, from its highest point being much higher than any of the surrounding hills. Streams flow from it in every direction, but the whole of its waters unite with the Elbe or the Weser. The Brocken is the highest point. This is granite. The hills around its sides and base are of a later formation, and they abound in iron, lead, silver, copper, and some gold. A large part of this mountain, containing its richest minerals, is within the territories of Hannover. The remainder belongs to Brunswick, Wernigerode, Stolberg, and Auhalt Bernburg. It is a great gratification to the inhabitants of the flat and sandy country to climb this mountain, and enjoy the extensive view; and there is no one point of the north of Germany which is more visited in summer than the Brocken. It is the holiday excursion for many a professor and student, and the summer jaunt for many a family. There are various roads to the top, each of which may be equally good, according as either can be profited by. There are various objects to be kept in view in visiting the Harz. To see its mines and manufactures is one; to explore its minerals is another; and to enjoy its picturesque scenery is a third. They may all be combined, but properly to investigate them all requires much time and much previous knowledge. My only object was to see the principal mines and manufactories which belong to Hannover. I was five days absent from Göttingen, and visited Osterode, Clausthal, Goslar, the Brocken, Andreasberg, and Herzberg.

At Osterode is a large granary to supply the inhabitants of the Harz with corn when it is scarce and dear. In some countries labour is so ill paid, that parish assistance must be given to the labourer, and here a royal granary, perhaps a not less costly expedient than workhouses and overseers, supplies the deficiency of wages. On an average, this granary gives corn to the value of 2500 Thalers, L. 400 a year, to the miners and other labourers on the Harz. Most of them work for the king, and it would be better that his majesty should give them the 2500 Thalers as greater wages, rather than as a bounty, and he might add the expence he now incurs for the large building, and for half a dozen persons employed at the granary. But this sort is a part of that individual wisdom, to me inscrutable, which so benevolently undertakes to provide for the welfare and happiness of the race.

It rained on the following day, and I was glad to join a mercantile traveller from Bremen, who was seeking orders, and collecting debts, in a carriage to Clausthal. This is the principal town of the Harz. There is a department of the Hannoverian ministry for the affairs of the Harz. A Berg-hauptman, chief of the mines, who is a nobleman, visits them occasionally, but transacts the business concerning them with the ministry, and he, therefore, generally resides in the town of Hannover. There is a vice Berg-hauptman, also a nobleman, who is the chief managing person resident on the Harz. He has to administer justice to the miners, and to preside over the whole of the different departments. He resides at Clausthal, and his permission must be obtained before the mint, the washing and smelting houses can be visited; it is always readily and politely given. The silver which is dug from the mines of the Harz is made into money at Clausthal, and it comes immediately into circulation by being employed to pay the workmen, and other necessary expences. At the mint the silver, which is still mixed with a small portion of lead, is first refined, it is then cast into bars, which, after passing through four series of rollers, become of the thickness requisite for the coin. They are then cut into round pieces by a hand machine, then weighed, the light pieces, if there be any, are rejected, and the heavy ones filed to a proper weight. The stamping is done by a machine that is worked by four men. Some dexterity was required to give the edge of the coin its ornament. Perhaps four series of rollers was more than were requisite, but, on the whole, the machinery was simple, and very good.

From the mint I visited the washing-house, which is well adapted, but the process of washing the earth is so well known, and has been so often described, that I shall say nothing about it, more than to confirm what has been frequently said of the washing house at Clausthal, that it is a very complete one. The earth, as it is obtained from the mine, is a sulphuret of lead, mixed with silver, and commonly contains in one hundred parts sixty of lead, and from six to eight of silver. After the earth has been separated by washing, the ore is carried to the smelting-house, mixed with a quantity of ironstone, and thrown into a furnace with charcoal. The iron combines with the sulphur in a state of fusion, the lead unites with the silver, and being heavier than the others, they sink to the bottom, and flow out of the furnace. The lead is afterwards separated from the silver by being exposed to a strong flame, when it becomes oxidated, and is removed as the oxidation goes on. Again thrown into a furnace, with charcoal, the lead is reduced to its metallic state, and is cast into those pigs in which it is met with in commerce. I saw this process; the furnaces, and the machine driven by water, which worked the bellows, appeared to me also to be good.

After dinner I visited one of the mines. All the mines of the Harz are worked at a great expence, owing to the rock in which the ores are found being of a soft and friable nature, that requires to be supported as the ore is extracted. All the galleries and shafts are accordingly built up with wood, which needs frequent repair, and can only be repaired at a very great expence. The galleries were the most spacious I ever saw in mines, and one chamber had been fitted up as a breakfast place for the Duke of Cambridge when he had visited them. We descended by ladders. The ore is drawn up by buckets. The machine which performs this office is driven by water. Two water wheels, each having a different movement, are connected together, and fixed on the same axis; and as the buckets are required to be let down or brought up, a man directs the water on one of the wheels, which sends one bucket down, and brings the other up; when this is performed, the water is directed on the other wheel, which turning the contrary way, brings the bucket which was sent down back, and sends the other down. To perform this, however, it is necessary a man should watch when to apply the water, and the whole machine appeared to me clumsy compared to machines employed for similar purposes in Britain.

Many of the officers connected with the mines supped at the inn, and I had the pleasure of a long conversation with Mr Vice Berg-hauptman von Reding, who usually, with most of the officers of the mines, spent their evenings in a social manner. I found him, as I have found every person filling respectable offices in Hannover, a gentlemanly well-informed man, and when I least expected to meet any society whatever, I passed a very pleasant evening. At Clausthal there is a school, where mining as a science, and all that is connected with it, as chemistry and mineralogy, are taught to those young men who are afterwards to fill offices in the mines.

The people of the Harz are different from the rest of the inhabitants of Hannover; their sole employments are mining, or working metals, or making the quantity of charcoal which is necessary for the thousand fires that are for ever burning. The Harz itself supplies wood, and the people look only to their mines for support. When, from any cause, their produce is deficient in quantity, or a sale cannot be found for it, they are reduced to extreme distress. All the people are exclusively miners, which renders them utterly dependant. Some little attention is paid to meadow land, and potatoes are partially cultivated, but in general agriculture is not so much attended to as it ought to be. “Laws,” whose wisdom I cannot discover, though they are said to be wise, “limit the culture of oats to Clausthal.” The monarch who directs the labour of the miners and enjoys its produce, however, takes care of them. It is said that the various mines of the Harz have not for many years defrayed the expences incurred in working them. Placed as they generally are under the inspection of a host of Berg-hauptmen, and Forest-masters, and servants of the “quill,” and servants of the “leather,” so the two classes who keep the accounts, and who inspect the out-door works, are distinguished, it is probably true that they do not pay for working them. This cannot, however, be known with certainty, because they are a part of the royal estates. Whether they do or not, the miners have been organized for the service of the crown, and they look to it for their pay, though their labour may produce nothing. Within a few years loud complaints have been made of the heavy expences of this district; the inhabitants have wanted employment so much, that many projects have been suggested to find them some other work than mining. At present the sale of the metals is better. There were more beggars about Clausthal than I had seen in all the rest of Hannover, and their importunity was only equalled by the familiarity of their address. Every body is called cousin. You are reminded of your relationship to those who solicit your charity.

From Clausthal I went by the Oker Thal to Goslar. The valley is full of fine views. At Oker I saw a machine which had recently been erected to roll lead and copper into sheets. The whole machinery had been cast at the Koings-hutte at Lauterberg, on the Harz, but the men understood its management so ill, or it was made so imperfect, that they could not set the rollers parallel to each other, and every sheet of copper or lead came through crooked, from being more pressed on one side than on the other.

Goslar, like the other towns on the Harz, has several forges, smelting-houses, and other works connected with the mines. But it is celebrated in history as having been frequently the residence of those emperors who were of Saxon origin, and the seat of more than one solemn assembly of the princes of Germany. It is seated at the foot of the Rammelsberg, and overlooks an extensive plain. Its glittering towers and steeples still give it the air of an imperial town, but all delusion vanishes when you enter it, and find the streets narrow, crooked, and ill paved, and the churches and buildings in ruins. After being the residence of the emperor, Goslar became a powerful free city, and domineered over the Harz. It is now in the possession of Hannover, is a small town of 5670 inhabitants, and has no other claim to be noticed than its former historical importance. It possesses many antiquities, memorials of the imperial residence, some of which were thought worthy of being carried to Paris, but are now restored. The antiquaries differ in opinion relative to the origin and use of some of these, particularly a small metallic altar; and it is not for me, who took a very cursory view of it, to decide whether it be an altar of the Saxon god Krodo, or a piece of the household furniture of the Christian emperors. It may be of some consequence to the lovers of black letter and old print to be informed, their taste may be gratified in the little and old town of Goslar. In the Markt-Kirche there is a great collection of old books, and, among the rest, the first editions of most of the works, even the smallest, of Luther.

I ascended the Brochen from Ilsenburg, in company with two Silesian gentlemen, whom I had previously met at Clausthal. Ilsenburg is a cheerful large village in the county of Wernigerode. From it to the Brochen the road leads through the Ilsenthal, one of the most beautiful of all the vallies of the Harz. A small stream tumbles down among rude masses of granite that have been shook from the high surrounding rocks. From one of these, the Ilsenstein, there is a most delightful view of the village, and of the ironworks in the valley beneath, of many adjacent rude masses of rocks, and of a wide plain, through which the Ilse winds its way. On its summit the Count of Stolberg-Wernigerode has erected a cross made of cast-iron to the memory of some of his fellow soldiers who fell in 1813, fighting for the freedom and rights of Germany. This is like the warriors of old, who planted their memorials to valour on the highest peaks of the wilderness. The cross is unfortunately not seen till it is reached, and it is more likely to be taken for the sign of a hermitage, or of a place where a murder had been committed, than for a memorial to departed friends.

We reached the Brocken, from where nothing higher but the heavens can be seen, about noon. Fortunately the weather was clear, and the view extensive and grand. There is nothing pretty, no beautiful little scene in the immediate neighbourhood of the Brocken, it is far too high above all the surrounding country, but there is nothing on any side to impede a most extensive view. The sight rather fails to distinguish objects, than is stopped. The horizon is every where lost in a light blue obscurity. The Brocken is said to be 3480 or 3500 Paris feet above the level of the sea. From its top a circle of the earth is seen, the diameter of which is 140 geographical miles. This circle contains the 200th part of Europe, and is inhabited by 5,000,000 people. More than 300 towns and villages, and the territories of eleven different princes, lie within it. It may be doubted if there be such another view in Europe, or indeed in the world. When higher mountains are accessible, some still higher ones in their neighbourhood generally limit the view. Such prospects are, however, more astonishing than beautiful; they make a much more powerful impression when the enumerations of the geographical arithmetician are read, than when they are beheld. A white cottage at the foot of a steep crag, with meadows and corn-fields, and a rivulet running past it, is much more beautiful than the eye-straining view from the summit of the earth. We toil, however, to the top from the ambition of being equal or superior to our neighbours, and if shame would allow us, we should confess when we had descended that there was more enjoyment in remaining below. It is the ambition of seeing what has been pronounced beautiful by others, that often excites a degree of toil of which the object itself is utterly unworthy.

There is a single public-house on the top of the Brochen, the inhabitants of which are cut off from all communication from the rest of the world during winter. Here accommodations of all kinds, and tolerably good ones, may be procured. We dined there, and then taking leave of my companions, who were going back to Ilsenburg, I descended to Andreasburg.

My companions had travelled through a great part of Europe, one was an agriculturist, the other a merchant, and both were the advocates of that servitude of the peasantry which has made them so stupid and indolent, that they can be no longer, according to common opinion, safely entrusted with their own interest. There never will be an end to the excuses which are made for one man usurping power over another. They had seen the peasantry of Silesia bowed down under the yoke of their task-masters, and had known them in that state indolent and stupid; and they affirmed, if they were released from their yoke, they would still retain these characteristics, and that it was better that the ground should be half tilled by compulsion than utterly neglected, as they affirmed it would be if the peasantry were their own masters. Such opinions, however false, are an evidence of what is yet thought on this subject in Germany. They would not be worth mentioning if they were merely the opinions of two people, but they are espoused by some very clever and celebrated professors. Truth comes not in floods, and many extensive spots in Germany have never yet been reached by its waters.

Andreasburg is the second most important town of that part of the Harz which belongs to Hannover, and its neighbourhood is celebrated for several mines, in which silver, copper, lead, and arsenic, are dug. Six miles above Andreasburg I passed a large reservoir, called the Oder-Teich, which is there formed, that the various works below may always have a supply of water. A large mound built of blocks of granite is thrown across a valley, and stops the little river Oder in its course. It is 54 feet high, the length is 300. It is 72 feet thick below, and 54 above. It was eight years building, being finished in 1722. It cost 12,000 Thalers. It is a solid wall of large granite blocks, fastened together with iron clamps, and the interstices filled with sand and moss. The whole work is massive and good. I had a delightful walk through the Oder Thal to Lauterberg, though the beauty of nature was somewhat obscured by the smoke from making charcoal, and from various forges and smelting-houses. Throughout this country man was at work, but nature seemed still.

The village of Lauterberg is full of industry. Not only the common work of the Harz is performed, but the agriculture is of some importance. Some linen is made, which, in general, the women on the Harz have little time or inclination to make. Near Lauterberg is a copper mine, which is said to be worked at a constant loss, and only to be worked on account of the very superior quality of the metal, which is useful in making brass. I visited the smelting-houses, and saw both the smelting and roasting; as there was nothing peculiar in either, they are not worth describing. Near Lauterberg stands Konigs-hütte, the largest of all the works on the Harz belonging to Hannover, for refining, casting, and forging iron. The ore is converted to metal. Four forges are employed to make bar iron, and there is a complete establishment for making wire. The melting-furnace is well constructed, and has been constantly employed for nine years, without being ever once suffered to cool. Iron pots, and such stoves as the Germans use to heat their rooms, are constantly cast, though other things are cast when they are in demand, or are applied for. The work was well and skilfully performed. Medallions of celebrated men, such as Goethe, Winkelmann, and Wieland, are cast in iron with a degree of art and accuracy that I almost thought above human skill. Very fine chains, to be worn about the neck as ornaments, are made from iron wire. The cross erected by Count Stolberg, which has been mentioned, and a much larger monument, in the form of a pyramid, which has been erected at Magdesprung by the Duke of Anhalt Bernburg to the memory of his father, are both of iron, and both were cast on the Harz. The shaft of the pyramid is forty feet high. A great progress in casting iron, particularly in casting ornaments, and things of taste, has, therefore, been made in Northern Germany. The progress which has been made in works of more utility has been less; there is no iron bridge in the country, there are no steam-engines made here. There are some few iron railways at Clausthal, but they are not used. There is no good machinery cast; the rolling machine at Oker, and a boring machine at Konigs-hütte itself, are the only machines of importance. With facilities equal to what are to be found in Britain, and with their casting works probably longer established, they equal us in making ornaments, but are far behind us in making useful articles. The source of this difference may be easily traced. The whole of the mines, and of the casting-houses and forges on the Harz, belong to some one of the princes under whose dominions the Harz is divided; while in Britain, all such works belong to individuals. On the Harz, the progress of the manufacturer is directed by salaried servants of the crown, whose chief aim is to gratify the whim of their royal master. In Britain, individual interest, sharpened by competition, animates and directs the whole. It begins in making what is useful to the multitude, but the demands of that multitude increase in proportion to the ingenuity displayed in gratifying them, and those improvements which were first made in scissors and knives, lead ultimately to throw an iron bridge over the Thames, which is a monument of skill superior to what the rest of the world can boast. In none of the countries where these manufactories have been long nursed by royal patronage, is there either skill or power to erect such a noble and useful public work. The sovereign of Prussia, to whom a part of this mineral country belongs, and who possesses in Silesia and Westphalia many mines of iron, forges, and furnaces, brought a steam-engine from Britain. When a nation suffers its skill and ingenuity to be directed by one individual, it never attains any thing beyond an excellence in trifling, but when each individual of a nation follows his own interest, it begins with cultivating trifling, and what are to many persons mean improvements, but it at length fabricates every thing that is useful and grand.

The bar, or hammered iron, which is made here, is not equal to Swedish iron, which may be owing to the ore, or to the manner of hammering it. Charcoal is used for smelting both, but that of the Harz is neither equally nor sufficiently hammered. There are five forges for making it, and it is supposed the whole five make 13,000 hundred weight per year. The men who cast are paid weekly, without any reference to the quantity of work they perform. Their wages are about six shillings per week, or about one shilling per day. The men who make bar iron are paid at the rate of 4 groschen and 6 pfennige per hundred weight, and on average, the five men who work at each forge may prepare 50 hundred weight per week, which makes their wages about 5s. 9¼d. per week.

A boring and turning machine, the model of which was brought from England, has been recently erected here. It was not at work at the moment. The whole of the establishment, including casting, bar making, boring, and wire making, employs altogether 130 people. Fifty are employed about the forges and furnaces, the remainder cut wood, and make charcoal, and bring it to the forges. The whole is placed under the inspection of an ober Factor, who renders an account to the chief of the smelting-houses, who communicates directly with the vice-berg Hauptman. However the system which is here pursued may, on account of unprofitableness, be open to objections, I have abundant reason to praise the politeness of the individuals connected with it. A most intelligent and well-informed young man accompanied me throughout, and gave me every information I asked. The systematic and extensive education which all the persons receive who are to be employed in such places, ensures to them a degree of communicative knowledge which is very valuable to those who visit the places under their charge.

I have not here mentioned the tithe of all the manufactures in metals and mines which belong to Hannover, and which are situated on the Harz. Twenty-three thousand people live on that part of this mountain which belongs to our sovereign, and the greater part of all these are employed either in the mines, in burning charcoal, or in melting and working in metals. At Herzberg, which was the last place I visited before returning to Göttingen, there is a manufactory of arms, such as muskets, swords, &c. This also was royal, but it was sold during the government of Jerome Bonaparte, and is now left in the quiet possession of the purchaser. My excursion to the Harz was short, but it gave me great pleasure. A longer and more minute examination of the whole would have amply rewarded me, had circumstances at the moment not compelled me to return to Göttingen. I know scarcely any pursuit of common travellers, except the fine arts, which may not be promoted by a visit to this part of Germany. The hills abound with geological phenomena, and with beautiful minerals. The chemist may see a large part of his science in daily practice, and the man of general knowledge may here find some parts of every thing which he loves and cultivates. The lover of nature may delight in the beautiful scenery, and the poet may be amused by some of those thousand legends, fairy tales, and tales of goblins, which are still recounted and believed by the superstitious inhabitants. In this point they form an exception to the generality of the Germans. Their imaginations are said to be vivid. They have probably been improved by employments that bring them together, and subject them to danger. They are not, like the peasants, the slaves of a feudal lord; they have always enjoyed a species of distinction and freedom as Bergmänner, and they are distinguished from their countrymen by greater liveliness and ingenuity of fancy.

I finally left Göttingen and the territories of Hannover at the beginning of September. Münden, a town of 5000 inhabitants, beautifully situated at the confluence of the Fulda and the Werra, which, united, receive the name of the Weser, was the last town belonging to Hannover. I reached it on the evening of the day I had left Göttingen. I had exchanged memorials with my friends, and we had written compliments and good wishes for each other, as is customary among the Germans. I had been compelled by my host to do justice to his home-made sausages and brandy, and injustice to my stomach, and thus, after having gratified friends and acquaintance, their hospitality allowed me to depart. The impression on my mind at the moment was,—and time has not altered it,—that these are a kind people. Some I had become acquainted with by chance, to others I had been introduced, and I found every one kindly attentive, ready to promote my wishes and my happiness.

In the evening I strolled into a public garden there is at Münden, and which is situated on the point where the two rivers meet. The neighbouring hills are precipitous and well wooded. The garden was well laid out, and neatly kept. The town was behind. The two streams were rushing rapidly together, and, when united, they flowed more quietly on before me. On the right the high-road from Hannover wound down a steep and well-wooded hill. The evening was still, but man was filling the air with the noise of his labours. Carriages and carts were rattling on the road, and thundering over a bridge at the entrance of the garden. Boats were loading or unloading at the little quay, and close to me were several parties smoking, talking, and playing bowls. The garden formerly belonged to a merchant of Münden, who built a very elegant house here, and laid out the ground in a handsome style. He had partaken of the commercial spirit of Frankfort and Hamburg, and had used his wealth in enjoyment. He had been, however, either too extravagant or too speculative, had failed, and his house and garden had been sold, and converted into a place of public entertainment.

It is rather a common German custom to place some memorial to departed friends in the gardens where the living take their daily exercise. I have heard of many instances of this custom, but I have seen only the one mentioned at Celle and one which was in this garden. The former owner had erected a monument in it to his wife, which was still standing. It deserved no praise for its beauty, but it was sculptured, and recorded the names and virtues of her to whom it was erected. The custom is an amiable one. It is better to place a memorial of this sort amidst our daily walks than among a promiscuous heap of corrupting mortality. We may not choose that the bodies of our friends should be buried beneath our tread, but the memorials which are erected to them by affection, ought assuredly to be placed amidst our daily walks, and exposed only to the eye of our friends. It is only vanity that displays them in the public square.

During my residence in Hannover, and in my various excursions through the country, I endeavoured to acquire some information on the government, laws, agriculture, and education of Hannover, and the remainder of the work will be principally employed in laying before the reader the little I obtained.

CHAPTER XI.: hannover—statistical and historical view.

Different provinces of Hannover.—Names and size.—Population.—Boundaries.—Historical view.—Thirty years’ war.—Union of territories.—Their extent when the Elector was called to the throne of Great Britain.—Act of settlement gave a ninth elector to Germany.—Acquisition of Bremen and Verden.—Of territory at the Congress of Vienna.

There is no land properly called Hannover, and this is the only monarchy in Europe whose title is borrowed from the chief city of its territories. This title was first used when Ernest Augustus, the father of George I. obtained the dignity of an elector of the empire, and it is now applied both to the newly acquired and to the long-possessed German dominions of his majesty. The history of this part of Germany prior to the above period, mentions the Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, or Lüneburg, or the Prince of Kalenberg, or the Archbishop of Bremen, but the name Hannover was then used only to designate an almost independent city, which often refused obedience to its nominal sovereigns, and never obeyed them but on stipulated conditions.

The kingdom of Hannover is now composed of several provinces, each of which enjoyed, at no very distant period, a separate independent existence. Several of them have been already mentioned and described, and the following is a correct list of their names, size, and population. The most northern part of the kingdom is placed first. The information is taken from Erd Beschreibung des Königreichs Hannover. Von K. D. A. Sonne. Sondershausen, 1817.

Size. Number of Inhabitants.
Names of Provinces. In square geographical miles. In the whole province. To each square geographical mile.
1st, Archbishopric of Bremen, dukedom of Verden, and Land Hadeln 2006.56 191,160 95
2d, Dukedom of Lüneburg 3204. 245,976 77
3d, Counties of Hoya and Diepholz 1070.40 105,120 98
4th, Principality of Kalenberg, and county of Spiegelberg 786.72 138,306 176
5th, Bishopric of Hildesheim 515.04 128,938 250
6th, Principalities of Göttingen and Grubenhagen 880.80 178,929 196
7th, Bishoprick of Osnabrück 695.36 126,037 119
8th, County of Lingen 99.36 20,143 201
9th, Circle of Meppen and Emsbuhren 576.00 29,541 51
10th, County of Bentheim 270.40 24,364 69
11th, Principality of East Friezland 840.00 125,610 155

The whole number of inhabitants in Hannover was, in 1816—1817, 1,314,124, and, on an average of the whole, 120 persons are found living on each square mile of territory. The inhabitants are, however, very unequally divided. In the fertile bishoprick of Hildesheim, there are 250 persons; in the sandy Lüneburg, 77; and in the small, and still more desolate Meppen, only 51 persons to each square mile. Seventy-three cities and 5311 market towns and villages are enumerated as belonging to Hannover. In the whole kingdom there were, from 1816 to 1817, 43,317 births, 33,254 deaths, and 13,786 marriages. On an average, there were more than three children to each marriage. The excess of births over deaths is accounted for more by emigration than by an increase of population. The number of births and deaths for 1817—1818 will be found in an appendix, which is also valuable as shewing the number of children born out of marriage in each part of Hannover.

Hannover contains, in all, 11,045 square geographical miles, but its circumference can by no means be expressed, because, after all the efforts which have been made to “round states,” it is still intersected by the whole dukedom of Oldenburg. The free city of Bremen, the principality of Lippe-Schauenburg, and the Amt Ritzebüttel, belonging to Hamburg, lie within its circumference, and a portion of territory belonging to Brunswick completely separates one of its provinces from all the others: with these exceptions, its northern boundary, including the mouths of the three great rivers, the Ems, the Weser, and the Elbe, is the sea. The eastern boundary is the Elbe, with the exception of a small portion of territory which lies on the eastern side of that river; West Friezland, belonging to the king of the Netherlands, bounds it on the west; that portion of Westphalia which belongs to Prussia, and the principality of Lippe-Detmold, lie on the south-west; Hesse Cassel on the south; Brunswick and Magdeburg, belonging to Prussia, on the south-east side.

Germany differs from the other countries of Europe, inasmuch as all the inhabitants, with the exception of the Sclavonic race, speak the same, or dialects of the same language. The Germans are truly a nation or people, but have never been united under one government, so as to form a power. Most of the powers of Europe are composed of different nations, but have long had a bond of union in a common government. As it is this latter circumstance which makes up that idea which is expressed by the words,—our country,—much more than mere geographical limits, the Germans have necessarily wanted that ardent attachment to Germany which Frenchmen have to France, and Britons to their native island. “Il n’y point,” says Mad. De Stael, “un grand amour pour la patrie dans un empire divisé depuis plusieurs siècles, où les Allemands combattoient contre les Allemands, presque toujours excités par une impulsion étrangère.” Feuds and broils, rather than national wars, have ever made up the military history of Germany. Many of the feats which military history holds up to us as worthy of our admiration, ought to be regarded with abhorrence, yet the pride of belonging to a race long superior in honourable feats of arms may be an ennobling feeling. The sons of those men who have been distinguished in the field of blood, will shine in the better pursuits of science, when the growing knowledge of mankind shall make the arts of peace more honourable than those of war: and nothing but the practice of giving superiority to the children of superior men, prevents the former from surpassing the latter. Thus the very means which are taken by those giant men who occasionally win the empire of the world to transmit it to their posterity, cause it to pass away from their enfeebled descendants. Hannover is in a great measure in miniature what Germany is in the full sized portrait.

At the earliest periods of the history of the north of Germany, the present dominions of Hannover were the dwellings of those nations who, under the command of Herrman, or the general, or Arminius, defeated the Romans under Varus, and appear to have completely excluded the Roman armies and Roman civilization. The name of Cherushers has not, however, descended to their posterity, and the present generation having justly learned to despise the ferociousness of their ancestors, seem also to have no claim to their glory of loving and courageously struggling for independence. This is the first great event in their history, and from this period till Charlemagne sent his army to conquer and baptize them, in the eighth century, they appear to have made few approaches to civilization. The change from paganism to Christianity was encircled with that glory which belongs to a just, though unsuccessful national resistance. They became Christians, and both the sagacity and the magnanimity of the conqueror appear conspicuous in his allowing his unsuccessful opponent, Wittekind, to take with his new religion the new title of Duke of Saxony, and thus to preserve the government of his dominions.

The new dukedom must not, however, be confounded with what we at present call Saxony. The former appears to have extended from the Elbe to the Ems, and to have inclosed, with the mountains of the Harz, all the land that lay between them and the sea. It became, from the valour of the Saxons, one of the most extensive and mighty powers of Germany, and, in the year 918, one of its dukes was elected Emperor of Germany. It remained a powerful dukedom till the twelfth century, when Henry the Lion (the duke) was put to the ban of the empire, and all his extensive territories were divided into parcels, never again to be united, and never more to be conspicuous till one of his descendants was called to the British throne. It was the armies of Charlemagne, who, carrying with them the arts and religion of the south, first introduced improvements amongst the Saxons. A more extensive government was established, and it put a stop to most of those petty wars which had formerly desolated the country. It was, however, one of the last civilized parts of Europe. Towns appear to have been first built in the tenth century, but then their progress was rapid, and, in the thirteenth century, some of them, as Brunswick and Goslar, formed part of the Hanseatic league.

The thirty years’ war, the most conspicuous event which intervened between the time of putting Henry to the ban of the empire, and the accession of one of his descendants to the throne of Great Britain, is rather to be considered as a religious broil, and as a struggle of many petty chiefs for power, than as a national contest. He who could do most mischief,—who could work the greatest cruelty,—appears to have been the greatest man. The changes of party in the chiefs, the numerous mercenaries, the pillaging, destruction, and wanton murders, give this contest the character of a war of banditti. Hannover shared in its crimes and punishments. The policy of its chiefs was changeable, and the country was more than once desolated.

It was only in 1680 that the right of primogeniture was fully established in our royal family, and it was George I. who, in consequence of this right, first united a considerable portion of the ancient territories of Henry the Lion under one sovereign. Before that period, government was an attribute of property, and never distinguished from it; the land was divided as an inheritance, and the people often fought to decide to whom they were to belong. Since that period, whenever the people of Hannover have appeared in history, it has been rather as the allies of Britain than as an independent nation. Their country then came to be considered as an appanage of their sovereign’s crown, and the dignity of the elector and of his people was lost in the greater dignity of another nation, to none of whose ancient glories they could lay any claim. Few people, therefore, have fewer ennobling historical recollections than the inhabitants of the different provinces of Hannover. This fact, which deserves to be remembered, from the influence it may have had on their national character, accounts, probably, for their wanting that lofty port for which they are sometimes reproached.

Sophia, the mother of George I. of England, appears to have been a woman of talent. She was honoured by the assistance and friendship of Leibnitz, and devoted herself to the aggrandisement of her family. Through her exertions, and the exertions of the celebrated minister, Grote; through the timely assistance which they gave to the Emperor, and through much solicitation, they wrung from him in the year 1692, the dignity of an elector of the empire, for Ernest Augustus, the husband of Sophia. Three of the electors, however, and most of the princes of the empire who were not electors, opposed this grant, and he never possessed more than the mere nominal dignity. William III. of England exerted all his influence to soften the princes of the empire. In the year 1700 Sophia was declared heiress to the British throne, with succession to her heirs, and an immediate alteration was observed in the opinions of the German princes. When this was confirmed, in 1705, the most sturdy opponent of the new dignity, Anton Ulrich, Duke of Wolfenbüttle, ceased his opposition, and, in 1708, George I. was for the first time fully invested with the dignities of archtreasurer and elector of the empire. The ennobling of our royal family was therefore effected by British influence, and our Act of Settlement gave a ninth elector to Germany.

When George I. succeeded his father, in the year 1698, his whole dominions probably did not contain more than 2120 square geographical miles, and 354,000 inhabitants. He united the dutchy of Lüneburg to these at the death of his uncle, in 1705, and these, making together 6200 square miles of territory, and containing, at most, 600,000 inhabitants, were all the dominions of our royal family when it was called to the throne of Great Britain.

In 1715, George I. purchased of Denmark the dutchies of Bremen and Verden. They were the last remains of the conquests which Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden had made in Germany. They were conquered by Denmark from Sweden in 1712, and in 1715 sold by the former power to the Elector of Hannover, for the sum of 900,000 florins, about L. 90,000 Sterling. This, however, displeased Sweden, and she was only induced formally to resign her claim to them by the terror inspired by an English fleet, and by George giving to her the sum of 1,500,000 florins, L. 150,000 Sterling.

In 1753, Bentheim was taken in pawn, by the Elector of Hannover, for a sum of money, and the dominions of Hannover consisted only of these provinces, till they were occupied by the French. The alterations which then took place, the manner in which the territory was divided and despoiled, till it again returned under the dominion of its former sovereign, are events which, from their recency, must be too well known to make it necessary for me to repeat them.

According to the geographer, Busching, and the historian, Spittler, the territories of Hannover contained, in 1797, and from that time till the occupation of the country by the French, no alteration took place, 8560 square miles, and 800,000 inhabitants. At the same time the alternate sovereignty of Osnabrück belonged to the elector of Hannover; its full sovereignty was only given to him by the Congress of Vienna; and it was not included by these authors in their estimate of the dominions of Hannover. It may therefore be included in the territory acquired by the decisions of that Congress. It has before been stated what is the present extent of these territories, viz. 11,044 square miles, containing 1,314,124 inhabitants. They are now, therefore, greater than they were before the occupation of the country by the French, by 2484 square miles; and now contain 464,124 people more than they did then; or our sovereign acquired, by the decisions and treaties made at the Congress of Vienna, (though, for a purpose it is easy to imagine, they were not immediately carried into execution,) an increase of territory amounting to more than one-fourth of what he before possessed in Germany, and an increase of people amounting to more than one-half of the former number of his German subjects. The minister of Great Britain at that celebrated Congress did not forget that his master was also sovereign of Hannover.

According to the progress of population in long peopled countries, a part of the increase of people might be owing to an increase in the number inhabiting the old territories of Hannover. There is, however, reason to think, from the general want of improvement in the country from the decay of some towns, as Lüneburg, and many manufactories, that if any of this increase be owing to this cause, it must be a very small proportion.

Prussia gave East Friezland, with the much desired port of Embden, Hildesheim, and some other small districts, to Hannover, and the prayers of the Saxons were not heard by our ministry. When the sovereign of Great Britain added to his foreign dominions, the British nation was degraded to assist in severing the Saxons from the paternal rule of a monarch whom they highly loved. They are not far surpassed by any other nation in Europe for an attachment to literature and the sciences, and they are equal to any one in the lighter graces of the mind, and in the charities of the heart. We owe most of our improvements in religion to the Saxons, yet we allowed a large part of them, for the gratification of ambition, clothed with the delusive names of political expediency, to be torn from under the gentle sway of a monarch to whom they were fondly attached, and we united them to the most military despotism of Europe. No person who has not seen the Saxons, and mixed with the middling classes of that people, can duly appreciate the sufferings which were inflicted on thousands of men to gratify the ambition of one.

Hannover has, therefore, grown to its present size from the same causes which have enabled most of the other monarchies of Europe to embrace in their dominions people who formerly lived under different governments, who possessed different laws, and who still speak different languages. Some parts of these dominions have fallen to the chiefs as an inheritance, others have been conquered, and others have been the gifts of Congresses, which have usurped with more subtlety of arrogance than conquerors, a right to make a property of the human race. We censure and reproach justly the barbarians who still traffic with individual men, and we cannot discover the greater iniquity of buying and selling whole nations.

CHAPTER XII.: hannover—government.

Passive obedience characteristic of the Germans.—Former chief minister of Hannover.—Present ministry.—The chamber.—Provincial governments.—Prevent the practice of animal magnetism.—Magistracy of towns.—Power of the sovereign over them.—Character of city magistrates.—Amts what.—Police.—Government of the church.—Pastors.—Superintendents.—Consistoriums.—An anecdote.—Appointment of clergymen.—Revenues of the church.—Secularized convents.—Appointment of an abbot.—Character of the government.

Till a very recent period, it seems as if each generation had thought its own institutions the best which the wit of man could plan, and that they ought to be and would be the institutions of their posterity for ever. At present, however, men begin to doubt even their own wisdom on this point, and because every thing has changed, they argue that every thing must continue changing, that the institutions of to-day will want the wisdom which will only be acquired to-morrow, and that none can remain unchanged till the full completion of knowledge, and the perfection of reason.

Governments depend on opinion, and thus, notwithstanding the many efforts which have been made to preserve them in one and the same form, they have always varied in their spirit, at least so much as any of the sciences which have been subjected to investigation by a large body of inquirers. From these general facts, it is probable now that the sovereigns of Germany have very generally succeeded in abolishing most or all of the separate privileges of towns, and of the nobles, in beating down all other organized power but their own, in reducing all men to one uniform measure of submission, that they will be obliged to recede by the invisible but overwhelming power of opinion. Though passive obedience has long been one characteristic of the inhabitants of Germany, there is a few persons amongst them who are beginning an inquiry into the principle of obedience, and who are laying in a change of opinion a foundation for a change of government. It is a remark of one of their own authors, that “they fear every authority even when it does wrong, much more than they fear the reproaches of their own consciences for regarding public oppression with indifference.’ This is, in truth, their present character, but while one person is found with spirit to remark it, there is a hope it will improve. It is proper to warn the reader of the probability of the improvement.

The chief minister of most of the sovereigns of Germany, and of the members of the house of Brunswick, at a period somewhat before they became kings of Great Britain, was a person called a Chancellor, who was generally not a nobleman, and was always a man cunning in the law, attached to no particular country of Germany, pledged to no system of politics, except as he was a Protestant or a Catholic, and bent on nothing but to increase his own and his employers’ power. Such persons, by their knowledge of that foreign law which had then recently spread itself from the universities over Germany, were the great instruments of quietly taking from the nobles, and other superior classes, their exclusive privileges, of substituting their own beloved studies for the ancient laws of Germany, and of giving to their masters a species of power resembling that possessed by the great object of their admiration, the Emperor Justinian. Some few years before the accession of George the First to the throne of Great Britain, the ministry was formed rather more after the model of the French. The monarch appointed a cabinet-council, and ministers to different departments of the public service. The nobles had now learned how to conduct business, they alone were appointed to all these places, they have filled them ever since, and the chancellor sunk to be merely the chief of the administration of justice.

Since the accession of the elector to the throne of Great Britain, Hannover has always been governed by a council, now called the States and Cabinet Ministry. In important matters, it only executes the will of the sovereign; in matters of less moment, it has the power of acting from itself. With an absent sovereign, whom the subjects cannot approach even with a petition, but through the ministry, it is the actual sovereign. Munchausen, who was the chief of the cabinet under George the Second, is the only minister who seems to have at all merited the notice of the writers of history. Much of his fame arises from his having been the actual founder, under his master, of the University of Göttingen. Learned men are exposed to the influence of wealth like other men, and they praise and honour whatever they think promotes the advantages of their sect. The monarch who now wishes for most glory, should probably establish many Universities.

The Duke of Cambridge is at present the president of the Cabinet Ministry; and, with the title of Governor-General, he is the chief of the government. The members of this cabinet ministry have all the titles of excellence. Claus. von der Decken, Count Munster, who resides in London, as the minister of Hannover, Frans Dieterich Bremer, Count Hardenberg; Charles Fred. Alex. von Arnswaldt, are the chief ministers; and there are some subordinate ones. The ministry is divided into several departments, each of which has a secretary, who is not, however, always for each one a different person; and these secretaries are to be considered as the efficient men of business. At present finances are the most difficult and most important part of government; and the secretary of that department, Dr Rehberg, is usually spoken of as the most capable man of the government. He receives most of the praise and most of the censure which different people bestow on its acts. He has long been a conspicuous man, both as a statesman and as an author; and so far as regards political matters, he is more spoken of than the governor-general himself.

There is a branch of government to which we have nothing precisely similar in England, called the Kammer, Chamber; and which, to give a proper idea of its complexity, must be noticed. Its duty is to manage and administer the whole of that property belonging to the crown which is called domains. Under this is included regalia, certain rights to forests, to salt, to metals, to levy tolls, and some other privileges, together with rather more than one-sixth of the whole land of the ancient dominions, without including that which did belong to religious corporations, and which is now under the control of the monarch.

The Duke of Cambridge presides over the Chamber also; it is further under the control of one of the ministers, and has, as the active men of business, a vice-president and six councillors, with a great many assistants called cameralen, secretaries, writers, and other people. It possesses subordinate officers, composing sorts of colleges for the local government of the royal property in most of the provinces. The greater part of the persons employed in the administration of justice in the country are appointed by it. A large body of officers for the mines and for the forests, regularly organised into account-keeping and superintending, into riding and walking, with all the persons who superintend the buildings on the royal property, or who look after bridges and roads, are appointed by the Chamber. It is also a court for the decision of such causes as involve complaints against the tenants of royal property, relative to that property. It decides on any complaints made against its subordinate servants for the improper use of their power. It is an extensive branch of government separate and distinct from the ministry, though in some measure under its superior control. It employs a great number of persons. The great utility which is generally ascribed, not only to it, but to the crown, possessing so much property, is, that it is thereby enabled to provide for a large number of meritorious men.

There are five provincial governments. The first has its seat at the town of Hannover; and its jurisdiction extends over Kalenberg, Göttingen, Grubenhagen, Lüneburg, Hildesheim, Lauenburg, and some other districts. It is composed of a president and eight councillors, including a medical gentleman; and it has several secretaries and messengers.

The second has its seat at Stade; and its power extends over Bremen, Verden, and Land Hadeln. It is composed of a president and two councillors, with secretaries, and other officers.

The third is at Osnabrück, and governs Osnabrück, Meppen, and Lingen. It consists of a president, four councillors, and other subordinates.

The fourth has its seat at Aurich, and governs East Friezland. It is composed of a president and four councillors, with other persons.

The fifth is for Bentheim, and consists of one councillor and a secretary.

These provincial governments were first established when the country was recovered by the present government. It appears to have then formed the resolution to give to Hannover a general assembly of the several provincial states which it formerly possessed, and some of whose functions the provincial governments appear to have assumed. They are what may be called scientific governments, in which a unity of design and of purpose pervades the whole. Frederick the Great was the first, I believe, to introduce them into Europe. Revolutionary France followed his example, and her jacobinical steps have been followed by all the legitimate sovereigns, whenever they led to an augmentation or confirmation of their own power.

The powers of these provincial governments extend to every thing that can well be subjected to regulation; and they issue, in consequence, an abundance of orders. I have seen directions from them for the people to kill sparrows, how many pigeons a man may keep, not to steal trees, to preserve deer, forbidding straw to be exported out of the province; they order midwives to be placed, and sworn in faithfully to discharge their duties; they fix the sum to be given them for their service; they tell the farmers they ought to extirpate weeds; they direct agricultural operations; they ascertain the yearly produce of the land, that measures may be taken, by limiting appetite, in time, to prevent famine. In short, there is hardly an action of human beings capable of being prescribed, in which no regulation has been issued by one or other of the provincial governments of Hannover. There are some medical men connected with all and each of these provincial governments, who form a medical police for the whole kingdom. A similar medical police is established in most parts of Germany. There are general and sub-inspectors of apothecaries, physicians for the country and for the towns, all of whom are either members of this medical police, or under its control. The following is an instance of the manner in which its authority, and the authority of these provincial governments, are exerted:—

The chief of the medical police of the town of Hannover, and a member of the provincial government, is a Dr Stieglitz, who is rather a celebrated man, and an avowed and determined opponent of the doctrines of animal magnetism. This circumstance might possibly have had an influence on his determination, and on the conduct of the provincial government. In 1818 a Dr Ziermann, after having served in our armies, wanted to establish himself in practice in the town of Hannover. He obtained the necessary permission. It was his intention to follow the Mesmerian method of cure, and he is said to have noticed it to Dr Stieglitz, who had no objections. Some time afterwards, he wished to insert an advertisement in the Advertising Paper, which is, like every thing else, under the administration and control of government, but it was forbidden. He shortly afterwards received a notice from the provincial government, that he must state to it explicitly the manner in which he intended to magnetise and cure the sick; and that, before he carried his plan into execution, particularly, in assembling several sick to be magnetised at one time, he must wait for a particular permission. He explained, in a rational, clear manner, what his intentions were; particularly, “that he had the greatest faith in the use of the baquet, a large wooden vessel, somewhat less than a brewer’s vat, filled with water mixed with iron, glass, and other materials which is known from experience to be a powerful instrument for magnetising; that he intended to collect his patients, to the number of 12 or 16, sitting on little stools round this tub, for one or two hours at a time, to remain by them himself, to mark its effects on them, to wake them at the proper period of their somnambulism, and to be ready to help them on any particular occasion.” He was allowed by the government to employ what other methods he thought proper for healing the sick, but he was forbid to use the baquet, or to dispense health to numbers of people collected together.

Dr Ziermann is a regular bred practitioner, a man of good character, and of science; and in proposing to use magnetism as a means of curing many disorders, he followed the opinions of many learned and clever men in Germany, who affirm, with great truth, that it is equally possible for a baquet to produce powerful effects on people, as that plates of copper and zinc fixed in a wooden trough filled with an acid liquor, should have the effect of melting the hardest substances, and of destroying life. Though many persons, notwithstanding the premiums offered by learned bodies for the best classification of the phenomena of the magnetism of life, as it is now called, and the appointment of professors to teach it, doubt if there be any phenomena whatever, and amongst them, Dr Stieglitz, and the provincial government of Hannover, this is surely not a sufficient reason to prohibit its being practised. The believers are loud in asserting its wonderful and efficacious effects, which can neither be verified nor disproved, by forbidding respectable men to practise it. If it be a means of cure, why not let its benefits be given to the world? If it be a delusion, why prevent its exposure by prohibiting it? What evil can ensue from collecting a few fanciful women, or nervous men, round a large tub, which each imagines is to impart health and vigour? They who have only imagined themselves sick, may have their attention attracted from themselves to the apparatus of magnetism, and may become sound, from their curiosity being excited. I do not pretend to decide, if the use of the baquet is so beneficial as the physician standing amidst his patients, and imparting to them, by moving an iron rod before them, with a perpendicular motion, the vital and living principle; or if it be better that he should give this principle to them, by making circular motions with his flat hand, parallel to their bellies. The initiated indeed say, that the baquet answers the purposes of cure better, as it saves the practitioner from that exhaustion which is occasioned when the other methods are used, by the vital magnetism being abstracted from him, and thus supplied to his patients. Dr Ziermann was allowed to magnetise with his hand, and with iron rods, but he was forbidden to use the tub.

It was allowed to cure people by fanciful motions, but not by collecting them round a tub. The government was afraid the latter would work too powerfully on their imagination, and might disease instead of cure them. The duty of governments to take care of their subjects is extended too far when it wishes to shield them from the consequences of their own follies. Those who believed in the baquet, and in Dr Ziermann, might either have been killed or cured without the interference of government. If men be, as learned doctors say, “born to evil,” the ambition of protecting them from it far surpasses in madness the mad ambition of conquerors, and they who undertake it make themselves responsible for all the imbecility, immorality, and misery which are found in the world.

Hannover has not so scientific a plan for the government of its towns as Prussia. The number of the magistrates for every town, and sometimes their titles of office, are various. Generally, however, they are called bürgermeisters, syndicii, secretaries, and senators. In that part of Hannover, for example, which is denominated the old town, which contains about 12,000 inhabitants, there are two bürgermeisters, one syndicus, four secretaries, five senators, and one auditor, making in all thirteen persons, with a competent number of clerks and messengers. For the town of Lüneburg there are four bürgermeisters, and ten senators, one medical man, one protosyndicus, one syndicus, and four secretaries. These persons select the whole of the members and servants; they are called a college of magistrates, and the term magistracy will here be used to signify them. Their office in general lasts for life.

It is of importance to remark, that the bürgermeisters of all the large towns, the syndicii, secretaries, and auditors, are always jurisconsults. Thus there are not less than eight such persons in the magistracy of the town of Hannover, and not less than eleven in that of the town of Lüneburg. This class of men have had as powerful an influence in Germany as in other countries of Europe.

Almost all the towns have landed property, and as all have some funds or other to administer, the magistracy is generally divided into two parts, one of which is charged with the administration of the property, the other with the administration of justice. The two bürgermeisters take alternately the presidency of these two departments.

The towns of Germany were originally places of security and defence against the nobles. They were independent little states, and each had a magistracy of its own, appointed in general by the whole mass of the citizens assembled in their respective guilds. At present the appointment of the magistrates has either fallen into the hands of the magistrates themselves, or into those of some few of the citizens, and either directly or indirectly into those of the government. There is no town of any consequence whose superior magistrates must not be approved of and confirmed in their office by the cabinet ministry.

The sovereign of Hannover has, like the other sovereigns of Germany, given new constitutions or charters to many of the towns, and in doing this, he has not departed from the rules they have generally followed, of appropriating to themselves as much power as possible. It is at present the fashion for monarchs to make many professions of liberality; they promise to their subjects “constitutions suitable to the circumstances of the times.” They are probably earnest and sincere in these professions, but what they understand as suitable to the circumstances of the times, can only be known from their actions. To judge from some instances of their conduct in Germany, they appear to think that the growing desire for freedom amongst men, requires to be met by increased power and influence in their possession. It cannot certainly be desired that the sovereigns should restore the towns to that state of political independence in which they formerly existed, but while they contribute their share to the support of the general government, their local governments ought to be appointed by the citizens, and dependant on them. The following are examples of the new charters which the sovereign of Hannover has given to some of the towns of his dominions:

For the town of Hildesheim he decreed that the whole body of the magistracy, bürgermeisters, syndicii, town-judge, in all eight persons, with a number of assistants and secretaries, should always be appointed by him or his ministry. The town is divided into nine districts, and the citizens living in each of these districts elect one deputy, who holds his place for life. These nine deputies have each a seat and a vote in that division of the magistracy which has the administration of revenue. They are called on to examine the accounts for each quarter’s expenditure, and this is all the power over their own concerns which has been left to the inhabitants of Hildesheim. Deputies for life are like no deputies at all. Such people can seldom have any other motive but to turn the deputation so much to their own profit as possible.

The constitution which has been given to the town of Osnabrück has been made more complicated, but perhaps not less favourable to the power of the crown. The town is divided into four districts, and the magistrates select from each district four citizens, in all sixteen, and these sixteen citizens elect four persons, who are called representatives of the citizens. Their office lasts two years, when the election is repeated after the same manner. When a vacancy occurs in the magistracy, two of these representatives, with one person belonging to the magistracy, selected by it, in all three persons, elect twelve of the citizens, who, with the eldest of the four representatives, nominate three persons as proper to fill the vacant place; one of these three is presented by the magistracy to the government, which may either accept or reject him as it pleases. The four representatives have also a seat, and a vote in the chamber for the administration of the revenue, and they elect six other citizens every year to inspect with them the accounts of the city.

In the town of Embden, in the once free province of Friezland, the members of sixteen different guilds formerly elected from amongst themselves forty deputies, who were removable at the will of a majority of the electors. These forty deputies formed a sort of permanent council, without whose advice and consent the magistrates could not levy new assessments nor taxes, nor take one step of importance. These forty, with the magistrates, were also the persons who were appointed to the vacancies in the magistracy. As the limits of a town do not allow any thing to be done in it which affects the right of the people without its being immediately known to them all, and as the inhabitants of Embden had the power to remove their deputies at pleasure, the greater part of the power remained in the hands of the people. With such a constitution Embden had risen to a considerable degree of prosperity.

By the new constitution which the government of Hannover has given it, the whole of the magistracy, in all fourteen persons, was for that time appointed by the government, and at its head was placed a royal commissioner, who is always to be appointed by the government. He possesses a complete power of controlling the magistracy, and is placed solely to look after the interests of the crown. Five of these persons must be jurisconsults, but if there be a person found extremely learned in the administration of the town, that is, in the business of the citizens, he may, with the express permission of the government, fill one of these five places; but his functions are to be entirely confined to the administration of the finances. The forty deputies of the people were entirely swept away. In their place twenty-four persons were ordered to be elected for life. Every citizen who has a house, or 3000 Thalers property, who is of age, and belongs to one of the Christian confessions of faith, has a vote in this election. The day and the hour of the election are appointed by the royal commissioner. The town is divided into six districts, each district electing four representatives, and the commissioner deputes some one of the magistracy to preside at the election over each of these districts. The twenty-four persons so elected represent the whole citizens, of whom, however, they are declared to be perfectly independent, and whose affairs they may regulate without consulting them.

It seems a most curious proceeding to call some men the representatives of others, and, at the same time, to give them the power to manage the affairs of their constituents without consulting them. The order in the original is, “Sie sind berechtigt alle Angelegenheiten wozu sie nach, § 4 und § 33, herbei gezogen werden, ohne Rücksprache mit der Bürger-schaft abzuthun.” Had the citizens themselves given their representatives the power to manage their affairs without consulting them, it would have been rather silly, but, on the part of the government, it was appointing tutors to the citizens, not allowing them to have representatives. These mockeries of representatives are not allowed to meet without the sanction of the royal commissioner, and their functions are entirely confined to the administration of the revenues of the town.

To fill up the future vacancies in the magistracy, these twenty-four representatives elect three persons, who are presented to the provincial government, which notices the fact to the cabinet ministry, which may either appoint one of the three or not, as it pleases. If it decides for the latter, a new election must take place. Such are some of the particulars of the new constitution which the government of Hannover has given to its newly acquired city of Embden.

The power of the crown, in Hannover, over the magistracy of the towns, is still further augmented by the members of the latter very often filling other offices immediately dependent on the will of the crown. They are commissaries for the army, or members of the consistoriums, who are the servants of the crown. I had an opportunity of knowing some of these magistrates, and always found them amiable well-informed gentlemen, only so thoroughly convinced of the excellencies of law, that they thought the world could do nothing without it, and without them. One of them I might hold up as the pattern of a very estimable old man. He was bürgermeister of a small town, with an income, possibly, of 600 Thalers a-year, and, of course, so paid he could live in no great state. He united to his knowledge of law, in which he was said to be eminently skilled, an acquaintance with most of the languages of Europe. He was a very good practical gardener and farmer, and might shew his flowers and fruit trees,—which he did,—with just pride, for they were all nursed into excellence by his own labours; and he might, with equal exultation, shew his collection of pipe-stems, for they were all turned by himself. He was seventy years of age, calm, sedate, but full of engaging anecdote and knowledge. Before meals, he pulled off his white night-cap and silently prayed, and, in the whole of his deportment, except the extent of his knowledge, he reminded me strongly of an aged Scots peasant. The air of the magistrate, however, when he slid his cap over the side of his head, till it descended to his knees, was full of humility, while the bonnet of the Scotsman was lifted off and held up with pride.

The first part of this portrait may recall to those who are acquainted with Aus meinem Leben of Goethe, either in the original or the Edinburgh Review, “the worthy Schultheiss, also a magistrate, at Frankfort on the Maine, and the grandfather of Goethe, who passed much of his time in his garden, sorting tulip roots, pruning, planting, or grafting, dressed in a long night-gown, and a full velvet cap.” This is a coincidence in manners in two distinct parts of Germany, though the nightgown is converted into a greatcoat, and the velvet cap changed for a cotton one. The portrait which Goethe has given of his grandfather, of his taciturnity, his equability of temper, and his employments, seems to me an accurate representation of the class of men to which he belonged.

That portion of the land which is the property of the crown is divided into what are called Amts, each of which in general comprises several parishes. Over the Amt, an amtman, who is a jurisconsult, is placed as magistrate. Land not under the government of some Amtman, or of some towns, belongs to the nobles, and they exercise the powers of government over it. The amtmen are appointed by the Chamber, and when they are noblemen, as they sometimes are, they take the title of Landdrost. When the latter are not themselves learned in the law, they have a jurisconsult, who is then called Amt’s assessor, placed under them. These persons have the power of enforcing the orders of government in their respective districts. They correspond strictly to no magistrates of our country, but resemble justices of the peace more than any other. The police of their districts is under their control. They have certain servants, or Vogts, who may be considered as the instruments of this police. They communicate frequently with the governments, both of the provinces and the general government, which are consequently well informed of every occurrence.

Each village, again, has what is called a Vorsteher, or Baumeister, who is the organ to expound the will of the superiors to his fellow-parishioners, and to forward the reclamations or complaints of the whole parish to these superiors. He is generally chosen by the inhabitants yearly; he is a farmer, or some other inhabitant of the parish; he has something to do with the administration of the church, and of the poor, and, on the whole, exercises functions somewhat similar to our churchwardens and overseers combined. As, however, the great portion of the land belongs either to the nobles or to the sovereign, this person, except in the marsh lands, is always whom they please.

Prior to the occupation of this country by the French, the police of the towns, which included the regulations of the market, fixing prices, giving passports, apprehending vagrants, and determining a great variety of small causes, and punishing a great many small offences, was exercised by the magistrates of the towns. It is now, however, regulated by three commissioners appointed by the crown, who have subordinate officers, with a regular corps of Gens d’armes. It is one of the new establishments, by which the expences of the government, and its influence, are very much increased.

The Protestant church of Hannover, and, generally, of Germany, is administered by parish priests, ( Pastors, ) superintendents, and consistoriums. Each parish has a pastor. The parishes of some of the towns, and some large ones in the country, have two. Both a clerk, Cantor, and sacristan, Kuster, are appointed in extensive parishes; in smaller ones these offices are united in one person, who is also very often the schoolmaster. The larger churches of the towns have organs and organists. The court has a chapel and chaplains. Some of the towns have clergymen more than the pastors, but, in general, each parish has its pastor, its clerk, and its sacristan, and these are all the minor officers of the church.

The superintendents are of two kinds, special and general. The former are also pastors whom the government selects from their having superior talents, or from any other motive it pleases. Their name accurately expresses their office. They superintend the conduct of the clergymen, and the discipline of the church, within a certain district. They communicate with the general superintendents, and are the organs for making known the orders of the superior powers to the pastors. Each one of their districts includes, on an average, ten parishes. There are ten general superintendents for the kingdom of Hannover, who are also very often the eldest pastor of some town, or they are court chaplains, or professors of theology at the university, and they are also generally councillors of the consistoriums.

There are seven consistoriums for the whole kingdom, all the members of which are nominated by the crown. They are composed of a portion of clergymen and of laity. Generally the provincial consistoriums are presided by some person who is in other respects a servant of the crown. That of Hannover is, however, presided by the abbot of Loccum, who is no otherwise dependant on it than as he may be made so by this appointment. The laity are generally jurisconsults. Of the consistorium of Hannover, one of the bürgermeisters, and a magistrate of the new town, are members. The consistoriums have also secretaries, who are jurisconsults. The secretary for that of Hannover is a brother of the celebrated Schlegel’s.

The consistoriums regulate all matters relative to the discipline of the church. They are the trustees of all the funds which yet belong to it. They superintend the business of education; they very often appoint schoolmasters; they have the examination of all candidates for clerical offices; and they lend their aid to the well government of the people. They give orders relative to marriage, in so far as to the restrictions under which the priests are to celebrate it, relative to baptism and confirmation, and they do what they can to convince the rising generation that there are many advantages and honours in becoming soldiers. When any person reflects what a German soldier is, there can be no want of words to designate the actions which the sacred name of religion is here employed to produce.

The consistoriums are also ecclesiastical courts, which decide in cases of divorce. Those of Celle and Hannover pronounced the divorce between George I. and his wife some few years before he was called to the throne of Great Britain. They are the judges in all complaints made against the morals of the clergy.

As an instance of their power and practice in such cases, the following anecdote may serve: The wife of a clergyman was delivered of a child some few months earlier than was consistent with the date of her marriage. The parishioners complained of their pastor. The affair was examined by the consistorium, and, in spite of his observing that the fault of his wife was not his fault, he was removed to another parish, of which the emoluments were less. As the character of his wife was known, there was some truth, as well as wit, in the observation of a lady, who, when this story was told her, said, It was a shame to punish the poor man for what he had not occasioned.

In all cases not strictly appertaining to the discipline of the church, an appeal may be made from their decision to a chief court of appeal, which is at Celle. The consistoriums are the censors for all works on theological subjects.

The inhabitants of some parishes have the power of electing their own pastor; in some the appointment belongs to nobles; in others to the monarch, as proprietor of land; some are in the gift of the consistoriums, and invariably the magistracy of the towns appoint the pastors of the towns. When there is a vacant place they advertise for candidates. All these appointments must, however, have the approbation of the consistoriums, as they are appointed to examine and ordain all the clergymen. The superintendents and members of the consistoriums are all appointed by the crown, and as these are nearly all the promotions to which the inferior clergy can aspire. The whole government of the church, with the disposal of many of its emoluments, and a great influence over the minds of the clergy, all center in the crown.

In the marsh lands on the Elbe, where the glebe is extensive, and the land of great value, the parish priests may possess an income of 2500 Thalers, or about L. 416 per year; but in general their incomes, with a portion of glebe land, house, &c. are between 300 and 1000 Thalers per year. The clergymen of the towns and the superintendents may have from 1200 to 1500 Thalers, or, at most, L. 230 per year. The richest member of the church, the Abbot of Loccum, who was formerly a prince of the empire, is said not to enjoy, including all his little privileges, such as the inhabitants of Loccum being obliged to maintain his horses, and wash his linen, more than 6000 Thalers, or L. 1000 per year.

The clergymen of all the towns are paid out of the funds of the towns; those of the country out of some land formerly ecclesiastical property, and now devoted to this purpose. Many of their emoluments consist in their glebe, which the people are bound to cultivate for them, but which they very often let for a sum of money, because they have found many inconveniences attending this forced labour. Fees are given them at baptism, marriage, and confirmation. Tithes are the property of the crown, of particular nobles, or are levied in the name of some town or religious corporation. In the houses of the clergymen which I have entered, both in the towns and in the country, I saw no marks of wealth, nothing of opulence to excite envy, and make the doctrine of content under poverty which they preach, less efficacious from their example. In truth, though the tradesmen and farmers of this country are poor, they seem to have so much wealth as the clergy. The country clergymen are said to possess considerable influence over the inhabitants of their parishes, but this is entirely owing to their superior knowledge, and not to superior wealth.

In other countries it is thought necessary to support the dignity of the church, by much larger emoluments than are possessed by the members of the church of Hannover, and of the north of Germany. But the duties of the pastors, notwithstanding their poverty, are not neglected. Every person speaks with great praise of their conduct. They are described as a very learned body of men, who would not shrink from a competition with the clergy of any church of Europe. There are neither archbishoprics nor bishoprics in the Hannoverian church; there are no great prizes to fight for, and there are very few sectaries; there is no immense wealth to be preserved by intolerance, and the priesthood is liberal, tolerant, and enlightened. The simplicity of the form of this church government, when united with its efficacy, and with its poor rewards, as to wealth, compared with the hierarchies of the church of Rome and of England, may teach us the accurate value, for the purposes of religion and good government, of numerous and proud hierarchies.

All that has been hitherto said relates to the Protestant church of Hannover. An eighth part, probably, of the people are Catholics, who live principally in Hildesheim and Osnabrück, in both of which provinces they have a bishop, called a weih (consecrated) Bishop, who must not be confounded with the Prince Bishop, who is, whether ecclesiastic or layman, the temporal governor. It was only at the congress of Vienna these two provinces came fully under the government of Hannover, and, as a concordat is at present negociating at Rome, it is impossible to say what influence the crown will have over the appointment of these bishops. It is a matter of less consequence now than formerly, because the Catholic church no longer possesses much wealth. In both these countries the church property has been secularised, and the priests are allowed to have only such a part as is necessary for the support of a very small establishment.

The secularised convents, or religious corporations of Hannover, must be here mentioned, although they are anomalies belonging much more to the crown than to the church.

The religious corporation of Loccum must be excepted from this latter assertion. This was an abbey of the empire, whose independence was secured by the treaty of Westphalia, and whose members must be persons who have studied theology. They fill up vacancies in their own body themselves. The abbot is alternately elected by the chapter and by the crown. The living abbot has almost the power of procuring the election of his successor; and the last incumbent is said to have offended her late Majesty, by refusing to nominate the chaplain of some German chapel in London to be his successor.

This place is so valuable that the nobles have desired to possess it, although, in general, no nobleman has ever filled a situation in the Protestant church. Some individuals, however, of a sort of Patrician families, who possess the inestimable privilege of having the monosyllable von, the title of nobility, prefixed to their names, have been clergymen. The nobles of Hannover are said to have resolved on the death of the late abbot, who, to avoid as much as possible offending her late Majesty, never nominated any successor, to procure this place for some clergyman with a von; and then it would always have been considered as a place belonging to nobility.

So soon, however, as the abbot was dead, the prior and two members repaired to Hannover, and there choosing the present abbot, notified their choice to the government, and asked its ratification. It was refused, as all the members were not present. It was replied, the prior and two members constituted a chapter, and that they had already applied to Prussia, who was bound, by the treaty of Westphalia, to protect the corporation, for assistance. This convinced the ministry; and the abbot chosen by the prior, to the exclusion of a noble, was appointed.

There are 25 secularised religious corporations for both sexes in Hannover, exclusive of Hildesheim, in which the whole were abolished by the French, and are not yet reinstated. A portion of the former revenues of these corporations is given to certain persons under the titles of priors, or conventualists. Sometimes they are clergymen who are considered not well enough paid, but more generally they are nobles, or members of the government. The elected presidents of the nobility of Bremen and Lüneburg are, by virtue of their office, the former, abbot of Neuenwalde, the latter, of St Michael’s in the town of Luneburg. These are the sinecures of Hannover. Many of the places in the female convents are given to the daughters of the nobility; they amount to a small pension, and sometimes to a dwelling and nourishment. Nearly the whole of them are in the gift of the crown. That portion of the funds of these religious corporations not employed to support the conventualists, is given for the support of institutions for charity and education. The whole is administered by a particular chamber, called the Kloster Kammer, whose members are appointed by the crown.

Such is a rough outline of the executive part of the government of Hannover. The mass of the people have no where any thing to do with it. The clergy, as a separate corporate body, possessed of power and influence, has ceased to exist; and as individuals, its members have become, in a great measure, dependant on the crown. The influence of the nobility, and of jurisconsults, may be traced in the college form of all the institutions, and in the multiplication of offices to which they alone are eligible. Because the chief of the government has not for many years resided in the country, and has therefore necessarily seen, and heard, and ordered every thing through the nobles, and because they fill all the superior offices of the government, there has not been, for many years, any other power than their’s. The case would be different were the monarch to reside in the country. Then there would be no power that could oppose him; and when the customs of the people did not prescribe otherwise, he might be an absolute monarch. Whatever form and name a government may have, it is by its own acts, and by the customs and spirit of the nation, that its character can be determined. Hannover is in every respect a favourable specimen of what German governments were and are. It has long been celebrated for mildness, and attention to what governments call the welfare of their subjects. Spittler says, in speaking of the alterations which had been been made in administering the governments of Germany, “Thanks to the British sense of freedom; thanks to the praise-worthy Georges, that the writer of the history of the principality of Hannover must seek in other German lands for the perfect completion of that un-German revolution, which was first begun under the government of John Frederick and Ernest Augustus.”

John Frederick reigned in the year 1665. From looking at the history of the government of Hannover, I must give it, for the last century, the credit of great mildness. More instances may be found of its having attended to the wishes of individuals, than of its having been guilty of arbitrary oppression; but its college form is bad, and the government officers have been so multiplied, that they now form a large proportion of the numerical strength of the society.

There is a much greater evil in this than the mere employment of a great portion of the community in unproductive labour. Each of the individuals composing these governments is highly impressed with a notion of the importance of his functions, and constantly does something that he may convince himself, and other persons, that he has a vast deal to do. Each strives to outdo the other by the subtlety, and acuteness, and number of his regulations. It would be more beneficial to the community if every one of these persons were to be paid for doing nothing, than as they are now paid for multiplying regulations, and for extending them and the power of government to every trifling business of life. On this subject, however, the opinions entertained in Germany seem much at variance with those entertained in Britain. If there be only Zählreiche Anstalten, numerous institutions, multiplied regulations, and a continued watchfulness and interference on the part of the government, the Germans are satisfied that all is correct. Political economy means with them the knowledge of promoting the prosperity of the people by means of governments. If that general opinion which supposes governments to be beneficial be accurate, it can scarcely be possible that we can have too much of them. The conduct of the Germans is perfectly consistent with this opinion, and those nations only are inconsequent who, acknowledging governments to be beneficial, seek, at the same time, to limit their power as much as possible.

In its general features, in its numerous subordinate governments, in its minute regulations, in its extensive interference, in all the concerns of life, in its control over education and the press, the government of Hannover resembles the other governments of Germany. It may be taken as an example of the whole; some are a little more modernized, have fewer mixed regulations of ancient and present times, but in their principles, in their never-ending regulations, in their minuteness of interference, they all resemble one another. Their leading characteristic is, that they trust nothing to individual interest, or individual wisdom.

“No where,” says a respectable German political writer, “has the true difference between England and other countries been set in that strong light it merits. In England, the government neither can nor dare interfere in all things. There the people in the subordinate parts govern themselves. The king and the parliament have a superior power for occasions of necessity, but many duties of government that are on the Continent easily performed, are there totally impossible, because there is not in England such a host of officers and of governments as we have on the Continent.” This is, in truth, the great difference between our country and the Continent. There every thing is regulated by a class of men set apart for that purpose, and who have no other duties to perform. But our subordinate governments are composed of gentlemen and tradesmen, who do not make governing their business. Not only are our local or provincial governments much cheaper than those on the Continent, but they are more beneficial, because they govern less.

There are some truths of much importance which may be learned from these facts. It is taken for granted, that the affairs of Great Britain have been better managed than those of the Continent, and it may then be affirmed, that the government which has grown up with our people, and in which they participate, is better and more useful than that which has been given to the Continent by the wisdom of legislators; and it may be inferred, that the affairs of every society can never be well managed by a class of men set apart for that purpose. I believe the administrators of most of the governments of Germany to be learned and accomplished men, who have endeavoured with good will to make their country prosperous. I believe also that, in general, they have been supported in extending the power of government by all the wise and thinking men of their country, yet it is now acknowledged that they have impeded the prosperity of the subjects, from governing too much. From this failure of wisdom, it is clear that the limits within which the power of government ought to be confined, and beyond which it becomes pernicious, are yet absolutely unknown; and when it is remarked, that the prosperity of every nation is in an inverse proportion to the power and to the interference of its government, we may be almost tempted to believe the common opinion, that governments are necessary and beneficial, is one of those general prejudices which men have inherited from an ignorant and a barbarous age, and which more extensive knowledge and greater civilization will shew to be an error full of evil.

CHAPTER XIII.: hannover—former states.

Six different states in Hannover.—Composition of those of Kalenberg; of Grubenhagen; of Lüneburg; of Bremen and Verden; of Hoya and Diepholz; of Hildesheim; of Friezland.—Their powers and privileges; in the fourteenth century; in the eighteenth century.—Alterations.—Causes.—Destruction of the clergy.—The dependence of the nobles.—The servility of magistrates of towns.—Resemblance to Scotland.—The power of the sovereign increased.—Points of difference between the parliament of Great Britain and the states of Germany.

We have been so long accustomed to speak of ourselves as the only free people of Europe, that it was rather with astonishment the following passage in an historian before quoted was read. Spittler nearly begins his work by saying, “When King George III. wishes to lay a new general tax on the whole of his German subjects, who, at most, do not exceed the tenth part of his islanders, he is obliged previously to discuss the affair with six different parliaments; and each of these parliaments is composed of several classes of members, who have equally important rights, and equally secured privileges. The consent of all these parliaments, how different soever may be their rights, must on this point be demanded, and at last the people of the Land Hadeln must also be particularly solicited.” Six different parliaments for such a territory and population as belonged to Hannover when the quotation was written, 1786, must have formed so numerous an aristocracy as to be at least half way to a democracy.