These things are surely anomalies, yet they are strictly true. The nobles of Prussia are preferred in military appointments; but if they in return abandon trade, mechanic arts, commerce, and the professions, they certainly have the worst of the bargain. The king is respected because he is simple in his manmers, economical in his expenditures, and of natural benevolence, and because he is identified with the struggles and glorious victories of the nation. The taxes are heavy; but the state squanders no money. The country is poor, but the universities and public institutions for science are munificently endowed. Among men of letters in Prussia, attachment to the government is universal, though the principles of liberty and public justice are discussed among them with unlimited freedom and great knowledge.

On the subject of constitutions in Germany, we would call the attention of our readers to one important fact. Every constitution which has been granted, secures to the nobility, as a coordinate branch of government, a positive influence, which they did not before possess. There are not wanting among the ardent lovers of freedom, those who prefer a regal government after the old forms, to a constitution on which an offensive aristocracy shall be irrevocably engrafted. The contest has often been a great deal more against feudal prerogatives, than against royal authority. In this manner many of the Bavarians, at present, would entirely prefer the old state of things to the operation of their present constitution.

The interests of the monarch, in Prussia, are on the side of his people. He is made politically stronger by the emancipa- V tion of the peasantry, by the increase of free proprietors, by the uniformity of taxation. Thus the interests of the crown and the people coalesce. The lovers of liberty in Germany have chiefly directed their attacks against the absurd pretensions and inherited rights of nobles. The policy of Prince Hardenburgh we have heard far more severely censured by nobles than by commoners. By commuting the hereditary services of the peasantry for a present demand, and closing at once the iniquitous partnership, he left the peasants in possession of less land but of more liberty. Ask a Prussian lawyer in what the privileges of the nobility consist, and he will answer you, that those privileges are almost entirely done away. Certain offices about the king's person are filled by those of noble birth, but otherwise a citizen may attain to any post or distinction, as well as a nobleman. Certain estates are free from the land tax; but these estates may be bought and sold, and a commoner can now become the purchaser. The exemption attaches to the land, and not to the owner.

The religious history of Germany, for the last fifty years, would seem to have been designed to furnish an illustration of

the weakness of human wisdom, and the strength of divine purposes. Infidelity had ever before been the part either of scoffers or philosophers. It had been engendered by frivolous vanity, which turned things holy into a jest; or it had been the abortion of some speculative free thinking, which made of a practical atheism the basis of morality, and magnified the nature of scepticism into a sort of wisdom of superior natures. But now mankind were destined to have a third; it was exegetical infidelity; the most absurd, and we speak advisedly when we say the most credulous, of all. Whatever learning throws light upon the oracles of religious truth, must be received and treasured with a gratitude commensurate with the importance of the subject; but when the interpreter, passing from his proper province, seeks to find in the simple story of the evangelists the exaggerated accounts of credulous admirers, when he so far forgets the true end of criticism, as to explain the wonderful deeds narrated of the founder of our religions as actual transactions, yet presupposing no supernatural power; when he describes Jesus as a skilful physician, whose extraordinary success was magnified into proofs of miraculous agency, he then leaves the firm land of criticism, and launches into the wildest absurdities which a credulous man can devise. Were we at this time in search of illustrations by which to exhibit to the world extraordinary instances of unsoundness of judgment, as displayed in the pursuit of a favourite theory, we know not whence we could derive better, or, for human nature, more humbling illustrations, than from the writings of German interpreters of the Scriptures. Paulus, one of the leaders in this business, declared of himself, that nature never intended him for a theologian, and that he had mistaken his calling. We believe him fully.

This form of infidelity is to our minds the most disgusting in which it has ever appeared. The annihilation of a divine religion by a philosophical deduction of universal principles, which are pretended to be derived from the same high source, has something far less revolting. The sceptic, who prefers the revelation of God's works to the revelations of his word, may still have some lofty claims to respect. But a host of interpreters, assailing divine truth with grammars and dictionaries, explaining away a miracle by a Hebraism, and giving a dead commentary for a living truth, are, as a class of writers, the least directly useful, and the least respectable. If the New Testament is no more than they take it for, it does not merit the attention which they give to it, but should be thrown aside among things that deserve to be lost.

And, indeed, it has been announced in German lecture-rooms, that Christianity was fast passing away, and had but a few years. to survive. But the prophets and their systems of philosophy

have passed away, as do all the fashions of this world, while the strength of Christian truths still remains unwasted, and promising to endure for ever. It was not reserved for philologists and oriental scholars to overturn the foundations of the religious faith of Christendom, or to win a victory which would leave the world a blank, happiness an unattainable object, and action but a perpetual struggle to cheat the restless soul out of a consciousness of its wretchedness. One such mind as Pascal's, one such spirit as Jeremy Taylor's, one such example as Heber's, is of more value to the world than all the philological minuteness of an Eichhorn, or all the circumstantial explanations of a Paulus.

But it is time to close. We have borne testimony to the accuracy of Mr. Dwight. We think his book one of the best volumes of travels that have appeared in the United States. In his letters on religion he is prolix; and his disparagement of some of our own institutions is too unqualified; still, it may have been dictated by a patriotic spirit, and may be reconciled with the ardent attachment which he otherwise manifests to his country. He would be among the first to acknowledge the excellency of our schools of medicine, the profound learning of our bar, the efficiency and eloquence of our clergy. In neither of those classes need we shun a reasonable comparison with any nation. We have not the men of learning of the Germans, nor they our statesmen; we have not their law professors, nor they our advocates; we have not their libraries, the best aid in pursuing knowledge, nor they our liberties, which save us from the dominion of established usage. The comities of life are more widely diffused in the United States than in Germany. General intelligence is decidedly more common. The neatness of our farm-houses, the air of comfort and health in every dwelling, far surpass what would be found among those of a corresponding order of society in Germany. As yet America has no university; our undergraduates are but as their gymnasiasts; which, however, of the German schools can, not in philology only, but on the whole, be put in competition with our older colleges? There is not in all Germany as good a military school as West Point, nor a place of instruction preparatory to a professional education, where the general culture of mind and manners is better provided for, than for the undergraduates of some of our best institutions. They have not a writer of fiction of our sex, that can be put in competition with Cooper; and we know not the German lady who has written better novels than the authoress of Redwood. There is not in the long list of their prose writers one, (Goethe only excepted, who is in truth of the former generation,) there is not one of their active prose writers who employs the German with the grace with which our own Irving writes the English; no pulpit orator in all Germany

holds his audience so completely in his power, or, we will add, understands the nature and excellence of pulpit oratory as well as some of our American divines: the social and political state of Germany offers no opportunity for such displays of talent as are exhibited in the keen, but somewhat unrelenting irony of one of our public speakers, or that union of clear discrimination, undeviating purpose, and brilliant imagination, which impart an irresistible influence to the eloquence of another. We have much, very much to learn from the old world; there is in Germany a vast deal which we might introduce with decided advantage; above all, the organization of universities, the liberal endowment of public libraries, the noble passion for encouraging every branch of learning, and obtaining a universality of culture, by taking an interest in all that concerns the human race. But we can richly repay any benefits that may be received. Germany may learn, from the example of the United States, how to combine religious toleration with religious zeal, to maintain the sanctity of possession amidst general equality, to render impotent the efforts of arbitrary caprice, and, at the same time, to preserve the strict maintenance of established authority. Whatever benefits America may receive, she will not remain in debt. Thank God! she never has been in debt to Europe. From the moment that the pilgrims of Plymouth laid the foundations of their civil compact, from the moment that Baltimore and Penn, for the first time in the annals of mankind, proclaimed the vast principles of religious toleration to a few white men that sought peaceful habitations amidst the forests, our fathers became not outcasts, but teachers; not exiles, but founders of states; not the recipients of bounty, but pioneers in the cause of political reform throughout the world.

ART. X.-Sketches of Naval Life, with notices of men, manners, and scenery, on the shores of the Mediterranean, in a series of letters from the Brandywine and Constitution Frigates. By A CIVILIAN. New-Haven: H. Howe:

1829.

Two duodecimo volumes in boards, with the ominous title of "Sketches of Naval Life," are at first sight rather appalling; for in these days, the press pours forth with such profusion, what purport to be the reminiscences of the state-room and the tent, that the world might almost believe arms are really yielding to the toga, in places where, students as we profess ourselves, we

are perfectly willing the former should maintain their sway. What with "Recollections" of this campaign, and "Sketches" of that cruise-what with "Novels" of which three-fourths of the incidents are extracted from official despatches, hashed up, and seasoned with a few glowing descriptions true or false, and half a dozen old anecdotes-what with "Memoirs," the interest of which, such as it may be, is made to consist in an overwrought account of a few naval battles, where the hero has chanced to act the illustrious part of a captain of a thirty-two pounder, or a rifleman in the maintop, and is a perfect master of the necessary slangwhat with these, and many other manufactures of equal merit and veracity, our book-shops and circulating libraries really teem with a quantity of trash, which adds little either to the glories or the genius of the service, by land or sea.

It is such productions, probably concocted for the most part for the home market, by those useful gentlemen whose cruises. seldom extend beyond their booksellers' shops, and whose knowledge of a fortress is derived from an accurate calculation of the height of their own garrets, that make us hesitate to encounter volumes on the same topics, which may really possess merits entitling them to notice.

Of the latter class certainly is the present work. It is the journal of Mr. George Jones, a gentleman of New-Haven, who on the eighteenth of August 1825, embarked on board the frigate Brandywine, from which he subsequently passed to the Constitution, and, after a cruise of nearly three years in the Mediterranean, returned to Boston on the fourth of July 1828. His office was not of a warlike nature, it was that of schoolmaster, and occasionally of chaplain, though this, strictly speaking, is now confined to regular clergymen, and his services were only bestowed, because the clerical functions seemed more suitable to his situation and habits, than to those of the gallant officers by whom he was surrounded. He appears from his book to be a gentleman of the most amiable character; some errors of grammar and more of style, indicate a want of attention rather than of education; and his modesty and freedom from pretension reconcile us to a deficiency of classical research, which is apparent in his remarks on countries that have been illustrated by the industry, taste and genius of Chandler, Stuart and Clarke.

Mr. Jones, however, has the advantage of being a most indefatigable observer; nothing is too trifling for his observation; he was determined to see every thing that was to be seen; and consequently he has collected a variety of particulars, seemingly so notorious that they would scarcely be deemed worthy of particular notice by most men, but which really are novel and curious, and we believe will afford amusement to his readers. He appears to have done faithfully, which is not always the case, what he ad