flamed fancies a second-rate dramatist loom- | be stated, Professor at Aarau, but Professor ed a Cæsar or a Napoleon, were thrown at a school, we believe, rather than at a into prison, and variously, although not university. severely punished. But we must add to the tale of boyish absurdities a few words of their yet more a bsurd sister-patrits. "That women took part in our exertions is already known from the report of the judicial proceedings. One of these lady patriots was the mistress of a school for young girls, who often so tormented Pfistern, that he would, with emphatic politeness, threaten to teach the German "Maid of * * of a wife and mother." These extracts may suffice to show that our autobiographer's condemnation of the Belgians and phrases of their rejected king are not the result of early prejudice, and should, therefore, be received as the fruit of ripened judgment and experience. But, having the volume open before us, we will, ere closing it, extract the account of the writer's introduction to almost the only two living literary celebrities hitherto mentioned by him; of these, the one is in the autumn, the other in the spring or early summer, of his fame; they are Görres, and Wolfgang Menzel. Münch was, at this time, it should "As I was one day hastening to the Canton-school, a large packet of corrected the voice of my friend St. calling upon me and uncorrected tasks in my hand, I heard to stop and look round. To my astonishment, I beheld a whole train of male and female figures in the old German costume. First walked a maiden of middle height, slenderly and elegantly made, with a face whilst the loveliest white contended with upon which health was distinctly legible, the brightest red. Her simple black dress, folds; her corset, adorned with a pretty tastefully puffed, and laid in a few plain cross; her chestnut hair, partly hanging low in two gracefully braided tresses, partly wound round her head under a net, after the fashion of the Bernese Oberland girls; the appropriate leathern pocket, with its silver points and chains, hanging from her girdle; all, in short, deliciously became the thoughtfully-sweet girl, who reminded me of a print of the Virgin that I had recently purchased. Steadily she led the way. Next came a younger sister, of twelve or fourteen, with full, broad, cherry cheeks, running unsteadily, treading down her shoes, ungraceful in her movements, evidently prompt to do battle with the first saucy boy she should meet, jesting incessantly, and laughing immoderately. Then followed a man of staid years, in a worn, old German coat, carelessly buttoned, through which peeped a crumpled, snuffstained frill, with hair rather red than yellow, that, in the full enjoyment of dithyrambic freedom, stood or lay in all directions, giving his arm to a very plainly but nicely dressed lady, of strong make and full health, with the remains of former beauty; the whole offering a vivid picture of the old-German patriarchal life. We made acquaintance immediately, and very soon became intimate, as I almost daily accompanied my friend to visit the family. Hardly could any other man have made so deep an impression upon me as did Görres, much as we differed upon many points in mode of apprehension, in order of ideas, in views and principles, in life and manners. The name of Görres was then one of the most celebrated, and he his early acknowledged scientific and pacame to Aarau with the double crown of triotic merits, and of his recent political martyrdom. His Germany and the Revolution' had appeared not long before, and flashed like lightning through the clouds that darkened the political horizon. The most opposite emotions were called forth by this work, and, by the singular vital question of the times was brought hieroglyphics veiling an open secret, the under discussion. Görres had, with the skill of a philosophic physician, apprehended, described, and marked the ma lady of the times; had evoked the spirits in, and out of, the abyss, and, with JeanPaulish fancy, united to the inspiration of the jest of olden days, had unveiled the story of the nation's heart. **** His heart, which had for years embraced all Germany, throbbed with especial warmth for his beloved Rhenish provinces. Their traditions, tales, and lays, were ever present to his fancy, as fountains of living waters above which the eagles of olden times soared, the birds of paradise sang, the feats of legendary heroes, the loveditties of an Ofterdingen, an Eschilbach, resounded. And this classic land he now beheld subjected to Prussia; a thought that infuriated him, whenever that bureaucratic government, which he had caricatured with such virulent irony, recurred to his imagination. When we read his We now turn to the Biographico-Historiunjust attacks upon Prince Hardenberg, cal Studies, amongst which, as we have said, should we most pity the statesman thus unmercifully assailed, or the censurer who the Life of Sir Walter Raleigh is most like could be insensible to the extraordinary a finished production. But our object, in forbearance and kindness which the de- our abstracts and extracts, being both to exceased Prince-Chancellor opposed to the stormy passions of the wrathful patriot. Hardenberg's letters to Görres and his wife, during their voluntary exile, breathe this spirit; showing him ever ready for a reconciliation, and the way home ever open to Görres, so he would satisfy the violated laws. gend of Menzel's early achievements; of his feuds with the Breslau Menzel, christened Karl Adolf, with whom he is not unfrequently confounded, whilst he disowns all kindred with him; of his dissensions with his parents, who opposed his learned career; of the hard fate of his youth, whence the harshness of his manly mind; of his audacious attacks upon Gōthe's lofty aristocratic supremacy at Weinar, &c. I soon discovered that Menzel was, indeed, an overbearing companion, with whom it was not every one that could live; but richly endowed with intellect, and of a very decided character; in short, that he really was of the wood, out of which, if they themselves mar it not, illustrious men are carved." hibit novelty of style in composition as well 66 "It was upon another fine summer's day that, going to invite my friend Steingass to a walk, I saw an unknown figure seated at his study table. This was a powerful young man, of slender form, and swarthy complexion, with a pair of keenly penetrating eyes; his stiff, long, black In turning over the pages of these two hair, divided on the forehead and cut after the fashion of the Black Forest; his beard volumes, the studies which most attract us long, according to Turner*-custom, and are, King Christiern II., the Amsterdam clad in the very shortest, black, old-Ger- Dove and Mother Sigbrit," (in which preferman coat I had ever seen. Long did the ence, we beg to say, we are actuated by no young man sit before me, uttering only the gossipping love of scandal, but by the sin most indispensable answers, and absorbed gularity of the influence acquired by a hidein the map of Switzerland. Presently my ous old woman over the Danish tyrant,) and friend appeared and presented me to Herr the comparison between the elder and the Wolfgang Menzel, of Waldenburg, near Breslau, formerly Vorturner at Jena, then now living Belgians, with a sketch of Wil. Bursch at Bonn, who had esteemed it wise liam I.'s early life. We begin with the to withdraw himself from the inquisition of Berlin society into the patriotic criticism of the old-Germanizers, and seek personal safety in that classic land of liberty,' Switzerland. "I now learned much of the sacred le. former. As some little apology for Christiern's many offences, we are told that his royal father committed his education to low persons, who, remote from the court and his own eye, flattered the young prince's faults into vices, encouraging his disposition to every kind of gross excess as well as to violence and cruelty; whilst his appointed in These words, Turner and Vorturner, were adopted when, on the conclusion of the war, an attempt was made to revive the old-German sports and gymnastic exercises, as well as costume, and are derived from the tourney or tour-structors managed to disgust him with learn. ing. Thus fitted for the ruler's task, Prince nament. Christiern was appointed Viceroy of Nor-in order to judge for himself without being way, with the assistance of an eccle: iastical in any way commited, he gave an enter chancellor. Archbishop Erik Valkendorf, an tainment to the citizens, to which he desired able administrator, but an ambitious man, that Sigbrit and her daughter should be inwho courted, his future sovereign by un-vited. He found Düveke's charms fully worthy acts of complaisance. Under such adequate to the archbishop's panegyric, and circumstances, it is more remarkable that forthwith opened and concluded a criminal the young viceroy should have quelled in- negotiation with her mercenary parent. surrections both in Sweden and in Norway, than that he should have engaged in an illicit amour. But the origin of this attach ment is worth recording. The archiepiscopal chancellor had repaired to Bergen, to appease some tumults excited by the imposition of new taxes. Here, as Münch tells us, he walked through the market-place, glancing inquiringly at the crowd : Düveke presently acquired and long retained unbounded power over her lover's heart; whilst her mother, frightful as she has been depicted, acquired and retained similar power over his mind. We are told that understanding, uncommon knowledge of "Sigbrit possessed a singularly keen human passions, and an immoderate propensity to intrigue, with a cruel, crafty, and revengeful sense of injuries." "When he was astonished by the sight of a woman of extraordinary stature and corpulence, who, as her baskets showed, She rendered all these qualities of such dealt in fruits, sugar-plums, and other dainties. Her cheeks, strangely distended, avail in her intercourse with Christiern, that and deep-dyed with such a red as he had she became his chief adviser in the concerns never before seen on woman's face, hung of his viceroyalty. And when, in 1510, he down nearly to her bosom. Her eyes was summoned to Copenhagen by the inflashed a dark, almost unnatural fire, and creasing illness of King John, he directed a savage scorn played about her strongly her secretly to follow him with her daughter. curled lips. * * * Beside this giantess stood a maiden of such gracious loveli- The connection did not, however, long reness as must have disarmed the severest main a secret. eye." But, as the daughter's beauty is a less original part of our story than the mother's ugliness, we omit its description and pass on to the hag's answer to the chancellor's inquiry as to what and whence they were. "The giantess replied, 'We are natives of Amsterdam in Holland, my dread lord: my name is Sigbrit Wylms, my daughter Düveke. We are indigent, but of good repute, and earn our livelihood honestly. Many a lordly earl and knight, many a lewd priest and monk, has gazed wistfully at this tender blossom of mine; but I have managed, by strict discipline and constant vigilance, to guard it from wild brambles, and venomous worms. * I have been warned in a dream that a lot, far different from that of her station, awaits my child. But even if she is not to be a queen, she is already, look at her yourself, dread lord, a queen amongst her equals. Near her envy is silenced, and pays her a reluctant homage. Her girlish playfellows, all who knew her, call her the Dove." " * * In 1514, Christiern ascended the throne, and the states of the kingdom pressed him to marry. To this he made no objection, provided he could obtain the hand of the Princess Isabel of Spain, who, to great beauty, talent, and piety, added an ample portion. Christiern's unlawful amour was urged as a cause of refusal by Isabel's guardians; it was at once, in appearance, broken off, and the marriage solemnized. But the young queen could no more weaken Dü veke's hold upon Christiern's heart by her personal charms, than by her mental endow. ments she could break the shackles in which Sigbrit had enthralled his mind; and in a very few weeks after her marriage, the mother and daughter resumed their former station, even more openly than before. The decisions of the council, and even those of the states of the kingdom, were submitted to the old Dutchwoman's approbation, and the prosperity of the nation depended entirely upon her caprices. Uncomplainingly as the newly wedded queen seems to have submitted to neglect, The Chancellor was so impressed by the such a state of affairs soon became intolerabeauty of the daughter, and perhaps by the ble to the Danish nation, and especially to strange language of the mother, that upon the grandees, who held themselves to be the rejoining the prince at Opslo, he hastened to proper advisers of their sovereign. report his discovery of so much loveliness those who were most indignant, at least and purity in a low-born foreigner. Chris- whose indignation carried them the greatest tiern, fired by the description, betook him-length, appear, naturally enough, to have self without loss of time to Bergen, where, mistaken the source of the influence which But they reprobated. They imagined that were quently visited the boy in the Castle of Cothere no beautiful daughter, there could be penhagen, even against the will of his pano power to harm or thwart them in a re-rents, or took him home with her, to give him lessons in the science of government; pulsive old crone. Düveke suddenly sicken. which surprise us the more from the difficulty ed and died; and, frequent as are the of conceiving how the old Amsterdam fruitgroundless accusations of poisoning in the hawker, or alewife, could have acquired such history of past times, the charge cannot, we knowledge as she imparted. fear, upon the occasion in question, be thus easily disposed of. But the crime proved as unavailing as it was atrocious. "The heart of the king seemed to have died with his mistress. The wild passions which had hitherto been curbed by one yet more potent, love, now ruled him with unmitigated, arbitrary sway. Hatred, suspicion, cruelty, and contempt for mankind, were now denizens of the royal bosom, and the main object for which the death of Düveke, or Columbula, as the Latin author calls her, had been wrought or desired, the destruction of Sigbrit's influence, was not attained; on the contrary, she seemed to have inherited, as a legacy, the two-fold regard of the king; and revenge for the annihilation of his love-paradise, and a passionate longing to inflict retribution for wrongs endured, governed the conduct of the bereaved lover and mother." * * ** * "But the magic by which Sigbrit ruled the king's spirit consisted chiefly in the readi ness with which she entered into his ruling passion, his desire to strengthen the monar chical element in the constitution, intolerably narrowed by the popular representative principle, and to break the arrogance of the pri vileged classes, the nobility and the priesthood; or, according to the better opinion, the skill with which she instilled those ideas into his mind, encouraging him to carry them into effect, by reference to the success of several of his co-sovereigns, as Louis XI., Charles V., and Henry VIII. * * Her friends and spies had vividly depicted to her the injustice, the arbitrary cruelties, often perpetrated by the great landed proprietors, lay and clerical: and she herself had been a sufferer by them of old. Hence her passionate hatred for the nobility, which she found little difficulty in grafting upon the That the revenge taken by Christiern upon king's jealousy of his own authority. She the supposed or convicted murderers of his had in pay numerous spies, selected from paramour was fearful, will readily be con- the populace, who daily supplied her with ceived by all who are acquainted with the news. These tales, tricked out according to cruelties he perpetrated or commanded in her own views, highly seasoned and exagSweden. We omit the painful and super-held most objects through spectacles, the gerated, she repeated to Christiern, who befluous detail, to end our account of this study glasses of which she fashioned. The highest with an extract or two on the point for which officers of state attended upon her, and waitwe selected it; to wit, the increased and ed for hours together at her door, often in increasing influence of Mother Sigbrit, when destitute of any stay beyond her own talents and address; or, in the opinion of the vulgar, high and low, of the black art. "Sigbrit's former influence daily increased, such power has habit; such witchery did she exercise over many minds, that Queen Isabel herself lived upon friendly terms with her, and the proudest nobles no longer blushed to attain their objects through her mediation. "Upon occasion of the queen's confinements, Sigbrit undertook the offices of midwife and nurse; she even waited upon the royal children, and carried them from place to place with a tenderness that could hardly spring from the heart, but which established her in Isabel's favor. At times, however, her diabolic nature overpowered the dissimulation with which she affected such feelings. Thus, upon the birth of a third son, she spitefully exclaimed, 'Why so many princes ! Where shall we find kingdoms for them all! Get ye gone! To the devil with the princes!" storm and tempest, whilst she was chatting with the meanest men upon common-place matters. Happy were the ministers, if her door at length unclosed, and a gracious look rewarded their patience. "One topic, frequently discussed when the king visited her in her own house, was the trade with the Hanse towns. These last were, as may well be imagined, not upon the best footing with the Netherlands, and Sigbrit, cherishing a patriotic spirit of revenge against them, encouraged Christiern in his purpose of repressing, as much as possible, their trade with his three kingdoms, and regulating all his internal commercial relations according to the plan adopted in the Netherlands. "To her may be ascribed the expedition equipped to explore the Frozen Ocean for islands, and a passage to the East Indies; as also, the prohibition to Hanseatic and other German vessels to fish, as before, in the Danish seas, &c. She induced the king to bestow many important rights and commercial privileges upon the Danish towns, to protect the third estate against the pretensions of the great, to convert the ecclesiastical prebends into foundations for the sick poor. Finally, she secured all practicable advantages to Dutch sailors in the northern realms. * "All Christiern's relations and treaties with whilst the bad overawed them. In no other foreign states were governed by sound policy, history do we find so early and so unbounded and, like some of his internal regulations, a degree of individual liberty, and in none so show Mother Sigbrit's influence not disadvan-immoderate, so untameable a misuse of libertageous to Denmark. But she disgraced her ty; so that the annals of the Flemish and merits by shameful rapacity, usury, private Walloon times may exemplify how little the speculations carried on with the public funds, and by her vindictive persecution of individuals and corporations opposed to her. * * * * sway of well-understood freedom, legal order, and a steady state of cultivation can be promoted by the triumph of pure democracy." Of the Netherlands, at the close of the Burgundian era, Münch thus speaks: 66 "The Swedish tragedy was mainly owing to the violent councils of Sigbrit. The unscrupulous Schlaghök was sent thither upon her recommendation. The extermination of They confirmed by oath, and then broke, the Swedish nobility was one of the thoughts one compact after another, always complainthat by day and by night occupied her soul. ing of encroachments upon their liberties. The privileged orders were gradual- The fundamental idea, bias, and temperaly driven to resistance by desperation, and an ment of the Belgians of that day are embodied imprudent expression of Sigbrit's, 'that the in the arrogant Philip of Cleves, the especial Danish nobility must be tried collectively for favorite of the democracy, but whose precise high treason,' proved the signal for revolt. object in his eager exertions was never ascerThe insurgents chose Frederick, Duke of tained. Thus did the country forfeit its peace Holstein-Schleswig, for the King of Denmark, and quiet, with the enjoyment of its freedom; and, arming against Christiern, triumphed. and, as a consequence of this degenerate sysIn 1523 the King was obliged to fly from tem, the most flourishing towns in Europe, Copenhagen, and before he attended to his which then were still marts for the whole own safety, he took means to insure Sigbrit's. world's trade, sank deeper and deeper into The infurated populace would have torn her moral abominations and disorders, into finanto pieces, and she was therefore conveyed on cial embarrassments and debts, and at last ship-board in a cask. She is said to have into complete insignificance and actual poconsoled the King of Denmark upon his re-verty. If we would conscientiously underverses, by promising to procure for him the stand the condition of those times, we must more exalted post of Burgomaster of Amsterdam. From this moment she disappears from the stage, and must probably have died upon the voyage, or soon after landing in her native country, Holland, where the dethroned monarch resided for some time." * ** * not read tbe partial French memoirs, which always represent the Flemings as runaway subjects, and every evil as a consequence of the Burgundo-Austrian sovereignty; but study and compare their own printed and MS. country chronicles, their charters and other official documents, and we shall be forcibly struck with the arrogance of a people, who neither could nor would be content with such rulers, with such unbounded liberties, with so happy and prosperous a condition. * * "The Belgians, like the Dutch, have pass"As, after the re establishment of Nethered through a series of historical changes land independence under the Orange dynaswithout having ever constituted a nation. ty, King William I. was represented to the Until the Burgundian era, we people as a hypocrite, and an oppressor alike find only unconnected duchies, counties, of Belgian freedom and the Catholic faith, so lordships, towns, with innumerable rights in the 16th century was William the Taciand privileges, pretensions, and claims, ad-turn industriously and similarly calumniated. vanced and enforced now amongst themselves That great man, who first breathed into the and against each other, now by subjects and nobility the idea and the spirit of royal revassals against their lords, now by lords and sistance to a foreign yoke, whose example invassals against the Emperor and the imperial cited to the first and weightiest enterprises, federation, to which they all belonged. Un- whose advice had proved the only sure guide til the close of the 15th century, we no where in moments of danger, was represented as a find the collective idea of a Belgian people pupil of Machiavel's, whose sole object was expressed; the idea of a Belgian nation does to bring the nation, now delivered from Spanot exist. This was equally the case in the nish thraldom,under a more disgraceful tyrannorthern provinces; but there, earlier than ny. The verbose declamatory harangues of in Belgium, arose the feelings that they ought Messrs. Vilain XIV., Rodenbach, and Co. in to constitute a brotherly federation against our days, may be read in many a Flemish, foreigners; and the glorious recollections of Brabant, and Hainault pamphlet of the 16th Batavian wars and enterprises early produc- century. ed a sort of nationality. Writers of all ages agree in painting the Belgians as the most "In a Ghent pamphlet, we read: 'Never restless, unruly, tumult-loving mortals in ex-were the much-to-be-pitied Netherlanders so istence; and it is observable that they have barbarously treated (not even by the Spaalways treated their best rulers the worst, niards) as now, by their own countrymen. * |