It is not unlikely that the Customs’ Union may lower our estimate of Weimar; a five years’ war with Austria and Prussia, especially if we were assisted by the French, would make us rank Schiller himself—­the greatest of German names—­on the same humble level where we now place Victor Hugo.  But there are thousands, of people in this good realm of England, who actually consider such beings a Spindler and Vandervelde superior to the noble genius who created Notre Dame de Paris.  Poor as our own novel-writers, by profession, have shown themselves of late years, their efforts are infinitely superior to the very best of the German novelists; and yet we see advertisements every day in the newspapers, of new translations from fourth or fifth-rate scribblers for Leipsic fair, which would lead one to expect a far higher order of merit than any of our living authors can show.  “A new work by the Walter Scott of Germany!” A new work by the Newton of Stoke Pogis!  A new picture by the Apelles of the Isle of Man!  The Walter Scott of Germany, according to somebody’s saying about Milton, is a very German Walter Scott; and, if under this ridiculous pull is concealed some drivelling historical hash by Spindler or Tromlits, the force of impudence can no farther go.

But we must take care not to be carried too far in our depreciation of German light literature by our indignation at the over-estimate formed of some of its professors.  Let us admit that there are admirable authors—­a fact which it would be impossible to deny with such works before us as Tieck’s, and Hoffman’s, and a host of others—­quos nunc perscribere longum est.  Let us leave the small fry to the congenial admiration of the devourers of our circulating libraries, and form our judgment of the respective methods of conducting a story of the French and Germans, from a comparison of the heroes of each tongue.  Let us judge of Greek and Roman war from the Phalanx and the Legion, and not from the suttlers of the two camps.  A great excellence in a German novelist is the prodigious faith he seems to have in his own story; he relates incidents as if he knew them of his own knowledge; and the wilder and more incredible they are, the more firm and solemn becomes his belief.  The Frenchman never descends from holding the wires of the puppets to be a puppet himself, or even to delude spectators with the idea that they are any thing but puppets; he never forfeits his superiority over the personages of the story, by allowing the reader to lose sight of the author; no, he piques himself on being the great showman, and would scarcely take it as a compliment if you entered into the interest of the tale, unless as an exhibition of the narrator’s talent.  But then he handles his wires so cleverly, and is really so immensely superior to the fictitious individuals whom he places before us, that it is no great wonder if we prefer Alexander Dumas or Jules Janin to their heroes.  The Germans, relying on their own powers of belief,