At the Karl-schüle Dannecker made but little progress in his studies.

Nothing could be worse managed than this royal establishment. The inferior

teachers were accustomed to employ the poorer boys in the most servile

offices, and in this, so called, academy, he was actually obliged to

learn by stealth: but here he formed a friendship with Schiller, who,

like himself, was an ardent genius pining and writhing under a chilling

system; and the two boys, thrown upon one another for consolation,

became friends for life. Dannecker must have been about fifteen when

the Karl-schüle was removed from the Solitude to Stuttgard. He was then

placed under the tuition of Grubel, a professor of sculpture, and in the

following year he produced his first original composition. It was a Milo

of Crotona modelled in clay, and was judged worthy of the first prize.

Dannecker was at this time so unfriended and little known, that the

duke, who appears to have forgotten him, learnt with astonishment that

this nameless boy, the son of his groom, had carried off the highest

honours of the school from all his competitors. For a few years he

was employed in the duke's service in carving cornices, Cupids, and

caryatides, to ornament the new palaces at Stuttgard and Hohenheim:

this task-work, over which he often sighed, may possibly have assisted

in giving him that certainty and mechanical dexterity in the use of his

tools for which he is remarkable. About ten years were thus passed; he

then obtained permission to travel for his improvement with an allowance

of three hundred florins a-year from the duke. With these slender means

Dannecker set off for Paris on foot. There, for the first time, he had

opportunities of studying the living model. His enthusiasm for his art

enabled him to endure extraordinary privations of every kind; for out

of his little pension of £23 a-year he had not only to feed and clothe

himself, but to purchase all the materials for his art, and the means

of instruction; and this in an expensive capital, surrounded with

temptations which an artist and an enthusiastic young man finds it

difficult to withstand. He told me himself that day after day he has

studied in the Louvre dinnerless, and dressed in a garb which scarce

retained even the appearance of decency. He left Paris, after a two

years' residence, as simple in mind and heart as when he entered it, and

considerably improved in his knowledge of anatomy and in the technical

part of his profession. The treasures of the Louvre, though far inferior

to what they now are, had let in a flood of ideas upon his mind, among

which (as he described his own feelings) he groped as one bewildered and

intoxicated, amazed rather than enlightened.

MEDON.

But Dannecker must have been poor in spirit as in pocket--simple,

indeed, if he did not profit by the opportunities which Paris afforded

of studying human nature, noting the passions and their physiognomy, and

gaining other experiences most useful to an artist.

ALDA.

There I differ from you. Would you send a young artist--more particularly

a young sculptor--to study the human nature of London or Paris?--to

seek the ideal among shop-girls and opera-dancers? Or the sublime and

beautiful among the frivolous and degraded of one sex, the money-making

or the brutalized of the other? Is it from the man who has steeped his

youthful prime in vulgar dissipation, by way of "seeing life," as it is

called, who has courted patronage at the convivial board, that you shall

require that union of lofty enthusiasm and patient industry, which are

necessary, first to conceive the grand and the poetical, then consume

long years in shaping out his creation in the everlasting marble?

MEDON.

But how is the sculptor himself to live during those long years? It must

needs be a hard struggle. I have heard young artists say, that they have

been forced on a dissipated life merely as a means of "getting on in the

world," as the phrase is.

ALDA.

So have I. It is so base a plea, that when I hear it, I generally regard

it as the excuse for dispositions already perverted. The men who talk

thus are doomed: they will either creep through life in mediocrity and

dependence to their grave; or, at the best, if they have parts, as well

as cunning and assurance, they may make themselves the fashion, and make

their fortune; they may be clever portrait-painters and bust-makers, but

when they attempt to soar into the historical and ideal department of

their art, they move the laughter of gods and men; to them the higher,

holier fountains of inspiration are thenceforth sealed.

MEDON.

But think of the temptations of society!

ALDA.

I think of those who have overcome them. "Great men have been among us,"

though they be rare. Have we not had a Flaxman? But the artist must

choose where he will worship. He cannot serve God and Mammon. That man

of genius who thinks he can tamper with his glorious gifts, and for a

season indulge in social excesses, stoop from his high calling to the

dregs of earth, abandon himself to the stream of common life, and trust

to his native powers to bring him up again;--O believe it, he plays a

desperate game!--one that in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred

is fatal.

MEDON.

I begin to see your drift; but you would find it difficult to prove that

the men who executed those works, on which we now look with wonder and

despair, lived like anchorites, or were unexceptionable moral characters.

ALDA.

Will you not allow that they worked in a different spirit? Or do you

suppose that it was by the possession of some sleight-of-hand that these

things were performed?--That it was by some knack of chiselling, some

secret of colouring now lost, that a Phidias or a Correggio still remain

unapproached, and, as people will tell you, unapproachable?

MEDON.

They had a different nature to work from.

ALDA.

A different modification of nature, but not a different nature. Nature

and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love.

I do maintain that, in these latter times, we have artists, who in

genius, in the power of looking at nature, and in manual skill, are

not beneath the great ancients, but their works are found wanting in

comparison; they have fallen short of the models their early ambition

set before them; and why?--because, having genius, they want the moral

grandeur that should accompany it, and have neglected the training of

their own minds from necessity, or from dissipation or from pride, so

that having imagination and skill, they have yet wanted the materials

out of which to work. Recollect that the great artists of old were

not mere painters or mere sculptors, who were nothing except with the

pencil or the chisel in their hand. They were philosophers, scholars,

poets, musicians, noble beings, whose eyes were not ever on themselves,

but who looked above, before, and after. Our modern artists turn

coxcombs, and then fancy themselves like Rafaelle; or they are greedy

of present praise, or greedy of gain; or they will not pay the price

for immortality; or they have sold their glorious birthright of fame

for a mess of pottage.

Poor Dannecker found his mess of pottage bitter now and then, as you

shall hear. He set off for Italy, in 1783, with his pension raised to

four hundred florins a year, that is, about thirty pounds: he reached

Rome, on foot, and he told me that, for some months after his arrival,

he suffered from a terrible depression of spirits, and a painful sense

of loneliness: like Thorwaldson, when he too visited that city some

years afterwards, a friendless youth, he was often home-sick and

heart-sick. At this time he used to wander about among the ruins and

relics of almighty Rome, lost in the sense of their grandeur, depressed

by his own vague aspirations--ignorant, and without courage to apply

himself. Luckily for him, Herder and Goethe were then residing at Rome;

he became known to them, and their conversation directed him to higher

sources of inspiration in his art than he had yet contemplated--to the

very well-heads and mother-streams of poetry. They showed him the

distinction between the _spirit_ and the _form_ of ancient art. Dannecker

felt, and afterwards applied some of the grand revelations of these men,

who were at once profound critics and inspired poets. He might have

grasped at more, but that his early nurture was here against him, and

his subsequent destinies as a court sculptor seldom left him sufficient

freedom of thought or action to follow out his own conceptions. While at

Rome he also became acquainted with Canova, who, although only one year

older than himself, had already achieved great things. He was now at

work on the monument of the Pope Ganganelli. The courteous, kind-hearted

Italian would sometimes visit the poor German in his studio, and cheer

him by his remarks and encouragement.

Dannecker remained five years at Rome; he was then ordered to return to

Stuttgard. As he had already greatly distinguished himself, the Duke

of Wurtemburg received him with much kindness, and promised him his

protection. Now, the protection and the patronage which a sovereign

accords to an artist generally amounts to this: he begins by carving or

painting the portrait of his patron, and of some of the various members

of his patron's family. If these are approved of, he is allowed to stick

a ribbon in his button-hole, and is appointed professor of fine arts,

with a certain stipend, and thenceforth his time, his labour, and his

genius belong as entirely to his master as those of a hired servant; his

path is marked out for him. It was thus with Dannecker; he received a

pension of eight hundred florins a year and his professorship, and upon

the strength of this he married Henrietta Rapp. From this period his

life has passed in a course of tranquil and uninterrupted occupation,

yet, though constantly employed, his works are not numerous; almost

every moment being taken up with the duties of his professorship, in

trying to teach what no man of genius can teach, and in making drawings

and designs after the fancies of the Grand Duke. He was required to

compose a basso-relievo for the duke's private cabinet. The subject which

he chose was as appropriate as it was beautifully treated--Alexander

pressing his seal upon the lips of Parmenio. He modelled this in

bas-relief, and the best judges pronounced it exquisite; but it did

not please the duke, and instead of receiving an order to finish it in

marble, he was obliged to throw it aside, and to execute some design

dictated by his master. The original model remained for many years

in his studio; but a short time before my last visit to him he had

presented it as a birth-day gift to a friend. The first great work which

gave him celebrity as a sculptor, was the mausoleum of Count Zeppelin,

the duke's favourite, in which the figure of Friendship has much

simplicity and grace: this is now at Louisberg. While he was modelling

this beautiful figure, the first idea of the Ariadne was suggested to

his fancy, but some years elapsed before it came into form. At this time

he was much employed in executing busts, for which his fine eye for

living nature and manly simplicity of taste peculiarly fitted him. In

this particular department of his art he has neither equal nor rival,

except our Chantrey. The best I have seen are those of Schiller, Gluck,

and Lavater. Never are the fine arts, never are great artists, better

employed than when they serve to illustrate and to immortalize each

other! About the year 1808, Dannecker was considered, beyond dispute,

the first sculptor in Germany; for as yet Rauch, Tieck, and Schwanthaler

had not worked their way up to their present high celebrity. He

received, in 1811, an intimation, that if he would enter the service of

the king of Bavaria, he should be placed at the head of the school of

sculpture at Munich, with a salary three times the amount of that which

he at present enjoyed.--

MEDON.

Which Dannecker declined?

ALDA.

He did.

MEDON.

I could have sworn to it--_extempore_! What is more touching in the

history of men of genius than that deep and constant attachment they

have shown to their early patrons! Not to go back to the days of Horace

and Mecænas, nor even to those of Ariosto and Tasso and the family of

Este, or Cellini and the Duke of Florence, or Lucas Kranach, and the

Elector John Frederic--[16] do you remember Mozart's exclamation, when

he was offered the most magnificent remuneration if he would quit the

service of Joseph II. for that of the Elector of Saxony--"Shall I leave

my good Emperor?" In the same manner Metastasio rejected every

inducement to quit the service of Maria Theresa,----

ALDA.

Add Goethe and the Duke of Weimar, and a hundred other instances. The

difficulty would be to find _one_, in which the patronage of the great

has not been repaid ten thousand fold in gratitude and fame. Dannecker's

love for his native city, and his native princes, prevailed over his

self-interest; his decision was honourable to his heart; but it is

not less certain that at Munich he would have found more enlightened

patronage, and a wider scope for his talents. Frederic, the late king of

Wurtemburg, who had married our princess royal, was a man of a coarse

mind and profligate habits. Napoleon had gratified his vulgar ambition

by making him a king, and thereupon he stuck a huge, tawdry gilt

crown on the top of his palace, the impudent sign of his subservient

_majesty_. I never looked at it without thinking of an overgrown child

and its new toy; he also, to commemorate the acquisition of his kingly

titles, instituted the order of the Wurtemburg crown, and Dannecker

was gratified by this new order of merit, and a bit of ribbon in his

button-hole.

But in the mean time the model of the Ariadne remained in his studio,

and it was not till the year 1809 that he could afford to purchase a

block of marble, and begin the statue on speculation. It occupied him

for seven years, but in the interval he completed other beautiful works.

The king ordered him to execute a Cupid in marble, for which he gave

him the design. It was a design which displeased the pure mind and high

taste of Dannecker; he would not so desecrate his divine art: "c'etait

travailler pour le diable!" said he to me, in telling the story. He

therefore only half fulfilled his commission; and changing the purpose

and sentiment of the figure, he represented the Greek Cupid at the

moment that he is waked by the drop of burning oil from Psyche's lamp.

An English general, I believe Sir John Murray, saw this charming statue,

in 1814, and immediately commanded a work from the sculptor's hands: he

wished, but did not absolutely require, a duplicate of the statue he so

admired. Dannecker, instead of repeating himself, produced his Psyche,

whom he has represented--not as the Greek allegorical Psyche, the

bride of Cupid, "with lucent fans, fluttering"--but as the abstract

personification of the human soul; or, to use Dannecker's own words,

"Ein rein, sittlich, sinniges Wesen,"--a pure, moral, intellectual

being. As he had an idea that Love had become moral and sentimental

after he had been waked by the drop of burning oil, so I could not

help asking him whether this was Psyche, grown reasonable after she

had beheld the wings of Love? He has not in this beautiful statue quite

accomplished his own idea. It has much girlish grace and simplicity, but

it wants elevation; it is not sufficiently ideal, and will not stand a

comparison either with the Psyche of Westmacott, or that of Canova. The

Ariadne was finished in 1816, but the sculptor was disappointed in his

hope that this, his masterpiece, would adorn his native city. The king

showed no desire to possess it, and it was purchased by M. Bethmann,

of Frankfort, for a sum equal to about one thousand pounds. Soon after

the Ariadne was finished, Dannecker conceived, in a moment of pious

enthusiasm, his famous statue of the Redeemer, which has caused a great

deal of discussion in Germany. This was standing in his work-room when

we paid our first visit to him. He told me what I had often heard, that

the figure had visited him in a dream three several times; and the

good old man firmly believed that he had been divinely inspired, and

predestined to the work. While the visionary image was fresh in his

imagination, he first executed a small clay model, and placed it

before a child of five or six years old;--there were none of the usual

emblematical accompaniments--no cross--no crown of thorns to assist the

fancy--nothing but the simple figure roughly modelled; yet the child

immediately exclaimed, "The Redeemer!" and Dannecker was confirmed in

his design. Gradually the completion of this statue became the one

engrossing idea of his enthusiastic mind: for eight years it was his

dream by night, his thought by day; all things else, all the affairs and

duties of life, merged into this. He told me that he frequently felt as

if pursued, excited by some strong, irresistible power, which would even

visit him in sleep, and impel him to rise from his bed and work. He

explained to me some of the difficulties he encountered, and which he

was persuaded that he had perfectly overcome only through divine aid,

and the constant study of the Scriptures. They were not few nor trifling.

Physical power, majesty, and beauty, formed no part of the character of

the Saviour of the world: the glory that was around him was not of this

earth, nor visible to the eye; "there was nothing in him that he should

be desired;" therefore to throw into the impersonation of exceeding

humility and benignity a superhuman grace, and from material elements

work out a manifestation of abstract moral grandeur--this was surely

not only a new and difficult, but a bold and sublime enterprize.

You remember Michael Angelo's statue of Christ in the church of Santa

Maria sopra Minerva at Rome?

MEDON.

Perfectly; and I never looked at it without thinking of Neptune and

his trident.

ALDA.

The same thought occurred to me, and must inevitably have occurred to

others. Dannecker is not certainly so great a man as Michael Angelo,

but here he has surpassed him. Instead of emulating the antique models,

he has worked in the antique spirit--the spirit of faith and enthusiasm.

He has taken a new form in which to clothe a grand poetical conception.

Whether the being he has represented be a fit subject for the plastic

art, has been disputed; but it appears to me that Dannecker has more

nearly approached the christian ideal than any of his predecessors;

there is nothing to be compared to it, except Titian's Christo della

Moneta, and that is a head merely. The sentiment chosen by the sculptor

is expressed in the inscription on the pedestal: "Through me, to the

Father." The proportions of the figure are exceedingly slender and

delicate; the attitude a little drooping; one hand is pressed on the

bosom, the other extended; the lips are unclosed as in the act to speak.

In the head and facial line, by carefully throwing out every indication

of the animal propensities, and giving added importance and development

to all that indicates the moral and intellectual faculties, he has

succeeded in embodying a species of ideal, of which there is no other

example in art. I have heard, (not from Dannecker himself,) that when

the head of the Jupiter Tonans was placed beside the Christ, the merely

physical grandeur of the former, compared with the purely intellectual

expression of the latter, reminded every one present of a lion's head

erect and humanized.

MEDON.

But what were your own impressions? After all this eulogium, which

I believe to be just, tell me frankly, were you satisfied yourself?

ALDA.

No--not quite. The expression of the mouth in the last finished statue

(he has repeated the subject three times) is not so fine as in the

model, and the simplicity of the whole bordered on meagreness. This,

I think, is a general fault in all Dannecker's works. He has of course

avoided nudity, but the flowing robe, which completely envelopes the

figure, is so managed as to disclose the exact form of the limbs. One

little circumstance will give you an idea of the attention and accuracy

with which he seized and embodied every touch of individual character

conveyed in Holy Writ. In the original model he had made the beard

rather full and thick, and a little curled, expressing the prime of

manhood; but recollecting that in the gospel the Saviour is represented

as sinking under the weight of the cross, which the first man they met

accidentally was able to carry, he immediately altered his first

conception, and gave to the beard that soft, flowing, downy texture

which is supposed to indicate a feeble and delicate temperament.

I shall not easily forget the countenance of the good and gifted old

man, as, leaning on the pedestal, with his cap in his hand, and his long

grey hair waving round his face, he looked up at his work with a mixture

of reverence and exultation, saying, in his imperfect and scarce

intelligible French, "Oui, quand on a fait comme cela, on reste sur la

terre!" meaning, I suppose, that this statue had ensured his immortality

on earth. He added, "They ask me often where are the models after which

I worked? and I answer, _here_, and _here_;" laying his hand first on

his head, then on his heart.

I remember that when we first entered his room he was at work on one of

the figures for the tomb of the late Queen Catherine of Wurtemburg. You

perhaps recollect her in England when only Duchess of Oldenburg?

MEDON.

Yes; I remember, as a youngster, joining the mob who shouted before the

windows of the Pulteney-hotel, and hailed her and her brother Alexander

as if they had been a newly descended Jupiter and Juno! O verily, times

are changed!

ALDA.

But in that woman there were the elements of a fine nature. She had

the talents, the strength of mind, and far-reaching ambition of her

grandmother, Catherine of Russia, but was not so perverted. During her

short reign as Queen of Wurtemburg, the influence of her active mind was

felt through the whole government. She founded, among other institutions,

a school for the daughters of the nobility connected with the court,--in

plain English, a charity-school for the nobility of Wurtemburg, who are

among the most indigent and most ignorant of Germany. There are a few,

very few, brilliant exceptions. One lady of rank said to me, "As to an

English governess, _that_ is an advantage I can never hope to have for

my daughters. The princesses have an English governess, but _we_ cannot

dream of such a thing." The late queen really deserved the regrets of

her people. The king, whose sluggish mind she ruled or stimulated, is

now devoted to his stables and hunting. He has married another wife, but

he has erected to the honour of Catherine a splendid mausoleum, on the

peak of a high hill, which can be seen from almost every part of the

city; and on the summer evenings when the red sun-set falls upon its

white columns it is a beautiful object. The figure on which Dannecker

was occupied, represented Prayer, or what he called, "La triomphe de

la Prière;" it recalled to my mind Flaxman's lovely statue of the same

subject,--the "Our Father which art in Heaven," but suffered by the

involuntary comparison. On the rough base of the statue he had tried to

spell the name of Chantrey, but not very successfully. I took up a bit

of chalk and wrote underneath, in distinct characters, FRANCIS CHANTREY.

"I grow old," said he, looking from his work to the bust of the late

queen which stood opposite. "I have carved the effigies of three

generations of poets, and as many of princes. Twenty years ago I was

at work on the tomb of the Duke of Oldenburg, and now I am at work upon

_her's_ who gave me that order. All die away: soon I shall be left

alone. Of my early friends none remain but Goethe. I shall die before

him, and perhaps he will write my epitaph." He spoke with a smile, not

foreseeing that he would be the survivor.

Three years afterwards[17] I again paid Dannecker a visit, but a change

had come over him: his feeble, trembling hand could no longer grasp the

mallet, or guide the chisel; his eyes were dim; his fine benevolent

countenance wore a childish, vacant smile, now and then crossed by a

gleam of awakened memory or thought--and yet he seemed so perfectly

happy! He walked backwards and forwards, from his Christ to his bust

of Schiller, with an unwearied self-complacency, in which there was

something mournful, and yet delightful. While I sat looking at the

magnificent head of Schiller, the original of the multifarious casts

and copies which are dispersed through all Germany, he sat down beside

me, and taking my hands between his own, which trembled with age and

nervous emotion, he began to speak of his friend. "Nous etions amis dès

l'enfance; aussi j'y ai travaillé avec amour, avec douleur--on ne peut

pas plus faire." He then went on--"When Schiller came to Louisberg, he

sent to tell me that he was very ill--that he should not live very long,

and that he wished me to execute his bust. It was the first wish of my

own heart. I went immediately. When I entered the house, I found a lady

sitting on the _canapé_--it was Schiller's wife, and I did not know her;

but she knew me. She said, 'Ah! you are Dannecker!--Schiller expects

you;'--then she ran into the next room, where Schiller was lying down

on a couch, and in a moment after he came in, exclaiming as he entered,

'Where is he? where is Dannecker?' That was the moment--the expression

I caught--you see it here--the head raised, the countenance full of

inspiration, and affection, and bright hope! I told him that to keep up

this expression he must have some of his best friends to converse with

him while I took the model, for I could not talk and work too. O if

I could but remember what glorious things then fell from those lips!

Sometimes I stopped in my work--I could not go on--I could only listen."

And here the old man wept; then suddenly changing his mood, he said--"But

I must cut off that long hair; he never wore it so; it is not in the

fashion, you know!" I begged him for heaven's sake not to touch it; he

then, with a sad smile, turned up the sleeve of his coat and showed me

his wrist, swelled with the continual use of his implements--"You see

I _cannot_!" And I could not help wishing at the moment, that while his

mind was thus enfeebled, no transient return of physical strength might

enable him to put his wild threat in execution. What a noble bequest to

posterity is the effigy of a great man, when executed in such a spirit

as this of Schiller! I assure you I could not look at it, without

feeling my heart "overflow in silent worship" of moral and intellectual

power, till the deification of great men in the old times appeared to me

rather religion than idolatry. I have been affected in the same manner

by the busts of Goethe, Scott, Homer, Milton, Howard, Newton;--never by

the painted portraits of the same men, however perfect in resemblance

and admirable in execution.

MEDON.

Painting gives us the material, sculpture the abstract, ethical aspect

of the man. In the bust, whatever is common-place, familiar, and actual,

is thrown out or kept down: in a picture it is not only retained, but,

in most cases, it is necessarily obtrusive. Goethe, in a blue coat and

metal buttons, and a white neckcloth, would not recall the author of the

"Iphigenia;" still less does that wrinkled, decrepit-looking face, in

the gallery at Hardwicke, portray Boyle, the philosopher.

ALDA.

Dannecker told me that he first modelled the head of Schiller the exact

size of life, and conscientiously rendered each, even the slightest,

individual trait; yet this head appeared to every one smaller than

nature, and to himself almost _mesquin_.[18] He was in despair. He

repeated the bust in a colossal size; and the development of the

intellectual organization, on a larger scale, immediately gave what was

wanting:--it appeared to the eye or to the mind's eye as only the size

of life. He showed me a beautiful basso-relievo of the Muse of Tragedy,

listening with an inspired look to the revelations of the Muse of

History. This admirable little group struck me the more, because long

ago I had clothed nearly the same idea in imperfect words.

I took leave of Dannecker with emotion: I shall never see him again!

But he is one of those who cannot die; to use his own expression--"Quand

on a fait _comme cela_, on reste sur la terre." When Canova, then a

melancholy invalid, paid him a visit, he was so struck by the child-like

simplicity, the pure unworldly nature, the genuine goodness, and lively

happy temperament of the German sculptor, that he gave him the surname

of _il Beato_; and if the epithet _blessed_ can, with propriety, be

bestowed on any mortal, it is on him whose long life has been one of

labour and of love; who has left behind him lasting memorials of his

genius; who has never profaned the talents which God has given him

to any unworthy purpose:--but in the midst of all the beautiful and

exciting influences of poetry and art, has kept from youth to age a soul

serene, a conscience and a life pure in the sight of God and man. Such

was our own Flaxman--such is Dannecker!

MEDON.

Who are now the principal sculptors in Germany?

ALDA.

Rauch, of Berlin; Christian Frederic Tieck, the brother of the

celebrated poet and critic, Ludwig Tieck; and Schwanthaler, of Munich.

Rauch is the court sculptor of Berlin. He has, like Dannecker,[19] his

professorship, his order of merit,[20] and, I believe, one or two places

under the government, besides constant employment in his art. He works

_by the piece_, as the labourers say. But though he too has yoked his

genius to the car of power and patronage, he has done great things. The

statue of the late queen of Prussia is reckoned his _chef-d'oeuvre_,

and is not, perhaps, exceeded in modern sculpture. It was conceived and

worked out in all the inspiration of love and grief; as Dannecker would

say, "Mit Lieb und Schmerzen." He had been attached to the queen's

personal service, and shared, in an intense degree, the enthusiastic,

devoted affection with which all her subjects regarded that beautiful

and amiable woman. This statue he executed at Carrara; and a living

eagle, which had been taken captive among the Appenines, was the

original of that magnificent eagle he has placed at her feet:--nothing,

you see, like going at once to nature! In the course of twenty-five

years Rauch has executed sixty-nine busts, of which twenty are colossal.

Among his numerous other works, designed or executed within the same

time, there is the colossal statue of Blucher, now at Breslau; this is

in bronze, upon a granite pedestal. There is another statue of Blucher

at Berlin, of which the pedestal, rich with bas-reliefs, is also in

bronze. Rauch has been employed for the last twenty years in modelling

field-marshals and generals, and has devoted his best powers to vanquish

the difficulties presented by monotonous faces, drilled figures,

military uniforms, and regimental boots and buttons; and all that man

_can_ do, I am told he has done. I have seen some of his busts, which

are quite admirable. At Peterstein, near Munich, I saw his statue of a

little girl, about ten years old, which, in its simplicity, truth, and

elegance, reminded me of Chantrey's Lady Louisa Russell, though in

conception and _manner_ as distinct as possible. The full length of

Goethe, in his dressing-gown, of which there is such an infinitude of

casts and copies throughout Germany, is also by Rauch.

Christian Tieck is the old and intimate friend of Rauch. They live,

or did live, under the same roof, and it is not known that a moment

of jealousy or rivalship ever disturbed the union between these two

celebrated and gifted men, who, starting nearly at the same time,[21]

have run their brilliant career together in the self-same path, and,

whatever judgment the world or posterity may form of their comparative

merits, seem determined to enter the temple of immortality hand in hand.

Tieck's works are dispersed from one end of Germany to the other. His

statue of Neckar; his busts of Madame de Staël, of her second husband

Rocca, of the Duke and Duchess de Broglie, and of A. W. Schlegel,

I have seen; and all, particularly the busts of Rocca and Schlegel are

exceedingly fine. At Munich, at Dresden, and at Weimar, I saw many of

his works; and at Manheim the bust of Madame de Heygendorf,[22] full of

beauty, and life, and expression. At Berlin, Tieck has been employed

for many years in designing and executing the sculptured ornaments of

the new theatre. There is a colossal Apollo; a Pegasus, striking the

fountain of Helicon from the rock, colossal Muses, and a variety of

other heathen perpetrations--all (as I am assured) exceedingly fine

in their way. I believe his seated statue of Iffland (the Garrick of

Germany) is considered one of his _chef-d'oeuvres_. He also, like

Rauch, has been much employed in modelling generals and trophies, in

memory of the late war.

Schwanthaler, the son of a statuary of Munich, is still a young man; his

works first began to create a sensation in Germany in the year 1823.

In spirit and fire, and creative talent, in a fine classic feeling for

his art, he appeared to me to be treading in the steps of Flaxman, and

like _him_, he is a profound and accomplished scholar, who has sought

inspiration at the very fountain of Greek poetry. His basso-relievo of

the battle of the ships in the Iliad, his games of Greece, his designs

from the Theogony of Hesiod, and a variety of other works which I have

seen, appeared to me full of imagination, and in a pure and vigorous

style of art. Of him, and some other sculptors, you will find more

particulars in the note-book I kept at Munich; we will look over it

together one of these days.

MEDON.

Thank you; but I must needs ask you a question. In the works you have

enumerated, nothing has struck me as new, or in a new spirit, except

perhaps the Christ of Dannecker, and the statue of the queen of Prussia.

Now, why should not sculpture have its Gothic (or romantic) school, as

well as its antique, or classical school?

ALDA.

And has it not?

MEDON.

If you allude to the sculpture of the middle ages, _that_ has not become

a school of art, like their architecture and their painting: yet can it

be true that there is something in our modern institutions, our northern

descent, our christian faith, inimical to the spirit of sculpture?--and,

while poetry in every other form is regenerate around us, that in

sculpture alone we are doomed to imitate, never to create?--doomed to

the servile reproduction of the same ideas? that this alone, of all

the fine arts, is to belong to some peculiar mode of existence, some

peculiar mode of thinking, feeling, and believing? "Qui me delivrera des

Grecs et des Remains?"--who will deliver me from gods and goddesses, and

from all these

"Repetitions, wearisome of sense,

Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place?"

ALDA.

You are little better than a heretic in these matters. But I will admit

thus much--that the classical and mythological sculpture of our modern

artists, is to the ancient marbles, what Racine's tragedies are to those

of Sophocles; that we are so far condemned to the "repetition wearisome

of _forms_," from which the ancient spirit has evaporated; but that is

not the fault of the subjects, but of the manner of treating them, for

never can the beautiful mythology of ancient Greece, which has woven

itself into our earliest dreams of poetry, become a "creed out-worn."

Its forms, and its symbols, and its imagery, have mingled with every

branch of art, and become a universal language. It is the deification of

the material world; and therefore, that art, which in its perfection may

be called the apotheosis of form, finds there its proper region and

element.

MEDON.

You do not suppose that, with all my Gothic tastes, I am such a Goth

as not to feel the truth of what you say? But I am an enemy to the

exclusive in every thing; and--pardon me--your worship of the Elgin

marbles and the Niobe, is, I think, a little too exclusive. All I ask

is, that modern sculpture should be allowed, like painting and poetry,

to have its romantic, as well as its classical school.

ALDA.

It has been otherwise decided.

MEDON.

But it has not been otherwise proved. There has been much theoretical

eloquence and criticism expended on the subject, but I deny that the

experiment has been fairly and practically brought before us. I know

very well you are ready with a thousand instances of attempt and

failure, but may we not seek the cause in the mistaken application of

certain classical, or, I should say, pedantic ideas on the subject? If

I ask for Milton's Satan, standing like a tower in his spiritual might,

his thunder-scarred brow wreathed with the diadem of hell, why am I to

be presented with an Athlete, or an Achilles? Why would Canova give us

for the head of Dante's Beatrice that of a muse, or an Aspasia? and for

Petrarch's Laura, a mere _tête de nymphe_? I contend that to apply the

forms suggested by the modern poetry demands a different spirit from

that of classic art. How to apply or modify the example bequeathed to us

by the great masters of old, Flaxman has shown us in his Dante. And why

should we not have in sculpture a Lear as well as a Laocoon? a Constance

as well as a Niobe? a Gismunda as well as a Cleopatra?----

ALDA.

Or a Tam o'Shanter as well as a laughing Faun?

MEDON.

When I am serious and poetical, which is not often, I will not allow you

to be perverse and ironical!

ALDA.

See, here is a passage which I have just found among Mrs. Austin's

beautiful specimens of translation: "The critic of art ought to keep in

view, not only the capabilities, but the proper objects of art. Not all

that art can accomplish ought she to attempt. It is from this cause

alone, and because we have lost sight of these principles, that art

among us has become more extensive and difficult, and less effective and

perfect."[23]

MEDON.

Very well,--and very true:--but who shall bring a rule and compass to

measure the capabilities of art, and define its proper objects? May

there not exist in the depths or heights of philosophy and art, truths

yet to be revealed, as there are stars in heaven, whose light has

not yet reached the naked eye? and why should not criticism have its

telescope for truth, as well as its microscope for error? Art may be

finite; but who shall fix its limits, and say, "thus far shalt thou go?"

There are those who regard the distant as the unattainable, the unknown

as the unexisting, the actual as the necessary;--are you one of such,

O you of little faith! For my own part, I look forward to a new era in

sculpture. I believe that the purely natural and the purely ideal are

_one_, and susceptible of forms and modifications as yet untried. For

Nature, the infinite, sits within her tabernacle, not made by human

hands, and Genius and Love are the cherubim, to whom it is permitted

to look into her unveiled eyes, and reflect their light; Art is the

priestess of her divine mysteries, and Criticism, the door-keeper of

her temple, should be Janus-headed, looking forward as well as backward.

Reason estimates what has been done; Imagination alone divines what

_may_ be done. But I am losing myself in these reveries. To attempt

something new,--perfectly new in style and conception--and spend, like

Dannecker, eight years in working out that conception--and then perhaps

eight years more waiting for a purchaser, and this in a country where

one must eat and pay taxes--truly, it is not easy.

SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.

III.

MEDON.

You have been frowning and musing in your chair for the last half-hour,

with your fore-finger between the leaves of your book--where were your

thoughts?

ALDA.

They were far--very far! I am afraid that I appear very stupid?

MEDON.

O not at all! you know there are stars which appear dim and fixed to

the eye, while they are taking flights and making revolutions, which

imagination cannot follow nor science compute.

ALDA.

Upon my word, you are very sublimely ironical--my thoughts were not

quite so far.

MEDON.

May one beg, or borrow them?--What is your book?

ALDA.

Mrs. Austin's "Characteristics of Goethe." I came upon a passage which

sent back my thoughts to Weimar. I was again in his house; the faces,

the voices of his grandchildren were around me; the room in which he

studied, the bed in which he slept, the old chair in which he died,--and,

above all, _her_ in whose arms he died--from whose lips I heard the

detail of his last moments--

* * * * *

MEDON.

What! all this emotion for Goethe?

ALDA.

For Goethe!--I should as soon think of weeping because the sun set

yesterday, which now is pouring its light around me! Our tears are for

those who suffer, for those who die, for those who are absent, for

those who are cold or lost--not for those who cannot die, who cannot

suffer,--who must be, to the end of time, a presence and an existence

among us! No.

But I was reading here, among the Characteristics of Goethe, who

certainly "knew all qualities, with a learned spirit in human dealings,"

that he was not only the quick discerner and most cordial hater of all

affectation;--but even the unconscious affectation--the _nature de

convention_,--the taught, the artificial, the acquired in manner or

character, though it were meritorious in itself, he always detected,

and it appeared to impress him disagreeably. Stay, I will read you the

passage--here it is.

"Even virtue, laboriously and painfully acquired, was distasteful to

him. I might almost affirm, that a faulty but vigorous character, if

it had any real native qualities as its basis, was regarded by him

with more indulgence and respect than one which, at no moment of its

existence, is genuine; which is incessantly under the most unamiable

constraint, and consequently imposes a painful constraint on others.

'Oh,' said he, sighing, on such occasions, 'if they had but the heart to

commit some absurdity, that would be something, and they would at least

be restored to their own natural soil, free from all hypocrisy and

acting: wherever that is the case, one may entertain the cheering hope

that something will spring from the germ of good which nature implants

in every individual. But on the ground they are now upon, nothing can

grow.' 'Pretty dolls,' was his common expression when speaking of them.

Another phrase was, 'That's a piece of nature,' (literally, _das ist

eine Natur_, that is a nature,) which from Goethe's lips was considerable

praise."[24]

This last phrase threw me back upon my remembrances. I thought of the

daughter-in-law of the poet,--the trusted friend, the constant companion,

the devoted and careful nurse of his last years. It accounted for the

unrivalled influence which apparently she possessed--I will not say

_over_ his mind--but _in_ his mind, in his affections; for in her he

found truly _eine Natur_--a piece of nature, which could bear even _his_

microscopic examination. All other beings who approached Goethe either

were, or had been, or might be, more or less modified by the action of

that universal and master spirit. Consciously, or unconsciously, in love

or in fear, they bowed down before him, and gave up their individuality,

or forgot it, in his presence; they took the bent he chose to impress,

or the colour he chose to throw upon them. Their minds, in presence of

his, were as opake bodies in the sun, absorbing in different degrees,

reflecting in various hues, his vital beams; but HER'S was, in comparison,

like a transparent medium, through which the rays of that luminary

passed,--pervading and enlightening, but leaving no other trace.

Conceive a woman, a young, accomplished, enthusiastic woman, who had

qualities to attach, talents to amuse, and capacity to appreciate, GOETHE;

who, for fourteen or fifteen years, could exist in daily, hourly

communication with that gigantic spirit, yet retain, from first to

last, the most perfect simplicity of character, and this less from the

strength than from the purity and delicacy of the original texture.

Those oft-abused words, _naïve_, _naïveté_, were more applicable to her

in their fullest sense than to any other woman I ever met with. Her

conversation was the most untiring I ever enjoyed, because the stores

which fed that flowing eloquence were all native and unborrowed: you

were not borne along by it as by a torrent--_bongré_, _malgré_,--nor

dazzled as by an artificial _jet d'eau_ set to play for your amusement.

There was the obvious wish to please--a little natural _coquetterie_--

vivacity without effort, sentiment without affectation, exceeding

mobility, which yet never looked like caprice; and the most consummate

refinement of thought, and feeling, and expression. From that really

elegant and highly-toned mind, nothing flippant nor harsh could ever

proceed; slander died away in her presence; what was evil she would

not hear of; what was malicious she would not understand; what was

ridiculous she would not see. Sometimes there was a wild, artless

fervour in her impulses and feelings, which might have become a

feather-cinctured Indian on her savannah; then, the next moment, her

bearing reminded you of the court-bred lady of the bed-chamber. Quick

in perception, yet femininely confiding, uniting a sort of restless

vivacity with an indolent gracefulness, she appeared to me by far

the most poetical and genuine being of my own sex I ever knew in

highly-cultivated life: one to whom no wrong could teach mistrust; no

injury, bitterness; one to whom the common-place realities, the vulgar

necessary cares of existence, were but too indifferent;--who was, in

reality, all that other women try to appear, and betrayed, with a

careless independence, what they most wish to conceal. I draw from the

life,--now, what would you say to such a woman if you met with her in

the world?

MEDON.

I should say--she had no business there.

ALDA.

How?

MEDON.

I repeat that the woman you have just portrayed is hardly fit for

the world.

ALDA.

Say rather, the world is not fitted for her. As the Sabbath was made for

man, not man for the Sabbath, so the world was made for man, not man for

the world--still less woman.

MEDON.

Do you know what you mean?

ALDA.

I think I do, though I am afraid I can but ill-explain myself. By the

world, I mean that system of social life in all its complicate bearings

by which we are surrounded; which was, I suppose, devised at first with

a reference to the wants, the happiness, and the benefit of men, but

for which no _man_ was specifically created; his being has a high and

individual purpose beyond the world. Now, it seems to me one reason of

the low average of what we call _character_, that we judge a human soul,

not as it is abstractedly, but simply in relation to others, and to

the circumstances around it. If it be in harmony with the world, and

worldly, we praise it--it is a very respectable soul; if so constituted,

that it is in discord with a world, (which, observe, all our philosophers,

our pastors, and our masters, unite to assure us, is a sad wicked place,

and must be reformed or renounced forthwith,) then--I pray your attention

to this point--_then_ the fault, the bitter penalty, lies not upon this

said wicked world,--O no!--but on that unlucky "piece of nature," which

in its power, its goodness, its purity, its truth, its faith, and its

tenderness, stands aloof from it. Is it not so?

MEDON.

Do you apply this personally?

ALDA.

No, generally; but I return to her who suggested the thought, and whom

I ought not, perhaps, to have made the subject of such a conversation as

this: it is against all my principles, contrary to my custom; and, in

truth, I speak of one in whom there is so much to love, that we cannot

praise without being accused of partiality; and so much to admire, that

we could not censure without being suspected of envy. I might as well

be silent therefore. Yet shall such a woman bear such a name, and hold

such a position as the mother of Goethe's posterity;[25]--shall she be

rendered by both a mark for observation, from one end of Europe to the

other;--shall she be "condemned to celebrity," and shall it be allowed

to ignorance, or ill-nature, or vanity, to prate of her;--and shall it

be forbidden to friendship even to speak?--that were hardly just. Of

those effusions of her creative and poetical talents, which charm her

friends, I say nothing, because in all probability neither you nor the

public will ever benefit by them. I met with several other women in

Germany who possessed striking poetical genius, and whose compositions

were equally destined to remain unknown, except to the circle of their

immediate friends and relatives.

MEDON.

Mr. Hayward, in his notes to his translation of Faust, remarks on the

strong prejudice against female authorship, which still exists in

Germany; but he has hopes that it will not endure, and that something

may be done "to unlock the stores of fancy and feeling which the

Ottilies and the Adèles have hived up." Tell me--did you find this

prejudice entertained by the women themselves, or existing chiefly on

the part of the men?

ALDA.

It was expressed most strongly by the women, but it must have originated

with the men. All your prejudices you instil into us; and then we are

not satisfied with adopting them, we exaggerate them--we mix them up with

our fancies and affections, and transmit them to your children. You are

"the mirrors in which we dress ourselves."

MEDON.

For which you dress yourselves!

ALDA.

Psha!--I mean that your minds and opinions are the mirrors in which we

form our own. You legislate for us, mould us, form us as you will. If

you prefer slaves and playthings to companions and helpmates, is that

our fault? In Germany I met with some men who, perhaps out of compliment,

descanted with enthusiasm on female talent, and in behalf of female

authorship; but the women almost uniformly spoke of the latter with

dread, as something formidable, or with contempt, as of something

beneath them: what is an unworthy prejudice in your sex, becomes, when

transplanted into ours, a _feeling_;--a mistaken, but a genuine, and

even a generous feeling. Many women, who have sufficient sense and

simplicity of mind to rise above the mere _prejudice_, would not contend

with the _feeling_: they would not scruple to encounter the public

judgment in a cause approved by their own hearts, but they have not

courage to brave or to oppose the opinions of friends and kindred--

MEDON.

Or risk the loss of a lover. You remember the axiom of that clever

Frenchman,[26] who certainly spoke the existing opinions of his country

only a few years ago, when he said--"Imprimer, pour une femme de moins

de cinquante ans c'est mettre son bonheur à la plus terrible des

lotteries; si elle a un amant elle commencera par le perdre."

ALDA.

I really believe that in Germany the latter catastrophe would be in most

cases inevitable; and where is the woman who knowingly would risk it?

MEDON.

All, however, have not lovers to lose, or husbands to displease,

or friends to affront; and if the women, in compliance with our

self-revolving egotism, affect to prostrate themselves, and undervalue

one another--do the men allow it to this extent? Do not the Germans most

justly boast, that in their land arose the first feeling of veneration

for women, the result of the Christian dispensation, grafted on the

old German manners? Do they not point to their literature and their

institutions, as more favourable to your sex than any other? Does not

even Madame de Staël exalt the fine earnestness of the German feeling

towards you, infinitely above the system of French gallantry?--that

flimsy veil of conventional good-breeding, under which we seek to

disguise the demoralization of one sex, and the virtual slavery of the

other? Have I not heard you say, that it is the present fashion among

the poets, artists, and writers of Germany, to defer in all things to

the middle ages? Are not the maxims and sentiments of chivalry ready on

their lips, the forms and symbols of the old chivalrous times to be

traced in every department of literature and art among them?

ALDA.

All this is true; and I will believe that all this is something more

than mere theory, when I see the Germans less slovenly in their

interior, and less egotistical in their domestic relations. The theme is

unwelcome, unpleasant, ungraceful,--in fact, I can scarcely persuade

myself to say one word against those high-minded, benevolent, admirable,

and "most-thinking people;" so I will not dwell upon it: but I must

confess that the personal negligence of the men, and the forbearance of

the women on this point, astonished me. I longed to remind these

worshippers of the age of chivalry of that advice of St. Louis to his

son--"Il faut être toujours propre et bien proprement habillé, afin

d'être _mieux aimé de sa femme_;" the really good-natured and well-bred

Germans will, I am sure, forgive this passing remark, and allow its

truth: they _did_ at once agree with me, that the tavern-life of the men,

more particularly the clever professional men in the south of Germany,

(another remnant, I presume, either of the age of chivalry, or the

Bürschen-sitten--I know not which,) was calculated to retard the social

improvement and refinement of both sexes. And, apropos to chivalry,

the fact is, that the institutions of a generous but barbarous period,

invented to shield our helplessness, when women were exposed to every

hardship, every outrage, have been much abused, and must be considerably

modified to suit a very different state of society. That affectation of

poetical homage, which your strength paid to our weakness, when the laws

were not sufficient to defend us, we would now gladly exchange for more

real honour, more real protection, more equal rights. I speak thus,

knowing that, however open to perversion these expressions may be, _you_

will not misapprehend me; you know that I am no vulgar, vehement arguer

about the "rights of women;" and, from my habitual tone of feeling and

thought, the last to covet any of your masculine privileges.

MEDON.

I do perfectly understand you; but, pray what are our strictly masculine

privileges, that you should covet them? Fighting! getting drunk! and

keeping a mistress!--I beg your pardon if I shock your delicacy; but

certainly, upon the score of masculine privileges, the less that is said

the better: there are nations in which it is a masculine privilege to

sit and smoke, while women draw the plough. It was some time ago,--and

now, in some countries, it is still a masculine privilege to cultivate

the mind at all; and in Germany, apparently, it is still a masculine

privilege to publish a book without losing _caste_ in society; whereas

here, in England, we have fallen into the opposite extreme; female

authorship is in danger of becoming a fashion,--which Heaven avert! I

should be sorry to see you women taking the pen you have hitherto so

honoured, in the same spirit in which you used to make filigree, cobble

shoes, and paint velvet.

ALDA.

It is too true that mere vanity and fashion have lately made some women

authoresses;--more write for money, and by this employment of their

talents earn their own independence, add to the comforts of a parent,

or supply the extravagance of a husband. Some, who are unhappy in their

domestic relations, yet endowed with all that feminine craving after

sympathy, which was intended to be the charm of our sex, the blessing of

yours, and somehow or other has been turned to the bane of both, look

abroad for what they find not at home; fling into the wide world the

irrepressible activity of an overflowing mind and heart, which can

find no other unforbidden issue,--and to such "fame is love disguised."

Some write from the mere energy of intellect and will; some few from

the pure wish to do good, and to add to the stock of happiness and

the progress of thought; and many from all these motives combined in

different degrees.

MEDON.

And have none of these motives produced authoresses in Germany?

ALDA.

Yes; but fashion and vanity, and the love of excitement, have not

as yet tempted the German women to print their effusions; their most

distinguished authoresses have become so, either from real enthusiasm or

from necessity; and in the lighter departments of literature they boast

at present some brilliant names. I will run over a few.

There is Helmina von Chezy--but before I speak of _her_, I should tell

you of her famous grandmother, Anna Louisa Karshin, though _she_

belonged to the last century. The Karshin was the daughter of a poor

innkeeper and brewer, in a little village of Silesia. She spent her

early years in herding cows. She learned to read by stealth, by stealth

she became a poetess; was first married to a boorish sulky weaver,

secondly to a drunken tailor, and suffered for years every extremity of

poverty and misery; at one time she travelled about the neighbouring

country, the first example of an itinerant poetess, declaiming her own

verses, and always ready with an ode or a sonnet to celebrate a wedding,

or hail a birthday. In this strange profession she excited much

astonishment--went through some singular, but not disreputable

adventures--and earned considerable sums of money, which her husband

spent in drink and profligacy. Gifted with as much energy as genius,

she struggled through all, and gradually became known to several of the

critics and poets of the last century, particularly Count Stolberg and

Gleim, and obtained the title of the German Sappho. She found means to

reach Berlin, where she worked her way up to distinction, and supported

herself, two children, and an orphan brother, by her talents. She was

recommended to Frederick the Great as worthy of a pension, and--would

you believe it?--that _munificent_ patron of his country's genius, sent

her a gratuity of two dollars, in a piece of paper. This extraordinary

and spirited woman, who had probably subsisted for half her life on

charity, instantly returned them to the niggardly despot, after writing

in the envelope four lines impromptu, which are yet repeated in Germany.

I am not quite sure that I remember them accurately, and it is no matter,

for they have not much either of poetry or point.

"Zwey Thaler sind zu wenig;

Zwey Thaler macht kein Glück;

Zwey Thaler gebt kein König;

Fritz, hier send ich sie zurück."

She died in 1791, and a selection of her poems was published in the

following year.

The granddaughter of the Karshin, the more celebrated Helmina von Chezy,

is likewise a poetess; her principal work is a tale of chivalry, in

verse, _Die drei Weissen Rosen_, (The three White Roses) which was

published in 18--, and she wrote the opera of Euryanthe, for Weber to

set to music. Her songs and lighter poems are, I am told, exceedingly

beautiful.

Caroline Pichler, of Vienna, I need only mention. I believe her

historical romances have been translated into half-a-dozen languages.

The Siege of Vienna is reckoned her best.

Madame Schoppenhauer, the daughter of a senator of Dantzic, is

celebrated for her novels, travels, and works on art. She resided for

many years at Weimar, where she drew round her a brilliant literary

circle, which the talents of her daughter farther adorned. Since

Goethe's death she has fixed her residence at Bonn, where it is probable

the remainder of her life will be spent. One of the best of her novels,

"Die Tante," has been translated by Madame de Montolieu, under the title

of "La Tante et la Nièce." Another very pretty little book of hers,

"Ausflucht an dem Rhein," I should like to see translated. Beside being

an excellent writer on art, Madame Schoppenhauer is herself no mean

artist. Moreover, she is a kind-hearted, excellent old lady, with a few

old lady-like prejudices about England and the English, which I forgave

her,--the more easily as I had to thank her in my own person for many

and kind attentions.

Madame von Helvig, of Weimar, (born Amalia von Imhoff,) was the friend

of Schiller, under whose auspices her first poems were published. Her

rare knowledge of languages, her learning and critical taste in works of

arts, have distinguished her almost as much as her genius for poetry.

The second wife of the Baron de la Motte-Fouquet, was a very accomplished

woman, and the author of several poems and romances.

Frederica Brun, (born Münter,) the daughter of a learned ecclesiastic

of Gotha, is celebrated for her prose writings, and particularly her

travels in Italy, where she resided at different periods. Madame Brun

was a friend of Madame de Staël, who mentions her in her de l'Allemagne,

and describes the extraordinary talents for classical pantomime

possessed by her daughter Ida Brun.

Louisa Brachmann is, I believe, more renowned for her melancholy death

than her poetical talents; both together have procured her the name of

the "German Sappho." The wretched woman threw herself into the river

at Halle, and perished, as it was said, for the sake of some faithless

Phaon. This was in 1822, when she must have been between forty and

fifty; and pray observe, I do not notice this fact of her age in

ridicule. A woman's heart may overflow _inwardly_ for long, long years,

till at last the accumulated sorrow bursts the bounds of reason, and

then all at once we see the result of causes to which none gave heed,

and of secret agonies to which none gave comfort--in folly, madness,

destruction. Whatever might have been the cause,--thus she died. Her

works in prose and verse may be found in every bookseller's shop in

Germany. There is also a life of this unhappy and gifted woman by

professor Schutz.

Fanny Tarnow is one of the most remarkable and most fertile of all the

modern German authoresses. Her genius was developed by misfortune and

suffering: while yet an infant, she fell from a window two stories

high, and was taken up, to the amazement of the assistants, without

any apparent injury, except a few bruises; but all the vital functions

suffered, and during ten or twelve years she was extended on a couch,

neither joining in any of the amusements of childhood, nor subjected

to the usual routine of female education. She educated herself. She

read incessantly, and, as it was her only pleasure, books of every

description, good and bad, were furnished her without restraint. She

was about eleven years old when she made her first _known_ poetical

attempt, inspired by her own feelings and situation. It was a dialogue

between herself and the angel of death. In her seventeenth year she

was sufficiently recovered to take charge of her father's family, after

he had lost, by some sudden misfortune, his whole property. He held

subsequently, a small office under government, the duties of which were

principally performed by his admirable daughter. Her first writings were

anonymous, and for a long time her name was unknown. Her most celebrated

novel, the "Thekla," was published in 1815; and from this time she has

enjoyed a high and public reputation. Fanny Tarnow resides, or did

reside, in Dresden.

I have yet another name here, and not the least interesting, that of

Johanna von Weissenthurn, one of the most popular dramatic writers in

Germany. She was educated for the stage, even from infancy, her parents

and relations being, I believe, strolling players. She lived, for many

years, a various life of toil, and adventure, and excitement; such,

perhaps, as Goethe describes in the Wilhelm Meister; a life which does

sometimes blunt the nicer feelings, but is sure to develop talent

where it exists. Johanna at length rose through all the grades of her

profession, and became the first actress at the principal theatre at

Vienna. She played in the "Phoedra," before Napoleon, when he occupied

the Austrian capital in 1806, and the conqueror sent to her, after the

performance, a complimentary message, and a gratuity of three thousand

francs; but her lasting reputation is founded on her dramatic works,

which are played in every theatre in Germany. The plots, which, I

am told, are remarkable for fancy and invention, have been borrowed,

without acknowledgment, both by French and English playwrights. I

was quite charmed with one of her pieces which I saw at Munich, (Die

Erben--the Heirs,) and with another which was represented at Frankfort.

Johanna von Weissenthurn has also written poems and tales.

I have come to the end of my memoranda on this subject, and regret it

much. I might easily give you more names, and quote second-hand the

opinions I heard of the merits and characteristics of these authoresses;

but I speak of nothing but what I _know_, and not being able to form

any judgment myself, I will give none. Only it appears to me that the

Germans themselves assign to no female writer the same rank which here

we proudly give to Joanna Baillie and Mrs. Hemans. I could hear of none

who had ever exercised any thing like the moral influence possessed by

Maria Edgeworth and Harriet Martineau, in their respective departments;

nor could learn that any German woman had yet given _public_ proof that

the most feminine qualities were reconcilable with the highest scientific

attainments--like Mrs. Marcet and Mrs. Somerville.

MEDON.

You said the other night, that you had not formed any opinion as to the

moral and social position of the women in Germany; but you must have

brought away some general impressions of manner and character;--frankly,

were they favourable or unfavourable?

ALDA.

Frankly, they were most favourable. Remember that I am not prepared with

any general sweeping conclusions: I cannot assure you from my own

knowledge, that among my own sex the proportion of virtue and happiness

is greater in Germany than in England. On the contrary--

----In every land

I saw, wherever light illumineth,

Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand,

The downward slope to death.

In every land I thought that, more or less,

The stronger, sterner nature overbore

The softer, uncontroll'd by gentleness,

And selfish evermore![27]

--Why do you smile?

MEDON.

You amuse me with the perseverance with which you ring the changes on

your favourite text, in prose and in verse; and yet, to adopt Voltaire's

witty metaphor, _we_ are the hammers and _you_ the anvils all the world

over. But is that all? You need not have gone to Germany to verify that!

ALDA.

No, sir; it is not _all_. In the first place, you know I have a

sufficient contempt for our English intolerance, with regard to

manners--

MEDON.

Why, yes; with reason. The influence of mere _manner_ among our

fashionable people, and the stress laid upon it as a distinction, have

become so vulgarized and abused, that I should be relieved even by a

reaction which should throw us out of the insipidity of conventional

manner into primeval rudeness.

ALDA.

No, no, no!--no extremes: but though so sensible to the ridicule of

referring the social habits, opinions, customs, of other nations, to the

arbitrary standard of our own, still I could not help falling into

comparisons; certain distinctions between the German and the English

women struck me involuntarily. In the highest circles a stranger finds

society much alike every where. A court-ball--the _soirée_ of an

ambassadress--a minister's dinner--present nearly the same physiognomy.

It is in the second class of society, which is also every where, and in

every sense, the best, that we behold the stamp of national character.

I was not condemned to see my German friends always _en grande

toilette_; I had better opportunities of judging and appreciating their

domestic habits and manners, than most travellers enjoy.

I thought the German women, of a certain rank, more _natural_ than

we are. The moral education of an English girl is, for the most part,

_negative_; the whole system of duty is thus presented to the mind.

It is not "this you must do;" but always "you must not do this--you

must not say that--you must not think so;" and if by some hardy,

expanding nature, the question be ventured, "Why?"--the mamma or the

governess are ready with the answer--"It is not the custom--it is not

lady-like--it is ridiculous!" But is it wrong?--why is it wrong?--and

then comes answer, pat--"My dear, you must not argue--young ladies

never argue." "But, mamma, I was thinking----" "My dear, you must not

think--go write your Italian exercise," and so on! The idea that certain

passions, powers, tempers, feelings, interwoven with our being by our

almighty and all-wise Creator, are to be put down by the fiat of a

governess, or the edict of fashion, is monstrous. Those who educate

us imagine that they have done every thing, if they have silenced

controversy, if they have suppressed all external demonstration of an

excess of temper or feeling; not knowing, or not reflecting, that unless

our nature be self-governed and self-directed by an appeal to those

higher faculties, which link us immediately with what is divine, their

labour is lost.

Now, in Germany the women are less educated to suit some particular

fashion; the cultivation of the intellect, and the forming of the

manners, do not so generally supersede the training of the moral

sentiments--the affections--the impulses; the latter are not so

habitually crushed or disguised; consequently the women appeared to me

more natural, and to have more individual character.

MEDON.

But the English women pique themselves on being natural, at least they

have the word continually in their mouths. Do you know that I once

overheard a well-meaning mother instructing her daughter how to be

natural? You laugh, but I assure you it is a simple fact. Now, I really

do not object to natural insipidity, but I do object to conventional

insipidity: I object to a rule of elegance which makes the negative the

test of the natural. It seems hard that those who have hearts and souls

must needs put them into a strait-waistcoat, in order to oblige those

who choose to have none; and be guilty of the grossest affectation, to

escape the imputation of being affected!

ALDA.

I think there is less of this among the Germans; more of the individual

character is brought into the daily intercourse of society--more of the

poetry of existence is brought to bear on the common realities of life.

I saw a freshness of feeling--a genuine (not a taught) simplicity, which

charmed me. Sometimes I have seen affectation, but it amused me; it

consisted in the exaggeration of what is in itself good, not in the

mean renunciation of our individuality--the immolation of our soul's

truth to a mere fashion of behaviour. As Rochefoucauld called hypocrisy,

(that last extreme of wickedness,) "_the homage which vice pays to

virtue_;" so the _nature de convention_, that last and worst excess of

affectation, is the homage which the artificial pays to the natural.

The German women are much more engrossed by the cares of housekeeping

than women of a similar rank of life in England. They carry this too far

in many instances, as we do the opposite extreme. In England, with our

false, conventional refinement, we attach an idea of vulgarity to certain

cares and duties, in which there is nothing vulgar. To see the young and

beautiful daughter of a lady of rank running about, busied in household

matters, with the keys of the wine-cellar and the store-room suspended

to her sash, would certainly surprise a young Englishwoman, who,

meantime, is netting a purse, painting a rose, or warbling some "Dolce

mio Bene," or "Soavi Palpiti," with the air of a nun at penance. The

description of Werther's Charlotte, cutting bread and butter, has

been an eternal subject of laughter among the English, among whom fine

sentiment must be garnished out with something finer than itself; and no

princess can be suffered to go mad, or even be in love, except in white

satin. To any one who has lived in Germany, the union of sentiment

and bread and butter, or of poetry with household cares, excites no

laughter. The wife of a state minister once excused herself from going

with me to a picture gallery, because on that day she was obliged to

reckon up the household linen; she was one of the most charming, truly

elegant, and accomplished women I ever met with. At another time, I

remember that a very accomplished woman, who had herself figured in a

court, could not do something or other--I forget what--because it was

the "grösse Wäsche," (the great wash,) an event by the way which I

often found very mal-a-propos, and which never failed to turn a German

household upside down. You must remember that I am not speaking of

tradesmen and mechanics, but of people of my own, or even a superior

rank of life. It is true that I met with cases in which the women had,

without necessity, sunk into mere domestic drudges--women whose souls

were in their kitchen and their household stuff--whose talk was of

dishes and of condiments; but then the same species of women in England

would have been, instead of busy with the idea of being useful,

frivolous and silly, without any idea at all.

MEDON.

And whether a woman put her soul into an apple tart, or a new bonnet,

signifies little, if there be no capacity there for any thing better.

I hate mere fine ladies; but equally avoid those who seem born to

"suckle fools and chronicle small beer." The accomplishments which

embellish social life--the cultivation which raises you to a companionship

with men--I cannot spare these to make mere nurses and housewifes, as I

conceive the generality of the German women aim to be, and which I have

been told the opinions of the men approve.

ALDA.

As to what we term accomplishments, there was certainly much less

exhibition and parade of them in society; they formed less an established

and necessary part of education than with us; but, of really accomplished,

well-informed women, believe me I found no deficiency--far otherwise:

if the inclination or the talent existed, means and opportunity were

not wanting for mental culture of a very high species. I met with fewer

women who drew badly, sang tolerably, or rather intolerably, scratched

the harp, and quoted Metastasio; but I met with quite as many women who,

without pretension, were finished musicians, painted like artists,

possessed an extensive acquaintance with their own literature, and an

uncommon knowledge of languages; and were, besides, very good housewives

after the German fashion. More or less acquaintance with the French

language was a matter of course, but English was preferred: every where

I met with women who had cultivated with success, not our language

merely, but our literature. Shakspeare, whether studied in English, or

in some of their excellent translations, I found a species of household

god, whose very name was breathed with reverence, as if it were that of

a supernatural being. Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott, and Campbell,

are familiar names. Wordsworth and Shelley are beginning to be known,

but they are pronounced more difficult of comprehension than Shakspeare

himself; yet I met with a German lady who could repeat Coleridge's

"Ancient Mariner" by heart. Of our great modern poets, Crabbe appeared

the least understood and appreciated in Germany, for the obvious reason,

that his subjects and portraits are almost exclusively national. There

are, however, several German editions of his works. The men read him as

a study. The only German lady I met with who had read his works through,

pronounced them "not poetry." Bulwer is exceedingly popular among the

women; so is Moore. Some of those who most admired the latter, gave as

one reason that "his English style was so easy."

MEDON.

Of all our poets, Moore should seem the least allied to a German taste.

Shall I confess to you? He reminds me perpetually of Prince Potemkin's

larder, in which you could always have _petits-patés_ and champagne,

_ad libitum_, but never a morsel of bread or a drop of water!

ALDA.

The simile is e'en too wickedly just; but I except his Irish ballads:

by the way, I was pleased to find some of our beautiful Irish melodies

almost naturalized in Germany, and sung either with Moore's words, or

German versions of them. I remember that at Stift-Neuberg I heard the

air of Ally Croker sung to an excellent translation of Moore's words,[28]

and with as much of the national spirit and feeling as if we had been on

the banks of the Shannon instead of the banks of the Neckar. The singer,

an amateur, and a most extraordinary musical genius, who had joined our

circle from Heidelberg, did not understand, or at least did not speak,

English; yet there was no Irish, or Scotch, or English air which he had

not at the ends of his fingers; and when he struck up, "Of noble race

was Shenkin," it was as if all the souls of all the Welsh harpers since

High-born Hoel had inspired him. This gifted person was, however, of your

sex, and our discourse, at present, is of mine.

I heard an English lady, who had resided for some time in Germany,

remark, that the "German mothers _spoiled_ their children terribly;" in

other words, the children lived more habitually with the mothers, were

under little restraint, and behaved in the drawing-room much as if they

were in the nursery, and were treated, as they grew up, on more equal

terms.

That high exterior polish, those brilliant conversational talents, which

I have seen in many English and French women, must be rare among the

Germans: they are too simple, and too much in earnest. The trifling

of a polished French woman is often most graceful; the trifling of an

Englishwoman gracious and graceful; but the trifling of a German woman

is, in comparison, heavy work; to use a common expression, it is not

_in them_. I met with _one_ satirical woman. You know I once ventured

to assert that no woman is _naturally_ satirical, and to touch upon the

causes which foster this artificial vice--and here was a case in point.

It was that of a mind which had originally been a piece of nature's

noblest handiwork, first bruised, then gradually festered by the action

of all evil influences.

MEDON.

And, "lilies that fester are far worse than weeds," so singeth the poet;

but do you make the cause also the excuse? How many minds have endured

the most withering influences of misery and mischief, if not untouched,

at least uninjured--unembittered!

ALDA.

I grant you: but before we assume the power of judging, of computing the

degree of virtue in the latter case, of vice in the former, we should

look to the original conformation of the human being--the material

exposed to these influences. Fire hardens the clay and dissolves the

metal. This plate of tempered steel, on which I am going to etch, shall

corrode, effervesce, be absolutely decomposed by the action of a few

drops of nitrous acid, which has no effect whatever on this lump of wax.

Now, carry this analogy into the consideration of the human character--it

will spare us a long argument.

As to the chapter of coquettes--

MEDON.

Ah! _glissez, mortel, n'appuyez pas!_

ALDA.

And why not?--Don't you know that I meditate, with the assistance of

certain _professorins_, a complete Natural History of Coquettes, (in

quarto,) which shall rival the famous Dutch treatise on Butterflies,

in heaven knows how many folio volumes? In the first part of this

stupendous work we intend to treat systematically of every known

species, from the _coquetterie instinctive_, which may be termed the

wild genus, indigenous in all females, up to the _coquetterie calculée

et philosophique_, the most refined specimen reared in the hot-bed of

artificial life. In the second part, we shall treat the whole history of

_Coquetterie_, from that first pretty experiment of dear Mamma Eve, when

she turned away from Adam,

"----As conscious of her worth,

That would be woo'd and not unsought be won,"

down to--to--how shall I avoid being personal?--down to the Lady Adeline

Amundevilles of our own day. With some women _coquetterie_ is an instinct;

with others, an amusement; with others, a pursuit; with others, a science.

With the German women it is a passion: they play the coquette as they do

every thing else, with sentiment, with good faith, with enthusiasm.

MEDON.

Why then it is no longer _coquetterie_--it is love!

ALDA.

I beg your pardon; it is something very different. True, perhaps, "that

thin partitions do the bounds divide;" but, to a nice observer, the

division is not the less complete. In short, you can imagine nothing

more distinct than an English coquette and a German coquette; in the

first case, one is reminded of Dryden's fanciful simile--

"So cold herself, while she such warmth express'd,

'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream!"

But, in the latter case, it is Diana bending the bow, and brandishing

the darts of Cupid; and with an unsuspicious _gaucherie_, which now and

then turns the point against her own bosom.

I observed, and I verified my own observations, by the information of

some intelligent medical men, that there is less ill-health among the

superior rank of women, in Germany, than with us; all that class of

diseases, which we call nervous, which in England have increased,

and are increasing in such a fearful ratio, are far less prevalent;

doubtless, because the habits of social life are more natural. The use

of noxious stimulants among the better class of women is almost unknown,

and rare among the very lowest classes--would to heaven we could say

the same! No where, not even at Munich, one of the most profligate of

the German capitals, was I ever shocked by the exhibition of female

suffering and depravity in another form, as in the theatres and the

streets of London.

I have been asked twenty times since my return to England, whether the

German women are not very _exaltée_--very romantic? I could only answer,

that they appeared to me less calculating, less the slaves of artificial

manners and modes of thinking; more imaginative, more governed by

natural feeling, more enthusiastic in love and religion, than with us.

If this is what my English friends term _exaltée_, I certainly cannot

think the German women would have reason to be offended by the

application of the word to them, however satirically meant. Perhaps it

may be from necessity, that they are generally more simple in their

tastes, and more frugal in their expenses; they had certainly a most

formidable idea of the extravagance of fashionable English women, and

of our luxurious habits. I believe that they are sometimes difficult of

access, and apparently inhospitable, because they suspect us of scoffing

at their simplicity, at the homeliness of their accommodations, and

their housewively occupations. For my own part I slipped so quietly

and naturally into all their social and domestic habits, and cared so

little about the differences and distinctions, which some of the English

thought it fine to be always remarking and lamenting, that my German

friends used to express their surprise, by saying--"Savez vous, ma

chère, que vous ne me faites pas de tout l'effet d'une Anglaise!"--an

odd species of compliment, but certainly meant as such. It is true

that I was sometimes a little tired of the everlasting knitting and

cross-stitch; and it is true I may at times have felt the want of

certain external luxuries, with which we are habitually pampered in this

prodigal land, till they become necessaries; but I would be well content

to exchange them all a thousand times over, for the cheap mental and

social pleasures--the easy intercourse of German life.

MEDON.

Apropos to German romance. I met with a striking instance of it even in

my short and rapid journey across part of the country. A lady of birth

and rank, who had been _dame d'honneur_ in the court of a sovereign

princess, (a princess by the way of very equivocal reputation,) on

the death of a lover, to whom she had been betrothed, devoted herself

thenceforth to the service of the sick in the hospitals; she could not

enter a religious order, being a Protestant, but she fulfilled all the

offices of a vowed Sister of Charity. When she applied to the physician

for leave to attend the hospital at ----, he used every endeavour to

dissuade her from her undertaking--all in vain! Then he tried to disgust

her by imposing, in the first instance, duties the most fearful and

revolting to a delicate woman; she stood this test, and persisted. It is

now five years since I saw her; perhaps she may by this time be tired of

her charitable, or rather her romantic, self-devotion.

ALDA.

No, _that_ she is not. I know to whom you allude. She follows steadily

and quietly the same pious vocation in which she has persevered for

fifteen years, and in which she seems resolved to die.

Now, in return for your story, though I knew it all before, I will tell

you another; but lest you should suspect me of absolute invention and

romancing, I must tell you how I came by it.

I was travelling from Weimar to Frankfort, and had stopped at a little

town, one or two stages beyond Fulda; I was standing at the window of

the inn, which was opposite to the post-house, and looking at a crowd

of travellers who had just been disgorged from a huge Eil-wagen or

post-coach, which was standing there. Among them was one female, who,

before I was aware, fixed my attention. Although closely enveloped in a

winter dress from head to foot, her height, and the easy decision with

which she moved, showed that her figure was fine and well-proportioned;

and as the wind blew aside her black veil, I had a glimpse of features

which still farther excited my curiosity. I had time to consider her,

as she alighted and walked over to the inn alone. She entered at once

the room--it was a sort of public saloon--in which I was; summoned the

waiter, whom she addressed in a good-humoured, but rather familiar

style, and ordered breakfast; not a cup of chocolate or _caffee au

lait_, as became a heroine, for you see I was resolved that she should

be one, but a very substantial German breakfast--soup, a cutlet, and a

pint (eine halbe flasche) of good wine: it was then about ten o'clock.

While this was preparing, she threw off her travelling accoutrements;

first a dark cloak, richly lined with fur; one or two shawls; a sort

of pelisse, or rather surtout, reaching to the knees, with long loose

sleeves, such as you may see in the prints of Tartar or Muscovite

costumes; this was made of beautiful Indian shawl, lined with blue

silk, and trimmed with sables: under these splendid and multifarious

coverings she wore a dress of deep mourning. Her figure, when displayed,

excited my admiration: it was one of the most perfect I ever beheld.

Her feet, hands, and head, were small in proportion to her figure; her

face was not so striking--it was pretty, rather than handsome; her small

mouth closed firmly, so as to give a marked and singular expression

of resolution and decision, to a physiognomy otherwise frank and

good-humoured. Her eyes, also small, were of a dark hazel, bright,

and with long blonde eyelashes. Her abundant fair hair was plaited in

several bands, and fastened on the top of her head, in the fashion

of the German peasant girls. Her voice would have been deemed rather

high-pitched, for "ears polite," but it was not deficient in melody; and

though her expression was grave, and even sad, upon our first encounter,

I soon found that mirth, and not sadness, was the natural character of

her mind, as of her countenance. When any thing ridiculous occurred,

she burst at once into a laugh--such a merry, musical peal, that it was

impossible not to sympathize in it. Her whole appearance and manner gave

me the idea of a farmer's buxom daughter: nothing could be more distinct

from our notions of the lady-like, yet nothing could be more free from

impropriety, more expressive of native innocence and modesty; but the

splendour of her dress did not exactly suit with her deportment--it

puzzled me. I observed, when she drew off her glove, that she wore a

number of silver rings of a peculiar fashion, and among them a fine

diamond. She walked up and down while her breakfast was preparing,

seemingly lost in painful meditations; but when it appeared, she sat

down and did justice to it, as one who had been many hours without food.

While she was thus engaged, the conducteur of the Eil-wagen and one

of the passengers came in, and spoke to her with interest and respect.

Soon afterwards came the mistress of the inn, (who had never deigned to

notice me, for it is not the fashion in Germany;) she came with an offer

of particular services, and from the conversation I gathered, to my

astonishment, that this young creature--she seemed not more than two or

three and twenty--was on her way home, alone and unprotected, from--can

you imagine?--even from the wilds of Siberia! But then what had brought

her there? I listened, in hopes of discovering, but they all spoke so

fast that I could make out nothing more. Afterwards, I had occasion to

go over to a little shop to make some purchase. On my return, I found

her crying bitterly, and my maid, also in tears, was comforting her with

great volubility. Now, though my _having_ in German, like Orlando's

beard, was not considerable, and my heroine spoke still less French, I

could not help assisting in the task of consolation--never, certainly,

were my curiosity and interest more strongly excited! Subsequently we

met at Frankfort, where she was lodged in the same hotel, and I was

enabled to offer her a seat in my vehicle to Mayence. Thus, I had

opportunities of hearing her whole history related at different times,

and in parts and parcels; and I will now endeavour to give it to you

in a connected form. I may possibly make some mistake with regard

to the order of events, but I promise you faithfully, that where my

recollection of names, or dates, or circumstances, may fail me, I will

not, like Mademoiselle de Montpensier, make use of my imagination

to supply the defects of my memory. You shall have, if not the whole

truth, at least as much of it as I can remember, and with no fictitious

interpolations and improvements. Of the animation of voice and manner,

the vivid eloquence, the graphic spirit, the quick transitions of

feeling, and the grace and vivacity of gesture and action with which

the relation was made to me by this fine untutored child of nature,

I can give you no idea--it was altogether a study of character, I shall

never forget.

My heroine--truly and in every sense does she deserve the name--was the

daughter of a rich brewer and wine merchant of Deuxponts.[29] She was

one of five children, two much older and two much younger than herself.

Her eldest brother was called Henri: he had early displayed such

uncommon talents, and such a decided inclination for study, that his

father was determined to give him all the advantages of a learned

education, and sent him to the university of Erlangen, in Bavaria,

whence he returned to his family, with the highest testimonies of his

talents and good conduct. His father now destined him for the clerical

profession, with which his own wishes accorded. His sister fondly

dwelt upon his praises, and described him, perhaps with all a sister's

partiality, as being not only the pride of his family, but of all his

fellow-citizens, "tall, and handsome, and good," of a most benevolent

enthusiastic temper, and devoted to his studies. When he had been at

home for some time, he attracted the notice of one of the princes in the

north of Germany, with whom he travelled, I believe, in the capacity

of secretary. The name of the prince, and the particulars of this

part of his life, have escaped me; but it appeared that, through the

recommendation of this powerful patron, he became professor of theology

in a university of Courland, I think at Riga, or somewhere near it, for

the name of this city was continually recurring in her narrative. Henri

was at this time about eight-and-twenty.

While here, it was his fate to fall passionately in love with the

daughter of a rich Jew merchant. His religious zeal mingled with his

love; he was as anxious to convert his mistress as to possess her--and,

in fact, the first was a necessary preliminary to the second; the

consequences were all in the usual style of such matters. The relations

discovered the correspondence, and the young Jewess was forbidden to see

or to speak to her lover. They met in secret. What arguments he might

use to convert this modern Jessica, I know not, but they prevailed. She

declared herself convinced, and consented to fly with him beyond the

frontiers, into Silesia, to be baptized, and to become his wife.

Apparently their plans were not well-arranged, or were betrayed; for

they were pursued by her relations and the police, and overtaken before

they reached the frontiers. The young man was accused of carrying off

his Jewish love by force, and this, I believe, at Riga, where the Jews

are protected, is a capital crime. The affair was brought before the

tribunal, and the accused defended himself by declaring that the girl

had fled with him by her own free will; that she was a Christian, and

his betrothed bride, as they had exchanged rings, or had gone through

some similar ceremony. The father Jew denied this on the part of his

daughter, and Henri desired to be confronted with the lady who was thus

said to have turned his accuser. Her family made many difficulties, but

by the order of the judge she was obliged to appear. She was brought

into the court of justice pale, trembling, and supported by her father

and others of her kindred. The judge demanded whether it was by her own

will that she had fled with Henri Ambos? She answered in a faint voice,

"_No_." Had then violence been used to carry her off? "_Yes._" Was she

a Christian? "_No._" Did she regard Henri as her affianced husband?

"_No._"

On hearing these replies, so different from the truth,--from all he

could have anticipated, the unfortunate young man appeared for a few

minutes stupified; then, as if seized with a sudden frenzy, he made a

desperate effort to rush upon the young Jewess. On being prevented, he

drew a knife from his pocket, which he attempted to plunge into his own

bosom, but it was wrested from him; in the scuffle he was wounded in

the hands and face, and the young lady swooned away. The sight of his

mistress insensible, and his own blood flowing, restored the lover to

his senses. He became sullenly calm, offered not another word in his own

defence, refused to answer any questions, and was immediately conveyed

to prison.

These particulars came to the knowledge of his family after the lapse of

many months, but of his subsequent fate they could learn nothing. Neither

his sentence nor his punishment could be ascertained; and although

one of his relations went to Riga, for the purpose of obtaining some

information--some redress--he returned without having effected either

of the purposes of his journey. Whether Henri had died of his wounds,

or languished in a perpetual dungeon, remained a mystery.

Six years thus passed away. His father died: his mother, who persisted

in hoping, while all others despaired, lingered on in heart-wearing

suspense. At length, in the beginning of last year, (1833,) a travelling

merchant passed through the city of Deuxponts, and inquired for the

family of Ambos. He informed them that in the preceding year he had

seen and spoken to a man in rags, with a long beard, who was working in

fetters with other criminals, near the fortress of Barinska, in Siberia;

who described himself as Henri Ambos, a pastor of the Lutheran church,

unjustly condemned, and besought him with tears, and the most urgent

supplications, to convey some tidings of him to his unhappy parents, and

beseech them to use every means to obtain his liberation.

You must imagine--for I cannot describe as she described--the feelings

which this intelligence excited. A family counsel was held, and it

was determined at once that application should be made to the police

authorities at St. Petersburgh, to ascertain beyond a doubt the fate

of poor Henri--that a petition in his favour must be presented to the

Emperor of Russia; but who was to present it? The second brother offered

himself, but he had a wife and two children; the wife protested that she

should die if her husband left her, and would not hear of his going;

besides, he was the only remaining hope of his mother's family. The

sister then said that she would undertake the journey, and argued that

as a woman she had more chance of success in such an affair than her

brother. The mother acquiesced. There was, in truth, no alternative; and

being amply furnished with the means, this generous, affectionate, and

strong-minded girl, set off alone, on her long and perilous journey.

"When my mother gave me her blessing," said she, "I made a vow to God

and my own heart, that I would not return alive without the pardon of

my brother. I feared nothing; I had nothing to live for. I had health

and strength, and I had not a doubt of my own success, because I was

_resolved_ to succeed; but ah! _liebe madame!_ what a fate was mine! and

how am I returning to my mother!--my poor old mother!" Here she burst

into tears, and threw herself back in the carriage; after a few minutes

she resumed her narrative.

She reached the city of Riga without mischance. There she collected the

necessary documents relative to her brother's character and conduct,

with all the circumstances of his trial, and had them properly attested.

Furnished with these papers, she proceeded to St. Petersburgh, where she

arrived safely in the beginning of June, 1833. She had been furnished with

several letters of recommendation, and particularly with one to a German

ecclesiastic, of whom she spoke with the most grateful enthusiasm, by the

title of M. le Pasteur. She met with the utmost difficulty in obtaining

from the police the official return of her brother's condemnation, place

of exile, punishment, &c.; but at length, by almost incredible boldness,

perseverance, and address, she was in possession of these, and with the

assistance of her good friend the pastor, she drew up a petition to the

emperor. With this she waited on the minister of the interior, to whom,

with great difficulty, and after many applications, she obtained access.

He treated her with great harshness, and absolutely refused to deliver

the petition. She threw herself on her knees, and added tears to

entreaties; but he was inexorable, and added brutally--"Your brother

was a _mauvais sujet_; he _ought_ not to be pardoned, and if I were the

emperor I would not pardon him." She rose from her knees, and stretching

her arms towards heaven, exclaimed with fervour--"I call God to witness

that my brother was innocent! and I thank God that you are not the

emperor, for I can still hope!" The minister, in a rage, said--"Do you

dare to speak thus to me! Do you know who I am?" "Yes," she replied;

"you are his excellency the minister C----; but what of that? you are

a cruel man! but I put my trust in God and the emperor; and then," said

she, "I left him, without even a curtsey, though he followed me to the

door, speaking very loud and very angrily."

Her suit being rejected by all the ministers, (for even those who

were most gentle, and who allowed the hardship of the case, still

refused to interfere, or deliver her petition,) she resolved to do,

what she had been dissuaded from attempting in the first instance--to

appeal to the emperor in person: but it was in vain she lavished

hundreds of dollars in bribes to the inferior officers; in vain she

beset the imperial suite, at reviews, at the theatre, on the way to

the church: invariably beaten back by the guards, or the attendants,

she could not penetrate to the emperor's presence. After spending six

weeks in daily ineffectual attempts of this kind, hoping every morning,

and almost despairing every evening--threatened by the police, and

spurned by the officials--Providence raised her up a friend in one of

her own sex. Among some ladies of rank, who became interested in her

story, and invited her to their houses, was a Countess Elise, something

or other, whose name I am sorry I did not write down. One day, on seeing

her young _protegée_ overwhelmed with grief, and almost in despair, she

said, with emotion, "I cannot dare to present your petition myself, I

might be sent off to Siberia, or at least banished the court; but all I

can do I will. I will lend you my equipage and servants. I will dress

you in one of my robes; you shall drive to the palace the next levee

day, and obtain an audience under my name; when once in the presence of

the emperor you must manage for yourself. If I risk thus much, will you

venture the rest?" "And what," said I, "was your answer?" "Oh!" she

replied, "I could not answer; but I threw myself at her feet, and kissed

the hem of her gown!" I asked her whether she had not feared to risk the

safety of her generous friend? She replied, "That thought did strike

me--but what would you have?--I cast it from me. I was _resolved_ to

have my brother's pardon--I would have sacrificed my own life to obtain

it--and, God forgive me, I thought little of what it might cost another."

This plan was soon arranged, and at the time appointed my resolute

heroine drove up to the palace in a splendid equipage, preceded by a

running footman, with three laced laquais in full dress, mounted

behind. She was announced as the Countess Elise ----, who supplicated

a particular audience of his majesty. The doors flew open, and in a few

minutes she was in the presence of the emperor, who advanced one or

two steps to meet her, with an air of gallantry, but suddenly started

back----

Here I could not help asking her, whether in that moment she did not

feel her heart sink?

"No," said she firmly; "on the contrary, I felt my heart beat quicker

and higher!--I sprang forward and knelt at his feet, exclaiming, with

clasped hands--'Pardon, imperial majesty!--Pardon!'" "Who are you?" said

the emperor, astonished; "and what can I do for you?" He spoke gently,

more gently than any of his ministers, and overcome, even by my own

hopes, I burst into a flood of tears, and said--"May it please your

imperial majesty, I am not Countess Elise ----, I am only the sister of

the unfortunate Henri Ambos, who has been condemned on false accusation.

O pardon!--pardon! Here are the papers--the proofs. O imperial

majesty!--pardon my poor brother!" I held out the petition and the

papers, and at the same time, prostrate on my knees, I seized the skirt

of his embroidered coat, and pressed it to my lips. The emperor said,

"Rise--rise!" but I would not rise; I still held out my papers, resolved

not to rise till he had taken them. At last the emperor, who seemed much

moved, extended one hand towards me, and took the papers with the other,

saying--"Rise, mademoiselle--I command you to rise." I ventured to kiss

his hand, and said, with tears, "I pray of your majesty to read that

paper." He said, "I will read it." I then rose from the ground, and stood

watching him while he unfolded the petition and read it. His countenance

changed, and he exclaimed once or twice, "Is it possible?--This is

dreadful!" When he had finished, he folded the paper, and without

any observation, said at once--"Mademoiselle Ambos, your brother is

pardoned." The words rung in my ears, and I again flung myself at his

feet, saying--and yet I scarce know what I said--"Your imperial majesty

is a god upon earth; do you indeed pardon my brother? Your ministers

would never suffer me to approach you; and even yet I fear----!" He

said, "Fear nothing: you have my promise." He then raised me from the

ground, and conducted me himself to the door. I tried to thank and bless

him, but could not; he held out his hand for me to kiss, and then bowed

his head as I left the room. "Ach ja! the emperor is a good man,--ein

schöner, feiner, Mann! but he does not know how cruel his ministers are,

and all the evil they do, and all the justice they refuse, in his name!"

I have given you this scene as nearly as possible in her own words.

She not only related it, but almost acted it over again; she imitated

alternately, her own and the emperor's voice and manner; and such was

the vivacity of her description that I seemed to hear and behold both,

and was more profoundly moved than by any scenic representation I can

remember.

On her return she received the congratulations of her benefactress, the

Countess Elise, and of her good friend the pastor, but both advised her

to keep her audience and the emperor's promise a profound secret. She

was the more inclined to this; because, after the first burst of joyous

emotion, her spirits sank. Recollecting the pains that had been taken to

shut her from the emperor's presence, she feared some unforeseen obstacle,

or even some knavery on the part of the officers of government. She

described her sufferings during the next few days, as fearful; her

agitation, her previous fatigues, and the terrible suspense, apparently

threw her into a fever, or acted on her excited nerves so as to produce

a species of delirium, though, of course, she would not admit this.

After assuring me very gravely that she did not believe in ghosts, she

told me that one night, after her interview with the emperor, she was

reading in bed, being unable to sleep; and on raising her eyes from her

book she saw the figure of her brother, standing at the other end of the

room; she exclaimed, "My God, Henri! is that you!" but without making

any reply, the form approached nearer and nearer to the bed, keeping

its melancholy eyes fixed on her's, till it came quite close to the bed

side, and laid a cold heavy hand upon her.

MEDON.

The night-mare, evidently.

ALDA.

Without doubt; but her own impression was as of a reality. The figure,

after looking at her sadly for some minutes, during which she had no

power either to move or speak, turned away; she then made a desperate

effort to call out to the daughter of her hostess, who slept in the next

room--"Luise! Luise!" Luise ran in to her. "Do you not see my brother

standing there?" she exclaimed with horror, and pointing to the other

end of the room, whither the image, conjured up by her excited fancy and

fevered nerves, appeared to have receded. The frightened, staring Luise,

answered, "Yes." "You see," said she, appealing to me--"that though I

might be cheated by my own senses, I could not doubt those of another. I

thought to myself, _then_, my poor Henri is dead, and God has permitted

him to visit me. This idea pursued me all that night, and the next day;

but on the following day, which was Monday, just five days after I had

seen the Emperor, a _laquais_, in the imperial livery, came to my lodging,

and put into my hands a packet, with the "Emperor's _compliments_ to

Mademoiselle Ambos." It was the pardon for my brother, with the Emperor's

seal and signature: then I forgot every thing but joy!"

Those mean, official animals, who had before spurned her, now pressed

upon her with offers of service, and even the Minister C---- offered to

expedite the pardon himself to Siberia, _in order to save her trouble_;

but she would not suffer the precious paper out of her hands: she

determined to carry it herself--to be herself the bearer of glad

tidings:--she had resolved that none but herself should take off those

fetters, the very description of which had entered her soul; so, having

made her arrangements as quickly as possible, she set off for Moscow,

where she arrived in three days. According to her description, the

town in Siberia, to the governor of which she carried an official

recommendation, was nine thousand versts beyond Moscow; and the fortress

to which the wretched malefactors were exiled was at a great distance

beyond that. I could not well make out the situation of either, and,

unluckily, I had no map with me but a road map of Germany, and it was

evident that my heroine was no geographer. She told me that, after

leaving Moscow, she travelled post seven days and seven nights, only

sleeping in the carriage. She then reposed for two days, and then posted

on for another seven days and nights.

MEDON.

Alone?

ALDA.

Alone! and wholly unprotected, except by her own innocence and energy,

and a few lines of recommendation, which had been given to her at St.

Petersburgh. The roads were every where excellent, the post-houses at

regular distances, the travelling rapid; but often, for hundreds of miles,

there were no accommodations of any kind--scarce a human habitation.

She even suffered from hunger, not being prepared to travel for so many

hours together without meeting with any food she could touch without

disgust. She described, with great truth and eloquence, her own

sensations as she was whirled rapidly over those wide, silent, solitary,

and apparently endless plains. "Sometimes," said she, "my head seemed

to turn--I could not believe that it was a waking reality--I could not

believe that it was myself. Alone, in a strange land,--so many hundred

leagues from my own home, and driven along as if through the air, with a

rapidity so different from any thing I had been used to, that it almost

took away my breath."

"Did you ever feel fear?" I asked.

"Ach ja! when I waked sometimes in the carriage, in the middle of the

night, wondering at myself, and unable immediately to collect my thoughts.

Never at any other time."

I asked her if she had ever met with insult? She said she had twice met

with "wicked men;" but she had felt no alarm--she knew how to protect

herself; and as she said this, her countenance assumed an expression

which showed that it was not a mere boast. Altogether, she described her

journey as being _grausam_, (horrible,) in the highest degree, and,

indeed, even the recollection of it made her shudder; but at the time

there was the anticipation of an unspeakable happiness, which made all

fatigues light, and all dangers indifferent.

At length, in the beginning of August, she arrived at the end of her

journey, and was courteously received by the commandant of the fortress.

She presented the pardon with a hand which trembled with impatience and

joy, too great to be restrained, almost to be borne. The officer looked

very grave, and took, she thought, a long time to read the paper, which

consisted only of six or eight lines. At last he stammered out, "I am

sorry--but the Henri Ambos mentioned in this paper--_is dead_!" Poor

girl! she fell to the earth.

When she reached this part of her story she burst into a fresh flood

of tears, wrung her hands, and for some time could utter nothing but

passionate exclamations of grief. "Ach! lieber Gott! was für ein

schreckliches Schicksal war das meine!" "What a horrible fate was mine!

I had come thus far to find--not my brother--_nur ein Grab_!" (only a

grave!) she repeated several times, with an accent of despair. The

unfortunate man had died a year before. The fetters in which he worked

had caused an ulcer in his leg, which he neglected, and, after some

weeks of horrid suffering, death released him. The task-work, for nearly

five years, of this accomplished, and even learned man, in the prime of

his life and mental powers, had been to break stones upon the road,

chained hand and foot, and confounded with the lowest malefactors.

In giving you thus conscientiously, the mere outline of this story,

I have spared you all comments. I see, by those indignant strides

majestical, that you are making comments to yourself; but sit down and

be quiet, if you can: I have not much more to tell!

She found, on inquiry, that some papers and letters, which her unhappy

brother had drawn up by stealth, in the hope of being able at some time

to convey them to his friends, were in the possession of one of the

officers, who readily gave them up to her; and with these she returned,

half broken-hearted, to St. Petersburgh. If her former journey, when

hope cheered her on the way, had been so fearful, what must have been

her return? I was not surprised to hear that, on her arrival, she was

seized with a dangerous illness, and was for many weeks confined to her

bed.

Her story excited much commiseration; and a very general interest and

curiosity was excited about herself. She told me that a great many

persons of rank invited her to their houses, and made her rich presents,

among which were the splendid shawls and the ring, which had caught my

attention, and excited my surprise, in the first instance. The Emperor

expressed a wish to see her, and very graciously spoke a few words of

condolence. "But they could not bring my brother back to life!" said

she, expressively. He even presented her to the Empress. "And what,"

I asked, "did the Empress say to you?" "_Nothing_; but she looked

_so_,"--drawing herself up.

On receiving her brother's pardon from the Emperor, she had written

home to her family; but she confessed that since that time she had not

written--she had not courage to inflict a blow which might possibly

affect her mother's life; and yet the idea of being obliged to _tell_

what she dared not write, seemed to strike her with terror.

But the strangest event of this strange story remains to be told; and

I will try to give it in her own simple words.

She left Petersburgh in October, and proceeded to Riga, where those

who had known her brother received her with interest and kindness, and

sympathized in her affliction. "But," said she, "there was one thing

I had resolved to do, which yet remained undone. I was resolved to

see the woman who had been the original cause of all my poor brother's

misfortunes. I thought if once I could say to her, 'Your falsehood has

done this!' I should be satisfied; but my brother's friends dissuaded

me from this idea. They said it was better not; that it could do my

poor Henri no good; that it was wrong; that it was unchristian; and

I submitted. I left Riga with a voiturier. I had reached Pojer, on

the Prussian frontiers, and there I stopped at the Douane, to have my

packages searched. The chief officer looked at the address on my trunk,

and exclaimed, with surprise, 'Mademoiselle Ambos! Are you any relation

of the Professor Henri Ambos?'--'I am his sister.' 'Good God! I was the

intimate friend of your brother! What has become of him?' I then told

him all I have now told you, liebe madame!--and when I came to an end,

this good man burst into tears, and for some time we wept together. The

kutscher, (driver,) who was standing by, heard all this conversation,

and when I turned round, he was crying too. My brother's friend pressed

on me offers of service and hospitality, but I could not delay; for,

besides that my impatience to reach home increased every hour, I had

not much money in my purse. Of three thousand dollars, which I had

taken with me to St. Petersburgh, very little remained, so I bade him

farewell, and I proceeded. At the next town, where my kutscher stopped

to feed his horses, he came to the door of my calèche, and said, 'You

have just missed seeing the Jew lady, whom your brother was in love

with; that calèche which passed us by just now, and changed horses here,

contained Mademoiselle S----, her sister, and her sister's husband!'

Good God! imagine my surprise! I could not believe my fortune: it seemed

that Providence had delivered her into my hands, and I was resolved

that she should not escape me. I knew they would be delayed at the

Custom-house. I ordered the man to turn, and drive back as fast as

possible, promising him a reward of a dollar if he overtook them.

On reaching the Custom-house, I saw a calèche standing at a little

distance. I felt myself tremble, and my heart beat so--but not with

fear. I went up to the calèche--two ladies were sitting in it. I

addressed the one who was the most beautiful, and said, 'Are you

Mademoiselle Emilie S----?' I suppose I must have looked very strange,

and wild, and resolute, for she replied, with a frightened manner--'I

am; who are you, and what do you want with me?' I said, 'I am the sister

of Henri Ambos, whom you murdered!' She shrieked out; the men came

running from the house; but I held fast the carriage-door, and said,

'I am not come to hurt you, but you are the murderess of my brother,

Henri Ambos. He loved you, and your falsehood has killed him. May God

punish you for it! May his ghost pursue you to the end of your life!' I

remember no more. I was like one mad. I have just a recollection of her

ghastly, terrified look, and her eyes wide open, staring at me. I fell

into fits; and they carried me into the house of my brother's friend,

and laid me on a bed. When I recovered my senses, the calèche and

all were gone. When I reached Berlin, all this appeared to me so

miraculous--so like a dream--I could not trust to my own recollection,

and I wrote to the officer of Customs, to beg he would attest that it

was really true, and what I had said when I was out of my senses, and

what _she_ had said; and at Leipsic I received his letter, which I will

show you." And at Mayence she showed me this letter, and a number of

other documents; her brother's pardon, with the Emperor's signature;

a letter of the Countess Elise ----; a most touching letter from her

unfortunate brother; (over this she wept much;) and a variety of other

papers, all proving the truth of her story, even to the minutest

particulars. The next morning we were to part. I was going down the

Rhine, and she was to proceed to Deuxponts, which she expected to reach

in two days. As she had travelled from Berlin almost without rest,

except the night we had spent at Frankfort, she appeared to me ready to

sink with fatigue; but she would not bid me farewell that night, although

I told her I should be obliged to set off at six the next morning; but

kissing my hand, with many expressions of gratitude, she said she would

be awake and visit me in my room to bid me a last adieu. As there was

only a very narrow passage between the two rooms, she left her door a

little open that she might hear me rise. However, on the following

morning she did not appear. When dressed, I went on tiptoe into her

room, and found her lying in a deep calm sleep, her arm over her head.

I looked at her for some minutes, and thought I had never seen a finer

creature. I then turned, with a whispered blessing and adieu, and went

on my way.

This is all I can tell you. If at the time I had not been travelling

_against_ time, and with a mind most fully and painfully occupied,

I believe I should have been tempted to accompany my heroine to

Deuxponts--at least I should have retained her narrative more accurately.

Not having made any memoranda till many days afterwards, all the names

have escaped my recollection; but if you have any doubts of the general

truth of this story, I will at least give you the means of verifying it.

Here is her name, in her own handwriting, on one of the leaves of my

pocket-book--you can read the German character;

=Bety Ambos von Zweibruken.=

SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.