In this country an outcry has been raised against the French authors in this department, and in favour of the Germans, on the ground of the frightful immorality of the first, and the sound principles of the other.  French impiety is not a more common expression, applied to their writings, than German honesty.  It will, perhaps, be right at starting to state, that, in regard to decency and propriety, the two nations are on a par; if there is any preponderance, one way or other, it certainly is not in favour of the Germans, whose derelictions in those respects are more solemn, and apparently sincere, than their flippant and superficial rivals.  Many authors there are, of course, in both countries, whose works are unexceptionable in spirit and intention; but as to the assertion, that one literature is of a higher tone of morals than the other, it is a mistake.  The great majority of the entertaining works in both are unfit pueris virginibusque.

Before the Revolution, Voltaire was as popular in England as in the rest of Europe; his powers as highly admired, and his short historiettes as much quoted:  their wit being considered a sufficient counterbalance of their coarseness.  But with the war between the two nations, arose a hatred between the two literatures; with Swift and Tristram Shandy in our hands, we turned up our eyes in holy indignation at Candide; we saw nothing to admire in any thing French; and as our condition in politics became more isolated, and we grew like our ancestors, toto divisos orbe Britannos—­ we could see no beauty in any thing foreign.  The Orders in Council extended to criticism; and all continental languages were placed in blockade.  The first nation who honestly and zealously took our part against the enemy was the German; and from that time we began to study achs and dochs.  Leipsic, that made Napoleon little, made Goethe great; and to Waterloo we are indebted for peace and freedom, and also for a belief in the truth and talent of a host of German authors, whose principal merit consisted in the fact of their speaking the same language in which Blucher called for his tobacco.  The opposite feelings took rise from our enmity to the French; and though by this time we have sense enough to be on good terms with the crapauds, and on visiting terms with Louis Philippe, we have not got over our antipathy to their tongue.  During the contest, we had constantly refreshed our zeal by fervent declarations of contempt for the frog-eating, spindle shanked mounseers, and persuaded ourselves that their whole literature consisted in atheism and murder, and though we now know that frogs are by no means the common food of the peasantry—­costing about a guinea a dish—­and that it is possible for a Frenchman to be a strapping fellow of six feet high, the taint of our former persuasion remains with us still as to their books; and, in some remote districts, we have no doubt that Peter Pindar would be thought a more harmless volume in a young lady’s hands than Pascal’s Thoughts—­in French.