Art. I., 1. Vorletzter Weltgang von Semilasso, Traum und Wachen. Aus den Papieren des Verstorbenen. 3 Bände. Stuttgart, 1835. (Travels in Germany and France. By Prince Pückler-Muskau.)

When Prince Puckler-Muskau published bis celebrated Tour, which, as our readers will recollect, was most severely and mercilessly attacked by two of our most respectable and influential journals, we thought it our duty to stand forward as the champions of the much-reviled tourist, and to expose the narrowness of those English prejudices which had smarted sore under the sweeping and uncompromising criticisms of a freespoken foreigner. But our estimate of the German Prince and his Tour was by no means so high, or expressed in such unqualified terms of admiration, as that which appears to have been formed by many contemporary British and continental critics. We have, since that period, imposed it on ourselves as a duty to keep a close watch over the literary proceedings of the German Prince, and we have now, especially since the perusal of his latest work,, the mystic title of which stands at the head of this article,, come to the conclusion that Prince Puckler-Muskau, so far from being a writer of whom Germany has reason to be proud, (as the author of the article in the Conversations-Lexicon seems to imagine,) is a vain coxcomb, and a frivolous and superficial scribbler of silly sentimentalities, shallow witticisms, and gabbling gossip. This judgment may appear severe; but we hope, before concluding our present observations, to satisfy our readers, that, notwithstanding the undoubted merits of the Tour in England and Wales, such are and ought to be the terms in which the impartial critic feels himself called upon to characterize the author of “Tutti Frutti,” and the “Penultimate Worldwalk of Semilasso.” The fact of the matter is, that the “Briefe eines Verstorbenen” owed their celebrity in a great measure, though certainly not altogether, to extrinsic and accidental circumstances. In the first place, this work contained the tour of a Prince ; in the second place it was the tour of a German prince ; in the third place, it was not merely a tour, but a tour made the medium of throwing recklessly about certain theological opinions and speculations, whose novelty, in this country at least, was sufficient of itself to “excite a sensation;” in the fourth place, it was pregnant with gossip of persons in high places, and profusely studded over with those personal charades,, in the shape of Lord B-s and Lady C-s, which never fail to stimulate the curiosity of even the most dull and apathetic reader; in he fifth place, it was patronized by Gothe ; and, in the sixth place, it was, as beforementioned, most recklessly and unjustly battered down by certain redoubted Aristarchs of periodical literature in this country, whose extravagant censure was with many a reason, per se, for no less extravagant eulogium. Four years have now passed away since Mrs. Austin’s translation of the “Briefe” was given to the British public ; and during that period the Silesian nobleman, ambitious, as it would seem, of literary, as he has already earned military honors, has delivered himself of five supplementary volumes, which, along with the previous four of the Tour, form a sufficiently well-furnished record from which to pronounce sentence on the intellectual and moral character of their author. We have made a patient survey of all the papers that compose this bulky record, and are grieved to express our opinion, that whatever merit of no vulgar kind they exhibit is more than neutralized by the superabundant infusion of vanity, frivolity, and affectation with which they are replete. The Prince, indeed, is a strange compound of an English coxcomb and a German Bursch. The qualities of mind which we have just enumerated seem borrowed from the former ; add to these the girlish sentimentality, the dreamy imaginings, the wayward whimsicality, and the break-neck recklessness, of the latter, and you are in possession of all the ingredients out of which a Puckler-Muskau may be composed. We do not say that the author of the different works above enumerated is not possessed of qualities of mind which might, under proper regulation, prove of great service either to the state of which he is a subject, or to the general republic of letters. He does not want imagination, he does not want feeling ; but the one is under no control of a strong understanding, and the other is affected in its style and feminine in its tone. He is possessed of considerable general information ; but that information is by no means a sound and solid description, and is composed, in a great measure, of such rags, (some of them purple rags to be sure, plucked from the robes of brother princes,) as a man of common abilities, who has employed a great part of his life in wandering idly from country to country, could scarcely fail to have collected. He is neither a man of science, nor a connoisseur in the arts; he can make, and frequently does make, such pertinent remarks on pictures and buildings as a man of common feeling and ideality, who has seen many cities and lounged through many picture-galleries, might be expected to make ; pretensions of a higher order he has none. He does not want enterprise, and a certain rash boldness ; but these qualities with him do not go beyond the state in which they are developed in the mind of a Jena student, big with the swelling desire of “renowning.” To scale “la Brèche de Roland,” or the “Pic du Midi ” in the Pyrenees, and play fantastic tricks before the sun with Mademoiselle Reichard in an air-balloon, are enterprises which seem sufficiently to gratify the appetite of his ambition, which is merely the ambition of impulse. In the year 1818 he was roused , as who with a German soul was not!, to take a share in the military deeds of glory that achieved his country’s liberty. There was something romantic and chivalrous in the “rising” of that time, with which his erratic spirit readily sympathized; and, to make it yet more romantic, we are informed in his biography that he signalized himself by a Quixotic duel with a Quixotic French colonel of Hussars, in which the Quixotic German came off victorious. Since that period, however, the Prince has not taken any active share in the public affairs of his country, either as a “bureaucratist” at home, or as a diplomatist abroad. He appears to be destitute of that solidity of character, and that manly ambition, which fit an individual for distinguishing himself in the public service ; and seems to prefer coquetting with Welsh bar-maids, and pirouetting with dark-eyed rustic madonnas of the Pyrenees, to the rivalry of Stein and Hardenberg, as the coadjutor of “the first Reformer in Europe.” The only department of useful activity, in which he has steadily and perseveringly exerted himself, as that of landscape-gardening, and here, to do him justice, his merits are of a high order : here he shows that he can, when he pleases, forget his trifling frivolity and rambling superficiality, and become a serious professional man, instead of a mere gossiping dilettante. But the reader will probably agree with us, that the laying out and adornment of pleasure-grounds, however much it may indicate the man of taste and the agricultural martinet, is but a poor foundation on which to build a literary or a political reputation. Besides, this passion for landscape-gardening becomes with the Prince, as with weak and vain minds most passions are apt to become, an absolute mania ; he exhibits and parades it on all occasions, and suggests improvements as profusely on the scenery of the Pyrenees as on the garden of the Tuileries in Paris.

But wherefore do we thus busy ourselves at such conscientious length in dissecting the character of Prince Puckler-Muskau ? We are engaged in a work of supererogation. The Prince has painted himself at full length passim in his writings, and especially in a notable passage, à  la Walter Scott, with which the present “Penultimate Worldwalk ” is introduced. Our fair readers, who lost their hearts to the “prepossessing” Byronic eyes, and the mustaches, the dark star-bestudded bosom of the portrait that introduced the third volume of the Tour of the German Prince into England, will doubtless be much edified by the following “genial’ specimen of self portraiture. After describing at considerable length, the fashionable vis-à -vis curricle in which he set out on his tour, the traveller himself is minutely depicted as follows :,

“The individual, who sat in the box of this trim vehicle, was a man of high stature, to all appearance a little beyond the middle period of life, of a slender elegant figure, which, however, displayed more delicacy than strength of physical structure, and more of vivacity and mobility than of compactness and solidity. On closer inspection, it was easy to remark that the cerebral system of this individual was much more complete than the ganglionic, and the intellectual part of his nature more strongly developed than the animal. A phrenologist would have been apt to conclude that the Creator had given him somewhat more of head than of heart, more of imagination than of feeling, more of rationalism than of enthusiasm ; and that, therefore, the individual was not destined to enjoy much happiness in this state of existence. Every one, however, who had the least knowledge of the world, could not fail to perceive that the stranger, whatever might be the state of his mind, belonged to that class of society from whom men are accustomed to receive quietly the laws of good ton, and the etiquettes that regulate the polished and refined intercourses of life. His features, though far from regular, were delicate and striking, of that kind, in a word, which once seen, are not easily forgotten. If they had any peculiar charm, it lay in their extraordinary activity. The eyes were a perfect mirror of every rapid change that passed in the mind, and, in a few seconds, they were seen to vary from dull and colorless to a brightness that rivalled the stars. But the permanent expression of these orbs was rather suffering than active, a strange middle shade betwixt pensive melancholy on the one hand and sarcastic bitterness on the other, that might well have suited with the countenance even of a Doctor Faust. To this dramatic personage, however, we do not believe that the character of our hero had much resemblance ; it appears rather that the feminine element was predominant in his character, whence arose a certain over-refinement and vanity, which were by no means, inconsistent with a great capacity of endurance and self-denial. His great happiness lay in the joys of the imagination, and in the trifles of life. The way, not the goal, was his enjoyment ; and when, in the child-like simplicity of his soul, he tumbled motley images together, and played with the many-colored soapbubbles of his fancy, he was in these movements at once the most joyous in his own spirit, and the most amiable in the eyes of others.

“While we are thus diligently engaged in scrutinizing our traveller, we perceive that he has laid himself gracefully back, and that he is now looking with his ‘lorgnette’ through the wood, as if to detect us in the midst of our criticisms. His bushy black hair, now, alas ! not so rich and luxuriant as it once was, and which evil tongues will have to be dyed, discovers itself from beneath a red African Fez, whose long blue tassel sports playfully in the wind. Round his neck a motley Cashmere shawl is carelessly thrown, and his high white forehead and pale countenance are in good keeping with this half Turkish accoutrement. A black military frock-coat, adorned with silk embroidery of the same color, nankeen pantaloons, and light boots, whose lustre vies with polished marble, complete the somewhat ostentatious toilette; and now our fault at least it is not, if our fair readers have not before their eyes a distinct representation of the ‘world-tourist,’ who hopes that he may never wander far without being accompanied by their good wishes.”

We do not know how many self-complacent hours before the looking-glass of vanity the Prince may have been occupied before he fitted himself for penning this most minute and accurate portraiture of himself; but assuredly a more curious, a more perfectly unique, specimen of self-admiring selfportraiture has seldom been exhibited to an indulgent and a discerning public. No doubt the ladies in Berlin and Vienna, and the author’s fair acquaintances at Almack’s, will be suffused with a gentle titillation of delightful feeling, when they recognise in this minute description the same “prepossessing” personage who figured at once so fiercely and so tenderly in the before-mentioned frontispiece to the third volume of the Tour of a German Prince. Our author, in this passage , exhibits himself in a double capacity, calculated to captivate the hearts of all his air readers, from the most sentimental and he most poetical devotees of Byron and Keats, to the most silly and the most trifling ” pretty nothings” that serve to furnish and deck out a fashionable ball-room. On the one side, the ” strange middle shade betwixt pensive melancholy and sarcastic bitterness” is a composition of the poetic mind, evidently intended to unite all that is most ethereal and most misanthropic in the creations of Shelley and Byron; while, on the other side, the Prince exhibits himself as an exquisite of the First water, whose elegant and imposing exterior would serve as a fit frontispiece to a neat little duodecimo with gilt edges, bound in red silk, entitled ” Hints on Etiquette,” or ” The Whole Art of Dress.” One thing is certain, that, after having penned the above passage, Prince Pückler-Muskau cannot longer call us to account for having given a false representation of his character. He is barred, personali exceptione, as the lawyers say from any claim of dogmas on this score. He has not hesitated to characterize himself, in the above passage, as vain, trifling and feminine, almost the ipsissima verba which we felt ourselves called upon to use ; our only surprise is that this gentleman should, like Göthe’s Philina, so distinctly perceive his own follies, and yet show not the least desire to get rid of them. He seems to sun himself with the most contented self-complacency in the mirror of his own insignificance, and is already so far gone in the fatal malady of conceit and vanity, as to be beyond the reach even of Burn’s prayer,

” Oh that some god the gift would gie us,
To see ourselves as others see us !”

So much, perhaps, too much, on Prince Puckler-Muskau’s personality. We must now proceed to justify our criticisms by a few extracts from the work itself, which has given rise to the present observations. This work, though ushered into the world with all the quackery and affectation of a pompous and recherché title, is in reality, like the author’s last work, Tutti Frutti, a collection of mere scraps and sketches carelessly thrown together and bundled into a book, in a manner that sufficiently proves the author to have as little respect for the public as he has for himself. But, before presenting our readers with any of those “elegant extracts” which we have selected as the most favorable specimens of the author’s powers, we must be allowed to notice a small piece of affectation of which he has been guilty in concocting the titles, or rather the summaries, of his different chapters. Instead of telling us in honest German what we are to expect from each paragraph, and thus saving us, perhaps, the trouble of reading it, the summary of his chapters is composed of such profound witticisms and mystical indications as the following :

“New Bethesda, The Key-hole as an Opera-glass , Descent into Hades , Heavenly Mansions, Will you sleep in the bed of the Dutchess de Berry ! , Plouviance.’ , Lord Brougham , Mistress Austin , The Modern Lichtenberg, Milk-brother, How to ‘ rough it’, Blue Stockings !”

The German scholar who is familiar with the writings of Richter will have no difficulty in perceiving from what model the German Prince has borrowed this most hieroglyphical manner of superscribing his travelling adventures, but he will not be the less disposed to hold in derision the puny efforts by which the nose of a pug-dog attempts to perform tricks that are only competent to the playful power of the elephant’s trunk. If the titles of Jean Paul’s chapters be eccentric and far-fetched, they are at the same time pregnant with wit, humor, and satire of the most unique and original kind. But the hieroglyphics of the Prince contain no mysteries which repay the trouble of deciphering them. They are clouds without water, empty, shallow, and unfruitful, as may be seen at a glance by analyzing the elegant specimens already given.

No. 1, The ” New Bethesda,” is merely the affected intimation that the Prince visited “Carlsbad” in the outset of his “world-walk.” No. 2, the “Key-hole as an Opera-glass,” is a more intelligible announcement that when the Prince was in Carlsbad an English family happened to lodge in the next room of the same inn, and the Prince, in whose character “the feminine element is predominant,” and on whose cranium of course the bump of curiosity is largely developed, could not restrain himself from peeping through the keyhole, and there he beheld, angels and ministers of grace defend us !, a beautiful little lap-dog, and yet a more beautiful young lady, with pale face, black hair, and a countenance like an Italian madonna, “who speaks seven languages, plays the piano like Moscheles, has seen as much of the world as Lady Morgan, poetizes like Lord Byron, and is, with all these accomplishments, only sixteen.’” No. 3, The “Descent into Hades,” means that when the Prince was in Frieberg he visited the silver-mines there ; and, perhaps, as bis excellency is a “Rationalist,” he means hereby to indicate that tbe descent of Ulysses, celebrated in Homeric song, is to be explained after the fashion of that learned divine, Dr. Paulus, in Heidelberg, as being nothing more important than a visit to a silver, perhaps a sulphur, mine. No. 4, “Heavenly Mansions,” is an epithet applied to the Pyrenean vales by our pious author, who, as the earned reader may recollect, was educated among the “Herrnhuters” in Lusatia, and has retained only so much of the good lessons he received from the Evangelical Brethren as to quote and make allusions to Scripture on all, even the most insignificant and trifling occasions. No. 5, “Will you sleep in the Bed of the Dutchess de Berry?” means nothing more than that when the Prince was in the inn at Gavarny, he was asked by the chambermaid to sleep in the bed where the Dutchess de Berry had slept three or four
years before, a most important piece of information certainly to occupy two or three pages of a tour in the Pyrenees. No. 6, Plouviance! implies that, when the said chambermaid roused the Prince from his morning slumbers, she announced in a surly voice that it was raining, by which “untoward event” his excellency was prevented from rivalling the enterprising feat of the said duchess, who it appears, had scaled the “Brêche de Roland,” upon the backs of no fewer than forty guides! Nos. 7 and 8, “Lord Brougham and Mrs. Austin,” indicate, without allegory, that the Prince had the good fortune to meet Lord Brougham at a table-d’hôte in Marseilles; and, though he had not acuteness enough to recognise the said lord by his remarkable physiognomy, he nevertheless ingratiated himself by offering his lordship a little “English mustard and Harvey sauce,” which he (the Prince), being as much of a gastronome as a Francomane, never fails to carry with him; and further, that his lordship gratified his excellency’s vanity not a little, by sounding the praises of his amiable and accomplished translator, Mrs. Austin. No. 9, “The Modern Lichtenberg,” is a new epithet applied by the Prince to Henry Heine, who, after Lord Byron, seems to be the great idol of our author’s poetical worship. No. 10, “Milk-brother,” is another new epithet, much more suitably applied than the last, with which the Prince commences a most edifying letter from himself to himself, (Sendschreiben des Fursten von P— M— , an den Autor dieses Buchs,) which
the curious reader will find in the second volume of Semilasso’s Weltgang, p. 115. This letter contains a minute description of all the amiable weaknesses, frivolities, and extravagances of which the character of Pükler-Muskau is composed; and, had we not already done the author full justice, by extracting at full length his initiatory self-portraiture, we should have felt much inclined to present our readers with this second dish of vanity and folly. No. 11, “How to rough it,” is a phrase introduced to show the writer’s acquaintance with English slang, and is an intimation to the fair reader that a delicate object of their “good wishes” is obliged for a few days to leave his princely carriage behind him, and travel in an omnibus, along with mortals of common mould. It is an habitual trick of our author to interlard his pages with English, French, and Italian colloquialisms ; and there are many people who have as great a reverence for this miserable foppery, as a man who cannot read is wont to have for a printed book. No. 12, “Blue Stockings,” does not announce, as the vulgar reader may imagine, a satire in the Prince’s most triumphant style against learned and “übergebildete” ladies ; it is only the symbol of one of those neat little coquetteries and rustic flirtations, in the management of which the Prince is known to have displayed such skill as called forth the admiration even of the octogenarian Göthe. It appears that, on the vine-encircled road between Bamberg and Schweinfurt, and while reclining amid the ruins of an old romantic cloister, the Prince, like another Hercules, encountered two rustic graces, both as beautiful as a sculptor’s model, “especially the elder, with chesnut-brown hair, deep blue, clear-shining eyes, teeth like those of a mouse, (wie ein mäuschen,) lips like purple, and a tint like milk and blood.” This paragon the Prince, with that air of noble familiarity which is so peculiarly characteristic of persons of high rank, addressed play fully, asking her “if the neat little feet which were concealed under her light-blue stockings, were as white as her lovely face ;” to which the Bavarian beauty, with the most amiable gravity replied, “Of course they are,, for how can it be otherwise when I wear stockings every day!” On which naive remark the Prince, who is fond of philosophizing, like a second Werther, profoundly observes, “How delightful a thing it is to behold such maiden souls in all their natural and unsophisticated simplicity!”

We shall now give the promised “elegant extracts,” only premising that they cannot be expected to be more orderly and systematic than the scraps and sketches of which they are a part. Since Heine’s Reisebilder gave the “ton” in this department, books of travels cannot contain anything that is out of place or foreign to the theme,, their theme is de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis!, the traveller himself often occupies a much more important place than his travels, , and we think the most proper designation for such medleys would be that which Jean Paul proposes as a title for a modern romance, ” Hoppelpoppel, or the Heart!”

From Carlsbad, where, as we have seen, he employed his eyes only in looking through a key-hole, our traveller proceeds to Eger, a place rich in historical recollections, but seldom visited by travellers. We subjoin the short, and not very important, notice which the Prince gives us of this ancient town.

“The blood of a great man is a seed that bears much fruit. The fame of Wallenstein will give immortal memory to Eger when not one stone stands upon another to tell where or what it was. The present inhabitants of Eger, however, do not seem over-sensible of the honor thus conferred on them ; they have sadly neglected the holy places of history.

There is a good portrait of Wallenstein in their town house (Rathaus), but the pictures that surround it, representing his assassination, are ludicrous. The stern general looks like an awkward dancer, who, in attempting to cut an entrechât in his shirt, has fallen with his ribs upon his stick. (…)

After visiting Baireuth and Wunsiedel, the birth-place of Jean Paul, Semilasso proceeds through Bamberg and Wurtzburg, with great expedition to Paris. This nearly concludes the first volume of his tour, but, except the following somewhat ingenious topological (not phrenological) explanation of Richter’s genius, we do not find any thing likely lo interest our readers.

Arrived at Wunsiedel, I made a pilgrimage to the room where Jean Paul was born. It is built on the ruins of the doryon of an old Rittercastle: from this came his romanticism, is the church: hence piety. The house, moreover, was a school, in which his father was teacher; hence his various knowledge, and a slight sprinkling of pedantry. As a point de vue, on one side was a wine-cellar : here we see the origin of his passion for Bavarian beer.”

Paris, that Babylon the Great of modern life, has been so often, so thoroughly, and so recently, discussed by the Heines, and the Börnes, the Raumers, the Bulwers, the Morgans, and Trollopes of the day, that we may be excused from troubling our readers with any of the Prince’s very profound observations on that theme. His excellency is too self-satisfied a mortal to feel any deep sympathy with the political excitement of that volcanic atmosphere. “It is terrible, it is too terrible,” says Börne in one of his maledictory letters, “to think how many human corpses a king requires to march over them to his throne !”, but Prince Puckler-Muskau finds nothing terrible in the matter, and partakes of the hospitalities of Louis Philippe in the Tuileries with as much ease and with as much indifference as when he feasted with that king of patriots, Daniel O’Connell, at Derrinane. Our tourist was invited to dine with Louis Philippe and his lady ; and as the “dinner-piece” is not less characteristic of the vanity of the entertained than of the magnificence of the entertainer, we subjoin it.

(…)

If the reader thinks this twaddle tiresome, we agree with him. Perhaps the following aesthetical excursus on the French romancers may prove more interesting. It appears to us to contain ethical doctrines which might have proceeded, the Prince will take this as a compliment, from the pure pen of the “modern Lichtenberg.”

(…)

Many of our readers, who know not even the name of Prince Puckler-Muskau, will peruse with pleasure the following notice of the veteran of Acre, Sir Sydney Smith.

(…)

From Paris the Prince proceeded by Bordeaux to Tarbes, and from this latter place made several romantic rambles through the Hautes Pyrenees. Perched upon those grotesque snow-clad peaks, where the astronomer Plantage, fixing his last look on the laughing vale beneath, died, with the exclamation in his mouth, “Grand Dieu, que cela est beau.’”, it is not surprising that such an excitable person as the Prince should have felt himself already in the heavenly mansions which are promised to the blessed ; but the manner in which he expresses his delight is in that exaltado opium style which may be admitted in Germany, but would be apt to be condemned as the ne plus ultra of bad taste in England. Besides, the gastronomic imagery of truffles and pasties with which the description is wound up, finis coronat opus , will be disapproved of by many who are willing to take the rest of the passage as the quintessence of descriptive sublimity. We translate the following letter to the writer’s sister, as a specimen of the 179 pages (German pages) of descriptive rhapsody with which the greater part of the third volume is filled :,
(…)

Hoppel-poppel! or the heart!, Mignon’s song and pâtés de Toulouse ! This is certainly a strange mixture, and yet we have no doubt that this rhapsody was intended to be the most sublime passage in the “Penultimate World-walk ; and that as such many a German Lucy and Julia will ecstatically receive it. In our humble judgment, it can be likened to nothing so fitly as to a dish of whisked cream, or a plate of soaped water, blown up into bubbles by a child.

The title of the present work, “Penultimate World-Tour,” indicates that the ultimate tour is yet to come. The princely author, indeed, (after having served Lord Brougham with the Harvey sauce and mustard, as above at length narrated,) proceeded straightway to Africa, where (unless he has made a second descent into Hades, not figuratively) we believe he is at this present moment. From thence he travels onward, taking of course his “elegant curricle” along with him, to America ; and here, in the new world, will be concocted that “ultimate tour of Semilasso ” for which the German publishers and public are at present so impatiently waiting. Of this threatened “letzter Weltgang,” we devoutly say, with Lord Byron,

” Tours of such princes, may they be the last.’”

for, unless the forthcoming volumes be more edifying than the present, we shall think ourselves justified in passing them over without any further notice. In the mean time, that the Prince may have no reason to complain of our having given to the English public garbled extracts from his penultimate tour, we transcribe his expedition to the celebrated amphitheatre of Gavarny at full length, in which the discerning reader will have occasion to remark the truth of an observation already made by us in reference to a certain genus of travelling sketches now fashionable in Germany, that the traveller is generally the most important figure in the sketch. (…)

One observation we feel ourselves called upon to make before we dismiss Prince Pückler-Muskau on the present occasion. Most of our readers are doubtless aware that the Tour of a German Prince was ushered into this country under the special patronage and protection of Gothe. We owe it therefore to them, and to that reverence which we have always professed for the name of Gothe, to reconcile, as far as we are able, thie contradiction between our present severe judgment of Semilasso’s Wellgang and the laudatory criticisms of the Briefe eines Verstorbenen that proceeded from the pen of the most liberal and comprehensive critic in Europe. The matter is easily explained. The very mildness and kindliness of Gothe’s criticism, which is its greatest beauty, led him astray at times from that just medium between unprovoked severity and unmerited eulogy, in which the true tone of criticism lies. It was a weakness of Gothe’s mind, both as a critic and as a moralist, that he could not be severe. The consequence was, that such careless, frolicsome, butterfly existences as our German Prince, often received from him a plentiful meed of praise, which, to more energetic, but less amiable natures, was denied. Besides this general bias, we may remark several special circumstances that may have operated not a little to tune down Gothe’s soul into a momentary consonance with that of the Prince. The Prince (though always as a coxcomb) is a lover of nature, and lavish in descriptive writing, so also was Gothe. The Prince mixes op with his love of nature a light, playful, we had almost said a coquettish, sort of religion, of which cast Gothe’s religion also was. The Prince, moreover, so far as manners and polish are concerned, is an aristocrat -, and the ‘Vornehmthun’ of Gothe has always been the object of Heine’s and Menzel’s bitterest satire. Add to all this that Göthe only lived to see the first flashing debut of Puckler-Muskau; whereas, we have seen him progressing, like the crab, backwards, during a period of five years, and there will be little left to explain in the apparently superficial criticism which the octogenarian sage of Weimar passed upon our most frivolous and most coxcombical tourist.

From: The Foreign Quarterly Review. No. 33, July 1836.