lost all elasticity, and sank dismembered into a stupid spirit of slavery, which originated in our passion for imitation, our faintheartedness, and our uncommonly low opinion of ourselves, which often looks like true dog humility.  This humility the French have in view, when if naughtily treated by their superiors, by the police, &c., they cry out “Est ce qu’on me prend pour un Allemand?” The Englishman is fond of being represented as a John Bull, but John Bull pushes about him.  We, however, are personified by the German Michel, who puts up with a touch on the posterior, and still asks, “What’s your pleasure?”

Voltaire sang of the Marechal de Saxe:—­

    “Et ce fier Saxon que lion croit ne parme nous,”

exactly like a Maitre d’Hotel, who, whenever he wished to flatter me, used to say, “Vous savez, Monsieur, je vous regarde presque comme Francais.”  Voltaire was not ashamed at Berlin, when the Prussian soldiers did not enact the Roman legions to his mind, to exclaim in the midst of German princesses, “F——­j’ai demande des hommes, et on me donne des Allemands!” Marechal Schomberg, to whom the impertinent steward, on committing a fault, said, “Parbleu, on me prendra pour un Allemand!” would long ago have set them to rights with his answer, “On a tort, on devrait vous prendra pour un sot!”

To be, not to seem, is still the fairest feature in the character of my—­I had almost said nation—­of my quiet, thrifty, contented, diligent, honest countrymen.  The German, at first glance, appears rarely what he is, and strikes the stranger as awkward and heavy.  Yet, behind this plain quiet outside, there often dwells a cultivated mind, reflection, and deep feeling of duty, honour, diligence, and domestic virtue.  In our father-land, honesty is universally at home; and during the night, you are safer on the highways and in the forests, than in the streets of Paris or London.  “When in foreign countries,” says an old author, “I fall in with a man too helpless for a Frenchman, too ceremonious for an Englishman, too pliable for a Spaniard, too lively for a Dutchman, too cordial for an Italian, too modest for a Russian—­a man pressing towards me with oblique bows, and doing homage with ineffable self-denial to all that seems of rank; then my heart, and the blood in my face, says, ’that is thy countryman.’” How true! and how often have I lighted on such countrymen.

North Germany commences as soon as you leave behind you Nurenberg and Cassel.  Cassel, in comparison with Hamburg resembles an Italian town.  The Thuringian Forest separates north and south.  The north is a coast-land, commerce its destination; the south inland:  hence agriculture and industry are more suitable.  The spirit of the South German is more directed to what is domestic:  a fruitful soil rewards his labour, and alleviates it by the juice of the grape.  The mouths of his rivers and his harbours allure the North German into foreign lands;