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'lA IT 1* f "PlT IT TT Jc9U I illlllU*
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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TRINKETS FROM DEUTSCHLAND . By a Mysterious Contributor . Last Monday , at five o ' clock m the afternoon , we took a third class ticket for Dover at the office of the South-Eastern Railway , near London-bridge ; walked , as is our wont , up and down the platform until starting time , and were then huddled into a kind of cow-pen , and dragged like a malefactor through the cutting air . Our sufferings , however , on the occasion , were more sympathetic than directly physical . We are old campaigners , and came fortified with our customary munitions of rugs and Russian fur . But there were two
thin-clad chattering petrifactions of Frenchmen at our side , and two women crouching behind the shelter of a parasol in the next pen : we were partakers of their pains , and it is to be feared also respondents to their sweet invocations on behalf of the South-Eastern directors . At twelve o ' clock the steamer moved her snoring fins , and pointed towards Ostend . She pitched drunkenly and we bolted downstairs , stretched ourselves along the seat , with our carpet-bag for a pillow , and in this attitude preserved the equilibrium of our interior . Reached Ostend at five o ' clock , and at six the trumpet sounded from the railway platform ; the engine yelled answer , and away we started . Through Bruges , through Ghent , through Malines—the country all along
being as flat as a pancake , until towards evening we approached Liege . Here nature began to give some signs of energy , set her arms a-kimbo and looked into our face with alternate smiles and sternness . Some twenty tunnels pierced the hills , and new scenic features greeted our escape from each . The woods were drawn like many-coloured scarfs over the shoulders of the hills j the larch sprung like a tapering mist beside its darker brother the mountain pinej grey rock-knobs jutted through the painted leaves , and along the bases of the hills the streams crept and tumbled alternately . Picturesque houses , cottages , castles , and blue wood-smoke must round off the reader ' s conception of this delightful land . Reached Cologne at nine o ' clock , and soon found ourselves swathed in the blankets of the Rheinberg .
On Wednesday morning before day dawn clouds spread like an umbrella over all the zenith , but a horizontal fringe of clear blue gave promise of a fine day . At six o ' clock we loosed from the quay and steamed upwards . Two hours brought us in sight of the white walls of Bonn . To the left rose the ragged summits of the seven mountains , and upon the wildest peak , recoiling against the storm , stood the castle of Drachenfels . Right opposite stood the ruin of Rolandseck , " a noble arch in proud decay , " clasping in its hoary arms the cankering atmosphere which ruined it piecemeal . about these
Beauties , geological and psychological , hang scenes . Here and there the fluted basalt exhibited itself as a solidified outcrop of the central fires . The hills are very singular . Imagine four inches cut from the apex of a sugar loaf , six inches more from the centre ; fancy the latter put aside , and the conical top placed upon the broad base that remains , and you have the general characteristic of the hills about here . The smaller cones appear to have been forced up at a later period from the bowel-furnace underneath , and are encased by the older hills as the skin of certain warts encloses the protruding papilla ? .
and Faraday , I imagine , might have composed a poem had Shakspeare , instead of Humphry Davy , operated upon him . An image sometimes flashes out upon you in the writings of this man which irradiates his whole subject , and throws a poetic flush into the face of science . Doubtless Faraday finds pleasure in his permanent mood ; and doubtless Murchison , with his geologic hammer , would delight to wander along * " those banks of Rhine "; but we must confess an infidelity to the pursuits of both as the steamer bore us along . Our mood was psychologic ; not that we would have it so , but it came—shall we tell whence it came ? There is within every human breast a solar system which has not yet found its Newton .
Aphelions and perihelions , attractions and centrifugal divergences , night and day , full moons and eclipses , which have thus far baffled philosophic calculation . We watch from the earth the entrance of Jupiter ' s fourth satellite into the planet ' s shadow , we see it issue at the other side , creep round him , and again dive into the shade ; and we find that to complete the circle , some two-and-forty hours are necessary . Centuries ago it was also two-and-forty hours , and centuries to come it will be the same . One unchangeable law stretches through ages , and Professor Airy converses with the Chaldean sage through their interpreters , the stars . But , have those inner orbs fixed laws of revolution ; or , are not their phenomena
meteorological , like the wind blowing where it listeth , and telling not whence it cometh or whither it goeth ? Their motions are certainly irregular , but may they not hearken to a common law , notwithstanding ? Some years ago a comet was twisted from its path by the planet Jupiter , and sent swinging round the Sun again ; after making a few revolutions , it escaped once more from the thraldom of our system and departed , God knows where ! Here was deviation produced by a constant cause . The visible universe is pregnant with one force acting from different centres , and may not the invisible be so too ? That brown rock which thrusts it crystalline forehead through the moss and fern , is a centre of force for me . The Rhine-land , with its ascending forests and vine terraces etched into crags ; those smitten ruins festooned with
centennial memories ; the noble river which " foams and flows ' beneath them—each and all possess their radiant forces which act as certainly upon the human soul as magnetism upon the ferric mass . Nor is it these alone which determine my mood just now . Emerson is beside me , and the music of his " Wood Notes" mingles with the silent warbling of the hills . Tennyson is also here , and so is Longfellow , with his genial , sunny heart : and there is still another influence due to a neighbouring mass of bone and muscle which clasps a heart and arches round a brain , both of hopeful calibre . He has dissolved Hyperion , and now pours the fluid mass laden with the perfume of his own feelings into me . In plain words , reader , my young friend with the beaver coat reads to me , and his voice blends harmoniously with the
tints of beech and hazel , with the bloom of the sky , and the rush of the river . These were the influences which , combined with the projectile force due to our proper individuality , determined the sunny orbit of our thoughts that day . But , whither has this sentence brought us ? In sooth , face to face with " Robert Owen ' s first principle . " Well , this shall not frighten our orthodoxy into fits . This creed of circumstances , like every thing else , partakes of the lights and shadows of a m . in ' s moods . It is sometimes unanswerable , and sometimes not worth an answer . Nor is there any inconsistency in this ,
for our first insight is by no means a constant quantity ; it oscillates between mere dog insight and the insight of a God . In the dog-days circumstances loom upon us like Fata Morgana on the coast of Naples , but the God ' s day comes , and the sky is clear once more . If , however , this creed of circumstances were granted , I do not see that we should be much the gainers . Grant that houses are made of bricks , the house is not built by the admission : before we can turn it to practical account , we must be able to distinguish bricks from buns . In other words , we must understand circumstances before
we can apply them . How is this knowledge to be attained ? " By experiment , " replies an apostle of this creed . But , where are your experiments ? I know that Harmony Hall , in Hampshire , was built at enormous cost ; that its erection was hailed as the commencement of God ' s millennium upon earth ; that even at the present moment letters significant of this are stamped on one of its gables in silicic acid ; but , I know also , that it soon became a failure . Either too much or too little circumstance ; or , perhaps , a wrong dose altogether must have been applied here . Have you any guarantee that your next attempt will be more successful ? I merely cite the experiment to show that , plain as your case appears , there are stern difficulties behind it ; for you work with materials of which you are ignorant ; and , probably , will
ever remain so . " Given the circumstances , " I have heard you say , we can predicate the man . " Now , given a Jesus Clirist , or even a philosopher Fichte , will you oblige me by calculating his effect ? Is it not like asking your fouryear-old boy for an investigation of the oscillatory circle ? Such men enter as transcendental functions into the social problem , and refuse to be solved by your feeble geometry . But , I doubt not , you would " regulate " Christ ' s " enthusiasm " and Fichte ' s " ideality , " and thus convert them into wholesome citizens of your " new moral world . " Chronometers in ships have their springs sometimes polarized by a flash of litfhtninsr . In such a case , what would you think of a proposal to abolish the earth ' s magnetism , so that Dent ' s £ 50 patent might still keep time ?
But , we have spun too long in this funnel of speculation . Forward , then , under the cannon of Klsrenbreitatein , and by the walls of Coblent- /—through the Lurlei , past Bingcri , into MainU—then by rail to Frankfort ; forward to that brave little land , Hesse Cassel , at present the cynosure of political Europe ; whence , from the tranquil shadow of an acacia , we have had much pleasure in conducting in thought the foregoing discussion with our respected English reader .
In the rotation of moods we are geologists and psychologists in turn . The understanding and the soul possess us alternately ; and it is the habitual fixation of one mood which often gives it its predominance . Jean Paul , I doubt not , could have conquered mathematics had he been pushed to it ;
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We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . — GOKTHE .
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KINKEL IS FREE ! Kinkel is free ! X . et the wind bear the sound The sphered earth around , And whisper , as it ilies Beneath . " Vienna ' s "wall , Where Blum in silence lies , The words so dear to all" Kinkel is free ! " KLnkel is free ! X . et lightning ' s rapid flight , These accents of delight , Flash on its fiery wings From Warsaw to Biscay ; And in the Courts of Kings Write , in the face of day , " Kinkel is free ! " Kinkel is free ! From far Kutayah ' s wall I hear the answering call Of Kossuth ' s manly voice ; And o ' er Atlanta ' s brine The Exiled shout—? ' Rejoice ! Our Brother of the Rhine , Kinkel , is free ! " Kinkel is free ! A beaker full of wine , Fresh from the rocky Rhine ! Brave Kinkel , health to thee ! With beating hearts , and eyes Moist with glad tears , do we Shout back the welcome cries , Xov . 12 , 1850 . " Kinkel is free ! " George Hooper .
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Not . 16 , 1850 . ] © f ) 0 & £ && £ ! % 813
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 16, 1850, page 813, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1859/page/21/
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