THE DUMB PRESS OF GEBMANY.

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by such principles the intellectual advantages of a " highly edu-catcd" German with those of a London mechanic. Let us scewhether even Herr Sägespäne himself,— the learned and long-winded author of nineteen volumes on the antiquities of Cob-lenz alone,—is likely to have a better knowledge of the worldtlian John Hornyhand the blacksmith, whose entire educationconsisted, most probably, of a couple of years at dame's school.Herr Sägespäne can teil you the Roman legion that wasstationed at Coblenz; he knows exactly how many Romantiles have been discovered with the number of that same legionimprinted upon them; he can point out to you the very spotwhere Cassar crossed the Rhine at Engers; he is acquainted,too, with the precise number of pounds of meat that thepeasants and Citizens were permitted to eat on Fridays, soas to raise the necessary funds for building the bridge acrossthe Mosel; he is, moreover, very partieular in the use of his" accusativnm cum infcnitivo" and intensely orthodox as to theposition of the verb at the end of all his capital sentences, andat the beginning of his subordinate ones. Nevertheless, of thecondition of his fellow-creatures round about him, or of themeans of improving their worldly circumstances, or of thecauses affecting either the price of their labour or the valueof his own food, or, indeed, any point of knowledge connectedwith the worldly welfare of himself or his fellows, he is utterlyand supremely ignorant.*

* A young English friend of ours, who was Irving with a Coblenz professor,was anxious to read Puffendorf in the original German ; and on Consulting theprofessor as to where he could obtain the book, he was asked why he desired tostudy a work of such a nature : for, Said the professor, no one in our country butthose who are regularly educating themselves for some of the higher departmentsof government ever dreams of looking into treatises of that class. Our friend,however, astonished the German, by telling him that an English gentleman tookan interest in all subjects connected with the principles of right government, anddid not consider liis education complete until he knew some little, at least, aboutthe matter.

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