forcibly struck us, viz. the necessity of warming this carriage, which, during the winter months, is miserably cold.

"The length of the post-office is 16 feet, and including buffers 18 feet 9 inches; the width is seven feet 6 inches; the height of body 6 feet 6 inches, and including under-frame, 7 feet 6 inches. The weight is 4 tons 1 cwt. 2 qrs. The weight of the clerks, bags, &c. is estimated at 2 tons

7 cwt. 3 qrs.

"The post-office is accompanied by a tender, something similar to a horse-box in size; its weight is 2 tons 7 cwt. 3 qrs. The gross weight of the post-office establishment is taken at 9 tons 1 cwt."

Such has been aptly named a Flying Post-Office, which like every other thing or department connected with railways and steam, must put people habitually to their mettle, and beget, as it were, new human activities. But a per-centage of damage and disaster is an inseparable evil.

Mr. Whishaw's volume is well illustrated by a railway map, by plates, plans, and diagrams; and although all on a subject that is not any way more than that of the Import Duties likely to be attractive to the mere readers of light literature, and owing to its professional details not always as plain as the course of a fictitious tale, yet from the magnitude of its parts, the wonders of the achievements described, and the still more wondrous promises of steampower, the theme and many of the sections of this work must address themselves strongly and engagingly to every mind that studies the master works of man, and the race of improvement in human affairs.

Unquestionably the most important and pressing improvement or alteration that can be introduced in connexion with railroad travelling is something to prevent the havoc of human life, of which hardly a week passes without our hearing the most heart-rending accounts. Now, without pretending to suggest any mechanical contrivances or economical arrangements for remedying the terrible and growing evil which we have mentioned, it must be obvious to every one that legislation might do much towards its prevention. Strict regulations might be enacted and enforced, so as to secure competency of knowledge on the part of those, such as the engineer, to whom the actual management of the vehicle is in each case entrusted. As to the sufficiency and soundness of the machinery, and the good order of the rails, &c., there should be, as ought long ago to have been enacted with regard to steam-vessels, inspectors and controllers of some sort. Englishmen are extremely jealous of legislation that goes to interfere with mercantile or manufacturing enterprise; and the national spirit has achieved in consequence the most brilliant and enviable results. But when it is proved by innumerable instances, as in the case of steam-power, not only that

secular interests and pecuniary profits are more regarded than human life, but that really in proportion to the gigantic strength, the resistless power, the frightful catastrophes, which are identified with travelling by steam, have been the callousness of men to the claims of humanity, and the routine estimate of destruction and death wrought by an unconscious and inanimate agency, surely it is high time for Parliament to interfere. Steam has in fact indurated the heart, and communicated to the feelings of those more immediately connected with its operations and results, a portion of its own mechanical coldness and recklessness. When such is the case the statute-book should step in, and sedulously provide so as to teach a decent regard for human life. Cannot the proprietors and managers of railroads be taught and made responsible, through their purses, for the disasters to which we allude? Is there no method of punishing any one who has the immediate management of the steam-power and machinery, with an exemplary severity, who through intemperance or negligence is the cause of accidents? But even these penalties, as we have seen it well reasoned, will not be sufficient or all that legislation might directly enforce. There ought to be clear and well-defined severities apportioned to every neglect of duty, even when no damage or disaster occurs; something, in short, that would constantly operate as a stimulating motive to attention during every moment of the occupation of the engineer, and all those whose activities are called for in regulating the processes essential to locomotion.

We throw out these very general hints, not with a view to impede the triumphs of railroad travelling, but for its perfection, which can never be realized or desired, so long as the destruction of life, and the damage to person, keep pace, as appears to have been the fact, with the mechanical improvements of the system. The nation must be awakened, and not lulled by the frequency of catastrophe. Let us not be totally materialized, or made heartless automata, whatever sordid capitalists, regardless speculators, and ignorant or neglectful servants may feel and do.

We do not bring our observations to an end without copying the announcement which appeared in the Courier, Jan. 15. "Notwithstanding the snow-storm of last night, the mail-train with the Northern bags arrived at the Euston station of the London and Birmingham Railway only sixty-seven minutes after time; and the mail despatches by the London and Birmingham and Great Western Railways were the first received at the General Post-Office. The day mail-train arrived at the Euston station eight minutes before time. Satisfactory proofs these of the great superiority of railway over road-travelling in heavy snow."

221

ART. IX.-History of German Literature, by Wolfgang Menzel. Translated from the German, with Notes, by TH. GORDON. Oxford: Talboys. 1841.

MR. GORDON hopes that Menzel's work, although not a history of the literature which it professes to be, will yet be "of much use to those among us who have acquired a desultory and smattering acquaintance with the subject." The book, however, being eminently superficial, random and bold in its decisions, and opinionative in its assertions, can only convey a smattering knowledge, and therefore cannot be of" much use" to persons who have previously acquired a similar extent of acquaintance with German literature to that which Menzel furnishes.

To write a history of the literature of any nation eminent in that department must be an achievement of the first magnitude. To do so in the compass of Menzel's book would be, it appears to us, the perfection of history, and one of the noblest human exploits; for instead of consisting of a crowded enumeration of authors with slight notices of them, or of the books which these authors have written, with hasty and smart criticisms of them, or even of lively pictures of the national mind at any one particular period, as this writer has done, it would require a profound insight into the progress and vicissitudes of the intellectual and moral development of a people, of social forms and political principles, with the reciprocities and reactions of all of these phases, to be illustrated with masterly skill and selection, by biographical and critical notices, instead of only slightly indicating causes and principles, and making up a book with rash and singular opinions, or imperfect and disjointed sketches of men's lives and characters. Now this last mentioned sort of performance is that to which Menzel can alone lay claim; and even in its achievement he is verbose and commonplace, smattering though forcible in as far as assertion and expression go.

The society in which Menzel has moved, his reading, and his occupations, have all served to nurture a superficiality and a dictatorial habit, features which appear to have been in no way alien to the original constitution of his mind, and certain natural gifts. At an early period of his life he had the situation of a schoolmaster; he afterwards was editor of a literary periodical. From the first he was master of a remarkable fluency of language, and therefore, having betaken himself to letters, attended lectures, and caught a conversational acquaintance with everything, he, like all other young litterateurs, and especially those who have great facility in composition, readily mistaking fluency of words for wealth and depth of ideas, rushed into print, and dictated with a despotic confidence. No established names and no current principles were exempted

from his attacks. He and others mistook assurance for originality, and dogmatism for genius; and when it is understood that it was the manner in which he delivered his opinions, and not the matter in them (which was trite and plain), that attracted notice, it will be admitted that he might with shallow thinkers, and impudent pretenders, be readily enough taken as a master critic, the founder of a new school, and the discoverer of the grand principles as well as epochs of German literature. He who was bold enough to assail Goethe in a manner analogous to that of those who have leathern lungs, and who bawl with stentorian voice, would pass with many who dream not that deep waters run smooth, or that noise is not eloquent, for an oracle.

But if held by the half-educated and the superficial like himself to be a high priest, it was not as one who officiates in a temple of mysteries. He was a man of sturdy opinion, rather than a transcendentalist,of healthy nerve, rather than a mystic and dreaming sentimentalist. It was something of thousands of books which he knew, gathered as hasty reviewers are in the habit of doing, instead of having time or being able to fathom the profundities of any one, digest its contents, and imbibe its spirit. And so far did this inferior attainment work well, that he neither attempts nor pretends mysticism. He is too confident and self-flattered for screening himself amid mists and clouds: he had been too long accustomed to dogmatise to betake himself to effeminate or visionary resources. Accordingly when he comes to speak of that which he had knowledge, derived from observation and reality, fully as much as from slap-dash reading and imperfect study, he not only speaks out like a man, but makes a sensible as well as a clear and comprehensive statement; at the same time dressing his manly views in a manner that is taking both in respect of language and illustrative points. If this manly and independent tone is anywhere particularly to be admired, it must be when the distracting subjects which politics, local as well as national, engage a writer and critic, and still more when religious differences and opposing creeds are his themes. We shall confine our examples of Menzel's fairness and powers to these perplexing topics, and also with the purpose of conveying to those of our readers to whom Germany, its sects, and its literature are strangers, a general account that is informing.

The portion of the account which we first copy, referring to the political mind of Germany, is limited to the utterance of it by the press. Says Menzel

"Liberal principles, however, were disseminated by speeches in the Chambers, by articles in the newspapers and local publications, to such an extent, that among so many names we scarcely know which to praise most. Upon the whole, political ideas and the political style have been both won

derfully improved. How astonished would Justus Möser be were he to see the interest with which our burghers and peasants now talk about politics, and to find in every corner of Germany papers filled not only with patriotic dreams, but also of disquisitions on questions of public law, such as we really meet with every day.

"The number of those who read political papers has increased to an amazing extent.

"The papers no longer occupy themselves exclusively with foreign policy; they now enter into questions connected with that of our own country.

"There is in the age, despite the censorship, an invincible desire to make everything public. Even when the censorship suppresses all Liberal papers, the state-gazettes and the servile papers give, in their own way, a publicity to contested political questions.

"Our political public press has already found out by experience, that the controversies of parties have become a kind of routine: some leading questions have been so often discussed, that notions formerly unknown or mysterious have become clear and known to every one.

"After the Rhenish Mercury of Görres of Coblenz, the Balance of Börne of Frankfort, the Franconian Mercury of Wetzel in Hamburg, the Opposition paper of Wieland (the son of the poet) in Weimar, the Nemesis of Luden in Jena, had all ceased to exist, and the Isis of Oken had gone a wandering, no Liberal journal was started after the passing of the Carlsbad Decrees, except the Neckar Gazette of Seybold, which soon became very moderate in its tone, and the German Observer of Liesching of Stuttgart, who was thrown into prison. After the French Revolution of 1830, this ebb was all at once followed by a flow, so that the sudden transition from chains to a wild and unrestrained licence was truly surprising. Wirth in his Tribune, and Siebenpfeiffer in his Western Mercury, some German exiles in the Courier of the Lower Rhine, preached up revolution and republicanism; nay, some of these terrorists went so far as to attack Rotteck, who appeared to them to be far too moderate, and in whom they saw nothing but an aristocrat, while his paper, The Liberal, (Der Freisinnige,) was suppressed by the Diet as being too liberal.

"The local papers, those which took an interest in the peculiar affairs of one province or city, and began to criticize in an interesting and intelligent manner their local affairs, were far more numerous and of more influence than those which argued about matters of more general importance. Every one knows best himself where the shoe pinches him. He, therefore, who pointed out and discoursed of those wants of any particular place which were the most particular and pressing, was far more attended to than he who spoke only in general terms. The people of one province or town did not, it is true, take any interest in the affairs of another; but all, though independent of one another, felt the same interest in public questions. Few editors of such papers, it is true, were celebrated, or can be ranked among our distinguished literary men; yet though, on the whole, they had but little influence on the upper ranks, they found means to make themselves of more importance on single questions among the lower classes, where they found a fruitful field which had hitherto remained almost uncultivated.