A Hundred Years Ago
TEE " SPECTATOR," OCTOBER 91a, 1830.
TEE STATE OF GERMANY.
No person who has paid any attention to the state of Germany for several years, can doubt that a great alteration of the system by which it has been misgoverned is absolutely necessary. In Germany the march of intellect has been real ; it is not there as here, a mere word of mockery. Education of no ordinary kind is more generally diffused in the north of Germany than in any other quarter of continental Europe; and an almost universal impatience of the rule of the petty princes in whose contemptible hands BO much of the Germanic territory is placed, exists everywhere. We do not believe that discontent in any dangerous degree is to be feared in Prussia or Austria ; and at all events it could be kept down, or appeared by obvious methods ; but in the smaller principalities it extends through almost all classes. The intolerable vexations arising from the customhouses which are scattered with such incredible profusion throughout Germany—the loss and trouble consequent upon the continual change and fluctuation of value of the innumerable coinages—the enormous expense of keeping up so many courts: and so many mimic armies—these, and many other grievances ol the same kind, are so practical, as to be felt severely by every ORM Besides these, there is a host of theoretical grievances, which are carefully nourished in the Universities, and, far more than actual oppressions, call into existence those secret societies, one of which ia said to have been discovered at Weimar. If, however, the petty principalities be got ri..d of, and four or five sufficiently strong powers be established in the territory of the old Caesarean empire audits adjuncts—if free constitutions, such as people so far advanced in intelligence and civilization as the Germans confessedly are, deserve, be granted—the fancies of the dreaming mystics, or tho drunken Burschen, will be of no importance. But an alteration must be made, and that with as little delay as possible.
WELSH'S MILITARY REMINISCENCES OF INDIA.
Old Indians, one of the most respectable classes as well as one of the most considerable of the multifarious society of England, will read with pleasure memorials of themselves and their friends, which will excite recollections of an experience invariably dear to their affections. The vigour of the old Indian has been spent amidst strange and far distant scenes, and with companions now mostly removed, who have left behind them no trace except in the hearts of their friends and comrades : he returns in the decline of life to the abode of his youth and the places endeared by early education ; he finds all changed, himself not the least so • his friends have dis- appeared, and he himself has long been counted as gone too. The position of such a man is peculiar and touching it gives a character to an old Indian that no one can fail to esteem and respect, though possibly it may be marked with little peculiarities that sometimes may raise a smile. There are a few returned Indians who do not unceasingly regret the society and manners they have quitted in the East—and with some reason. Hospitality, cordiality, confidence, and an absence of all sordidness, are the reigning virtues in our Indian possessions and besides, human nature is to be pardoned if the man accustomed to be looked up to as a sort of deity by large and in some sense a refined population, disrelishes the stunt, equality of British manners—he will love as little the coldness di his superiors as the rudeness of his interiors,........
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