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The Upper Rhine : Mayence to the Lake of Constance
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BEGGAKY A CRIME.

377

utterly unknown in Deutschland. For, no matter how higlithe worldly Station of 'the individual we may converse with inGermany,—be he even one of the so-called "nobles" of theland,—you will find him, if you but probe the fellow by longaequaintance to the core, either ready to justify the opening ofprivate letters, or eise to uphold the use of spies, as a socialinstitution, in order to obtain secret Information for the ministersof the crown,— in a word, you will sooner or later discoverthat he is as utterly insensible to all moral iigliness as well asto all manly dignity as a Jew bumbailiff with us.

But, if there be little chivalrous feeling among the phleg-niatic Germans of the present day—and surely it wants anemotional race to be a generous and self-denying one—thereis, at the same time, but little sympathy to be round amongthem for the sufferings of their less lucky fellow-countrymen.

In England, the general development of the feeling of phi-lanthropy constitutes the peculiar feature of the age; so muchso, indeed, that many of our sterner writers have spoken of thepublic commiseration that is now shown, even to the vilestclasses among us, as belonging to the " rose-water" schoolof sentiment. But though, perhaps, our fellow-feeling mayoccasionally lapse into the maudlin, it certainly speaks wellfor our national character that many of the charitable institu-tions of our land may be numbered amongst the most magni-ficent edifices ofthe capital;—our hospitals, our schools forthe indigent blind, our asylums for Veteran seamen, beingabsolute palaces designed for the shelter and relief of the poor.Nor do we ourselves care much for the nation where the" well-born " have not even imagination enough to view theirposition in life as a lucky accident — a prize drawn in thegreat lottery of existence; where the wealthy are unable tocomprehend the differcnce that would have been produced in