difficult for the strongest to break, or to rend it in any way. Through the whole also there breathed a warmth and a spirit of genuine human kindliness which removed every painful feeling of inferiority, even from the lowest. This, however, for the present only in momentary glimpsesthe visit was uncommonly short, but short as it was, the impression remained on me ineffaceable. A sonnet indeed was enough to satisfy the expression of my admiration at that time; but I afterwards discovered that this was only the first link in a chain which should unite my own happiness for ever with that of Rabel Levin."

In 1807 Varnhagen returned from Halle to Berlin, renewed his acquaintance with Rahel, and this acquaintance soon ripened into that perfect intellectual sympathy and emotional harmony, in which alone the poetry of marriage consists. From this period we have the following supplementary notice:

"It were in vain for me to attempt giving anything like a satisfactory outline of Rahel's character to those who have never had the happiness to see her personally. The striking thing in her was the concentrated action of every vital and intellectual function in every moment; a natural and habitual power, to represent which all paper and all canvas is powerless. Generally, however, I may state the impression made on me at that time. In the first place I can say, that in Rahel's presence I had the full conviction that a genuine human being (this noble creation of God) stood before me in its most pure and perfect type; through her whole frame, and in all her motions, nature and intellect in fresh breezy reciprocity; organic shape, elastic fibre, a living connection with every thing around her; the greatest originality and simplicity in sensuous perception, and intellectual utterance, the combined grandiosity of innocence and wisdom; in word and deed alertness, dexterity, and precision of function. All this was at the same time embosomed in an atmosphere of the purest goodness and benevolence, which did not remain a mere atmosphere, but was eager at every moment to incarnate itself in a deed. In Rahel I found combined, what in the greatest characters of the age I had hitherto seen isolated. Profound reflection and brilliant wit, ingenuity and love of truth, imagination and humour, were here united in a succession of the most energetic, gentle, and graceful living motions, which, like Goethe's words, hold quite close by the thing, are the thing itself, and, with the concentrated might of their suggestive contents, work momentarily. Never have I seen elsewhere such a mass of masculine breadth and penetration; along side of which, however, swelled without remission the warm flow of womanly mildness and beauty. Never have I seen an eye and a mouth so animated with loveliness, and at the same time giving free vent occasionally to the most violent outbreakings of enthusiasm and indignation."*

So far Varnhagen, the lover, the husband. The present

There is a portrait prefixed to the first volume, which answers this description very well. It is intellect without coldness, mildness without weakness, composure without indolence or luxuriousness of soul; expressive and pleasing, not beautiful.

writer never had the pleasure of the personal acquaintance of this celebrated lady; he only knows her from her general reputation among the Germans, and from the five (equal to eight English) volumes of German memoirs, of which the title is prefixed; but he can honestly say, that he finds nothing overcharged in the statement of Varnhagen. It is impossible to read the letters of this highly-gifted person, and not feel instinctively that the homage so long and so generally paid to her in Germany was of the true and genuine kind, and such as deserves to have a separate and prominent chapter allotted to it in the records of "hero-worship." Rahel is a German of the Germans; and as such in several traits of intellectual character, and in some opinions, not likely to excite the sympathy of the English mind. But it is, for the most part, only the excellencies of the German mind that are potentiated in her; she stands erect, and sees clear through the confounding nebulosity of æsthetical and philosophical nonsense with which our cobweb-spinning neighbours have so encumbered the atmosphere of thought. In this respect she was more to the literary world of Germany than Napoleon was to the political world in France. He ruled because he was the incarnation and the apex of his nation's prejudices; Rahel was a German, as Gamaliel was a Pharisee, of them and among them, but above them. For this reason, also, she stood isolated and alone even while she reigned; her superiority was felt and admitted in many places, where it was not allowed to operate any practical results.

The two volumes of "Portraits" which Varnhagen has published contain the most ample evidence of the vast influence which Rahel exercised over the greatest minds in Germany. Schleiermacher, the delicate philosopher and the subtle dialectician; Frederick Schlegel, the restless investigator and sublimely floundering dogmatist; Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the chivalrous and adventurous prince, who wanted but the world's one thing needful-success, to have gone down to posterity as famous as Blücher; Gentz, whose pen in modern history has been almost as famous as Napoleon's sword; all know and acknowledge the Berlin Jewess as Pope Paul V. did Cardinal Perron:-" May God inspire that man with good thoughts, for whatsoever he says we must do it!" Would to God, gentle reader, that you or I had been Varuhagen on that night, when at one of the Berlin intellectual soirées he first saw the redoubtable Schleiermacher, who had lectured at Halle, the rival of Wolff and Steffens, now fencing doubtfully with a woman, nay, sitting at her feet, struck dumb once and again by an electric word, as the strongest vision glimmers when phosphorus burns in oxygen gas! To talk with Rahel was to steam it at high pressure,-very dangerous work for

common vessels; so much so, that many mighty men, who had filled Europe with their name, either retreated hesitatingly from her contact, or, what was nobler, fell down devoutly and worshipped, crying, "Spare me, O woman, for I am but a worm!" So in particular Gentz worships the superiority of this lady almost to humiliation, confessing himself with more honesty than dignity to be in her presence the woman, and she the man. "My instructress, my oracle, my friend, my angel, my all!" And of her letters, he says, "They are not written letters-not words on paper; they are living beings, that with a fresh, lusty generosity, with blooming cheeks and with bright eyes, walk in before me and embrace me;" and similar language, for the exaggerations of which we cold-blooded English must make wise allowance. pressions of like intensity we find in the letters of all Rahel's correspondents. Goethe does not hold his worshippers by a stronger magic. When she speaks, her word goes directly to the heart; and the effect follows instantaneously, as from harlequin's wand in the pantomime.

Ex

If we look a little more minutely into this matter, and inquire how it was that the Berlin lady exercised this charm over the greatest intellects of Germany, the two following points prominently present themselves. In the first place, Rahel's mind is of a most masculine, strong, racy, one might almost say, sturdy character. We doubt much whether, notwithstanding all the feminine blandishments with which it was so witchingly tempered, such a female character would please in England. We find, for instance, in these letters, the constant recurrence of such phrases as the following: Bei Gott! bei allen höllischen Qualen! zum rasend werden, zum Tod werden, grimmig, grässlich, verdammt, verflucht, and so forth and then such a determined and despotic Ich HASSE es-I hate it; such an intolerant wrath against every thing "low" (gemein); nay, and she confesses plainly that there is nothing she loves better than to be angry, for a little irritation goads her to speak the truth with more point; and, unless a man speak the truth, he had better not speak at all. Gentz, as we said, will have it that Rahel is properly a man ;* and she is so; but she is not masculine to the exclusion, but merely to the bracing, of her womanhood. She did not live, like most masculine women, loveless and unloved; but on the contrary both loving and most passionately loved. As that man is the most perfect in whom the rough strength of his own sex is tempered by the milder virtues of the woman, so that woman is the true glory of her sex, who to the natural feminine charms of grace and tenderness, adds the

* Sie sind ein grosser Mann; ich bin das erste aller Weiber.-Bilduisse, ii. 203.

clearness of intellect and the decision of purpose characteristic of the male. So the finest statues of the Greeks, like the Rabbinical tradition of the primeval human being, have, properly speaking, no sex, or rather embrace both. Thus we think also it is with Rahel; and in this view we are inclined with Varnhagen to place her far above the general run of great women. But the masculine preponderates, at least strikes more; there is about her a habitual air of decision, and instinctive (not assumed or paraded) dictatorship, which contrasts her strongly with the prevailing aspect of the female character. This masculine character appears in nothing so strongly as in her literary taste; and this we may remark, by the way, is the best of all tests. For a woman, though she may love a whiskered and brawny man to protect her, prefers a smooth and sentimental writer to sympathize with her; thus we suppose, among our female students of German literature, Schiller will always be a greater favourite than Goethe; for Goethe's mind (notwithstanding the "eternal womanly" of the second part of Faust) is essentially masculine, though, as Carlyle happily expressed it, the hard granite mountain is overgrown with soft grass. But Rahel's literary heroes are all of the masculine kind-Goethe, Fichte, Mirabeau,* Heinse; and she will make

The following short characteristic of Mirabeau is among the few interesting sketches from the external public world that Rahel's letters contain. It is much to be lamented that a lady, with such a fine eye for observation, and such a wide sympathizing heart, should have been cooped during her whole life in a small private corner of Berlin; where, for want of grand external objects to occupy her attention, she was tempted to yield too much to that German habit of probing and piercing the inner man, an occupation confined in England for the most part to the religious world, but spreading itself in Germany over the whole breadth of literary activity, and tainting its inmost core. The characteristic of Mirabeau is dated 1st November, 1812, and is as follows:-" When Mirabeau was in Berlin, I saw him in the simple dress of a civilian, and looking altogether like the French courtiers of the day. He wore a slightly curled powdered toupet, bag-wig, shoes and stockings, and corresponding clothes, without gold, silver, or embroidery. He had dark animated eyes, and strong protruding eyebrows, yet there was something mild in his look. He was marked with the small-pox; his figure broad, but not stout. He had the appearance of a man that had lived much and with many; his movements were quicker and more various than is generally found in persons of his rank; for there was nothing compact, or nicely rounded off about him (Er hatte nichts compassirtes). In every thing he did, there was a wonderful activity; you saw at once that here was a person who was accustomed to see and investigate every thing for himself; he used his lorgnette, and I might say his whole person, with a peculiar air of independence. He used to frequent the German theatre, and every day brought his own letters to the post-office, where I often saw him for half-hours and hours at a time, while a lady and his eight-yeared son were waiting for him in a carriage. My father pointed him out to me simply as Count Mirabeau; I knew nothing about him, and for this reason am the more inclined to put a value on the judgment I then formed. He made a good impression on me, though he seemed old, and nothing neat or elegant; and I was almost a child, accustomed to admire only fair and slim men. I have no further recollections of him; he looked like a person that had suffered much and discussed much (Einer der viel gelitten und diskutirt hatte)."

small account of a rough, shaggy, scarred outside, of rudeness and even coarseness, if there be honest energy and native pith within. In this trait of character, closely connected with another to be immediately mentioned, we find in her mind a strong affinity with that of the most notable writer of the present day, Thomas Carlyle, concerning whom we remember to have heard a very proper criticism from the mouth of an intelligent individual,"that he had always shown a great partiality for scamps." And this again brings to our mind a remarkable passage in one of Burns' letters, which we shall here quote in justification of Rahel's enthusiastic attachment to Mirabeau and Heinse: "I have often," says the poet (Letter No. II., Currie's edition), "courted the acquaintance of that part of mankind commonly known by the ordinary phrase of blackguards, sometimes farther than was consistent with the safety of my character. Though disgraced by follies, nay, sometimes stained with guilt, I have yet found among them, in not a few instances, some of the noblest virtues, magnanimity, generosity, disinterested friendship, and even modesty."

The other quality of Rahel's mind which we wish particularly to mention, and in which she presents a yet more striking identity with the historian of the French Revolution, is truthfulness, and a detestation of lies (or SHAMS as Carlyle prefers to call them) amounting almost to a mania and a parade, certainly a mannerism and a hobby-horse. But it is a divine madness, as Plato would have said, and a hobby-horse which a man may reasonably be permitted to ride lustily; for though we may never grant, in Rahel's strong phrase, that "the great world and the literary world are altogether baked out of lies" (diese aus Lügen zusammen gebackene litterarische und grosse Welt), it is a lamentable fact, that from the polite sniffle and snigger of the saloon to the flat duckfooted plumper of a plebeian falsehood, there is an infinite variety of simulation and dissimulation in the world; and beyond the region of conscious or half-conscious lies there is a vast limbo of unconscious ones; both more familiarly known in England under the comprehensive name of HUMBUG. Now every thing of this kind Rabel would not merely not tolerate, but with a strong and wrathful instinct did literally unveil and tear in shreds habituallya fearful habit of mind (δεινον, σχετλιον, as Homer would have said), and which, when carried consistently out in these latter days (when many venerable forms have lost the soul which originally inspired them), must make either a martyr or a ruler of the possessor. Rahel seems to have been a little martyrized here and there in small matters; but she was amply compensated for this by the immense sway she gradually acquired over the minds of all the giants of the age who came in contact with her. She