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of her age, and derived as much benefit from the pattern as if she had been ten years older. So this then, is a picture of German manners. I fit is not, where is Goethe's fame as a painter of life? If it is, what is the meaning of the word Deutscheit? What the devil are you grunting at, Mr North? Do you think I don't know that what are called our own fashionable novels depict a state of manners not much more pure? In the first place, the novels so called are lies and libels—in the next place, where do you find adultery held up even in them as any thing but ruinous to reputation and entailing banishment from society,?—In Germany,—sir if we are to believe this book—written, you will remember, not by some footman out of place, or discarded waiting-maid, as our tales of high life generally are, but by the first author of his country, the great arbiter in arts and literature, himself a courtier and mixing in the highest circles—if, I say, we are to believe this book, the marriage tie is of much easier solution than the gordian knot, and acts, even while people condescend to submit to it, as no restraint on the wildest passions, but rather as an argument for falling in love with other men. No loss of station attends detection ladies and their paramours are received as honoured guests ; and our friend Edward, who is the beau-idéal of a German hero, thinks it no degradation to enact the part of Sir Pandarus of Troy!

You start, my dear sir—I hope you are not turning sick? The facts, I assure you, are as I have stated. Let me read you a part of the eleventh chapter.

"Edward accompanied the Count to his chamber, and was easily tempted to spend some time with him in conversation. The Count lost himself in the memory of former times, and raved of Charlotte's beauty, which he dwelt on with the eloquence of a connoisseur. 'A handsome foot is among nature's best gifts—years leave it untouched. I observed her to-day in walking. One might even yet kiss her shoe, and renew the barbarous but deep-feeling mode of doing honour among the Sarmatims, who used to drink out of the shoe of any one they loved or honoured.'"

But their observations did not continue limited to the foot. They passed on to old adventures, and recalled the difficulties that had long ago hindered the meetings between Edward and Charlotte. The Count reminded him how he had assisted him in finding out Charlotte's bed-room, when they had all accompanied their royal master on a visit he paid to his uncle; and how they had nearly ruined all by stumbling over some of the bodyguard who lay in the ante-chamber. But while they are deep in this highly edifying recollection, the clock strikes twelve. "Tis midnight,' said the Count, smiling, 'and just the proper time. I must beg a favour of you, my dear Baron, guide me now as I guided you then; I have promised the Baroness to visit her to-night. We have not spoken together all day, and 'tis so long since we have seen each other! Nothing is more natural than to sigh for a confidential hour or two."

"'I will be hospitable enough to show you this favour with much pleasure,' answered Edward; 'only the three women are together in that wing who knows but what we may find them with each other?'

"'Never fear,' replied the Count, 'the Baroness expects me. By this time she is in her chamber and alone.'

"'Then 'tis easily managed,' said Edward, and, taking a light, conducted his friend down some secret steps which led to a long passage. They mounted a winding stair. Edward pointed to a door on the right of the landing-place, and gave the Count the light. At the slightest touch the door opened, and received the Count. Edward was left in the dark."

And a more pitiful scoundrel than this hero of the great Goethe, I'll bet a trifle, never was left in the dark before, whether by putting out the candle or being hanged on a gallows-tree. Don't grasp your crutch so convulsively, my dear sir. The philosopher of Weimar would have had his skull cracked on an infinite number of occasions if he had been within your reach. But there are no Christopher Norths in Germany. If there were, would the scene that succeeds this have been suffered to exist? Yet, shocking as it is, I must give you some idea of it, to support my main assertion, that the author was the coarsest-minded of men, and the nation the most flagitious of nations,