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Frenchmen the moment he had done clapping the aforesaid magnanimous declaration; for who would have cared a halfpenny for a million of Bonapartes after shouting in chorus, till their throats were dry, "Britons never, never, never will be slaves?" But the records of the last war will let us see the patriotism of the Germans. Every little principality and power seemed to run a race who should first truckle to the invader. The Confederation of the Rhine is a death-blow to their boasts; and, to go back to their literature, is their a single man among all their authors, except poor young Korner, that showed a spark of Tyrtsean fire? What said Goethe? He made the campaign against France in 1792, and wrote an account of it—are there any spirit-stirring appeals in it against oppression? Not a word—but a great deal about the comfort of a blanket with which he kept himself warm on the march; and throughout the whole reign of Napoleon his muse was mute, or admitted to a place at court. And yet Thomas Carlyle,—let me propose his health, sir, hip, hip, hurra!—almost worships that cold-blooded, selfish, sensual old man; and this idolatry before such a shrine, the reputation of the Laird of Craigenputtoek goes a great way to perpetuate.

Such clouds of word praises, in which, I feel sure, the heart has no place, have been spread around this idol, that it positively needs a man to have very good eyes to see the paste and pasteboard it is composed of. Faust! Faust!—every human being, from about eighteen up to five-and-twenty, and some, even, who have come to years of discretion, have got into a perpetual sing-song of wonder and awe about the depth, grandeur, sublimity, and all the rest of it, of this inimitable performance. Did they ever think of extending their enumeration of its merits, so as to include its profanity, coarseness, vulgarity, and unintelligibleness? What are we to think of a work, sir, that, in the life-time of the author, needed commentaries on almost every passage,—on its general scope and tendency,—on its occult significations,—while, all the time, the author himself seemed to gape with as total an unconsciousness of its secret meanings as any one else. I will answer for it, at all events, he would have found as much difficulty as either Carus, or Enk, or Duentzor, in explaining its "einheit and ganzheit," its oneness and allness. Read his own continuation of it—never was proof so complete of a man's ignorance of what he had meant in the former part of the work; that is to say, if you give him credit for having had any meaning in it at all. Recollect I don't deny that the man was clever. He was as clever a fellow as the world will often see; for, do you know, Mr North, I have a prodigious respect for the abilities of successful quacks. Success, itself, is the only proof I require. The less a priori grounds there were for expecting their triumphs, the greater credit they are entitled to. Therefore a bumper once more, if you please, sir, to the immortal Goethe.

With no one element of the poetic character in his whole composition; without enthusiasm, without high sentiment,—with no great power of imagination, the man has persuaded his countrymen, and they have persuaded all Europe, that he was one of nature's denizens—the God-inspired—in short, a Poet. Then, again, with no knowledge of life, abstracted from German life, without even the power of entering into a pure or lofty feeling, much less of giving birth to one, he has persuaded his countrymen that he was an imaginative life-describer, bareing the human soul, and tracing every thought to its parent source. Oh! paltry, foul, and most unnoble thoughts which Goethe had the power of tracing. Oh! fallen and sinful human soul which Goethe had the power to lay bare! No, no, my dear Mr North, there is but one light in which that old man purulant can be seen in the colours his countrymen have bedaubed him with. As a shrewd note-taker of their habits, as a relater of their every-day modes of thought, he is entitled to all the praise they give him,—but, oh German innocence!—oh pittas!—oh prisca fides!—what habits of life are these—what modes of thought!

With the help of a first-rate style, full, clear, and satisfying, both to ear and understanding; and with a perfect mastery over the most flexible and graphic of all modern languages, it will be strange if, amidst all the unencumbered writings of this most laborious of the paper-stainers of his laborious and paper-staining country,