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    GERMAN LITERATURE. 333

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    -E> A Short Time Since We Had Occasion T...

    readers under the title of " Debit and Credit . " The success which attended his interesting historical studiesentitled " Pictures of

    , Olden Times in Germany , " has induced him to add a useful appendix to these volumesbringing before his readers a view of the

    social condition of his , native country during the last two centuries . The two volumes recently published , called " New Pictures from

    the Life of the German People , " * -take up the subject from the date of the Peace of Westphalia , after the devastating ravages of

    the Thirty Years' War had deprived the unhappy country of twothirds of its populationand " three-fourths of its capital . "

    , The object which Herr Freytag has in view ( as he tells us in his preface ) is to analyse the character of the people of Germany ,

    and to trace the influence of individuals ( or those who are-popularly called " representative men" ) upon the action of the nation

    at large . " History , " as Lamartine has said , "is human nature written in bas-relief . " It is no meaningless science , consisting of

    high phrases or abstract formulas , but a _stiidy which bears the deepest affinity to the mysteries of our own inner lives , and which

    may be best interpreted by our own daily experience . The highest aim of historical or dramatic art ( as Mr . Kingsley has told us ) is to

    " exhibit the development of the human soul , " and to examine the characters of personsof whom each one has a destiny of his own

    , , by virtue of his own peculiarities . Such a simple plan of study , —looking upon history as another

    form of biography , and allowing the characters to exhibit themselves in action—seems to have been the method which Herr Freytag has

    proposed to himself . The result is a book which is sufficiently interestingand which we can recommend to those of our readers

    who are anxious , to become acquainted with the social manners and habits of the German peoplefrom the olden times up to the

    present-, day . The first two chapters treat of the life of the German _peasant of the gradual emancipation of the serfs , and the state of the

    middle classes in times past . In the third and fourth chapters weread of the increase of military powerand of the state of trade

    and domestic life in the various cities . , The scourge of a long and destructive war ( unparalleled for its accumulated horrors and its

    disastrous effects , since the fall of the Roman Empire ) had paralysed the peasantry of Germanyand completed the ruin of the ancient

    , " _hourgeoisie" In the terrible century which intervened between the years 1650 and 1750 , a ruined nobility , and a helpless ,

    uneducated peasantry , could do little to contend against the powers which maintained themselves by violence . The unfortunate serfs were often

    obliged to obtain their own bread whilst working * for their masters , whilst the formidable taxes which were levied upon corn and meat

    caused the peasants of Meissen to rise in revolt against a tyranny which threatened to render subsistence impossible . To such an

    extent was this system carried , that , in Silesia , many villages were

    * ! N _" _eiie Bilder _aus-clem Leben des deutschen Volkes . 2 Bde .

    German Literature. 333

    GERMAN LITERATURE . 333

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Jan. 1, 1863, page 333, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01011863/page/45/