are laudable; but they would lose their value in the eyes of Prussia if they lost their Prussian character.

We have seen within the last few weeks how violently and how rapidly the Court of Berlin has oscillated between these extremes; and even now we have little actual security for its adherence to a self-denying policy which rests chiefly on personal ascendancy and accidental influence. But at present the principle of union with Austria predominates, which means, in other and better terms, the recurrence to the sound federal system of Germany. It is ably defended by M. von Manteuffel-and if Prussia has entered with sincerity into the conferences of Olmütz and Dresden, by this policy she must mean to abide, at least as long as that minister retains his influence over the King and his position at the head of affairs:we hope further, that the present state of doubt will shortly be terminated by the conclusion of more solemn and precise engagements in the same spirit. Germany owes to the one principle thirty-three years of unbroken peace; she owes to the other thirty-three months of incessant convulsion. The Confederation could, as we have now practically seen, bring into the field a million of men-a force, if ranged under one banner, perfectly irresistible in defence of the common rights of Germany; the separate policy of Prussia can at best array one-half of that mighty host against the other half, and consequently leave Germany on all sides open and undefended. The united powers of Germany are on their own ground the sole masters of the policy and constitution of their nation; divided, we have seen them resort in humble guise to the Lazienka palace at Warsaw-and the influence of Paris or St. Petersburg may some day outweigh their own. Combined in a strict federal alliance, of which the old Diet was a feeble and imperfect type, they are invincible, and they may become free; split up, and armed for mutual destruction, their cravings for liberty will degenerate into anarchy and social revolution, and their national independence will be at the mercy of the first military potentate who may find great resources at the disposal of his ambition. It is superfluous to add that the peace and union of the whole of Germany are matters of the highest interest to this country, since every change which threatens to disturb those relations is an injury to the great bulwarks of Europe. Perhaps, in the agitation of the last few years we might find reason to complain that these settled rules of England's policy have not always been held steadily in view; and it seemed like a sarcasm on Lord Palmerston's policy when we were gravely informed by his admirers that he reckoned Prussia and Sardinia amongst his allies. Prussia and Sardinia have played a very similar game; and it has been

the

the singular fortune of Austria to encounter, on both sides of the Alps, the most reckless acts of aggression which have been attempted in Europe since the peace-both founded, like Lord Palmerston's own policy, on a radical misconception of her strength and a puerile belief in her approaching dissolution. Those attempts have met with the fate they deserved, and the result has shown that, if the Courts of Turin and Berlin did ever receive encouragement from British placemen, it was not sanctioned by the will of the British nation. In these German transactions (as far as the influence of this country has been felt at all that is chiefly by its absence)-the coolness and estrangement which had been allowed to spring up for the most incomprehensible motives between the ministers of England and Austria, contributed to encourage the assailants of the latter power, and effectually excluded our representatives from any part in the late conferences where other states were not inactive. By so much, therefore, has the voice of England in the affairs of Europe been weakened and silenced; and in this discreditable attitude we seem likely to remain-unless Lord Palmerston has himself recognised the true causes of his failures, and reverted to a course less inconsistent with the permanent maintenance of our whole German connexions on an honourable footing.

ART. VIII.-The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey. Edited by his Son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, Curate of Plumbland, Cumberland. 6 vols. post 8vo. 1850.

ALTHOUGH Mr. Cuthbert Southey's first volume did not

appear until seven years after his father's death, the public, we think, would hardly have expected an apology for delay in bringing forth this work' (Preface, p. 1). He intimates that, had he been named as literary executor, the publication would have taken place much sooner. When the poet died his son was only twenty-four years of age; it is well, we cannot doubt, for the book that its completion was deferred till he had turned thirty. We believe it would have been better if a longer interval had been allowed to elapse. Mr. Cuthbert's reading does not seem to have been extensive; of the books that would have been most serviceable as to the political and literary history of his father's times, he has neglected many; there are several immediately bearing on the personal career which he either has not seen or must have turned over in a perfunctory manner. He has not even taken due pains to sift either his father's own works or the correspondence intrusted to his discretion. Nor can we suppose that circum

stances

stances have been peculiarly favourable to him as respects observation of the world. His narrative, creditable as it is to his feelings, and in many passages to his taste, must be allowed to reflect very often the circumscription of a secluded sphere.

Nearly half of the first volume is occupied with seventeen autobiographical epistles addressed to Mr. May between 1820 and 1825; but these bring the Laureate only to the fifteenth year of He often mentioned subsequently his intention to resume the history of his mind;' but the editor seems to have thought the nonfulfilment of that design sufficiently accounted for by these opening words:

I begin it,' he says, 'hoping, rather than promising even to myself, that I may find courage to pursue it to the end-courage, I mean, to live again in remembrance with the dead so much as I must needs do in retracing the course of my life. There are certain savages among whom the name of a deceased person is never mentioned: some superstition may have attached to this custom, but that the feeling in which it originates is natural I know both by experience and observation. My children never speak of their brother Herbert, and I never utter his name except in my prayers, unless some special cause acts upon me like a moral obligation.'-vol. i. p. 2.

It may interest many to compare these words with an entry in Scott's Diary a few days after the death of his wife :—

May 19, 1826-We speak freely of her whom we have lost, and mix her name with our ordinary conversation. This is the rule of nature. All primitive people speak of their dead, and I think virtuously and wisely. The idea of blotting the names of those who are gone out of the language and familiar discourse of those to whom they were dearest, is one of the rules of ultra-civilization which in so many instances strangle natural feeling by way of avoiding a painful sensation. The Highlanders speak of their dead children as freely as of their living mothers-how poor Colin or Robert would have acted in such or such a situation. It is a generous and manly tone of feeling; and as far as it may be adopted without affectation or contradicting the general habits of society, I reckon on observing it.' But Southey recurs to the same strain at a much later period; in 1837, just after reading Scott's brief autobiography :

'No doubt,' he says, the reason why so many persons have begun to write their own lives but stopped short is, that the recollections of childhood and adolescence, though they call up tender thoughts, excite none of that deeper feeling with which we look back upon the time of life when wounds heal slowly and losses are irreparable.'-vi. 333. And to another friend-alluding to the letters to May

To confess the truth, my heart began to fail; when the cares and griefs of life are to be raised up, it becomes too painful to live over the past again.'-Ibid. p. 344.

It is curious to see how differently Southey and Scott, alike manly, affectionate, and imaginative, felt and acted in reference to the inevitable afflictions of our lot; but it is to be observed that the former avows his shrinking from the past cares of life as well as its griefs, and that, freely as both have written about their losses of friends, they alike recoiled from memorializing the other cares, however different in kind, by which no one can doubt that their several existences had been most perplexed. Nothing so puzzles any reader of Scott's letters, considering the frankness of his character, as his reserve respecting his commercial entanglements; the details of which accordingly remain in great measure inexplicable. In like manner we must own that, having studiously read these volumes, refreshing ourselves also with a reperusal of Mr. Southey's chief works, to us the grand problem of his history remains very much in the vague. Neither have we discovered any precise indication of the extent to which he had once coincided with the parties which his maturer mind condemned, nor of the actual stages of his progress. What is even more strange, we should find it difficult to compile from his own words a clear statement of his ultimate creed, either political or religious.

He could not trace his pedigree beyond his great-grandfather, who had joined the standard of Monmouth, and, after narrowly escaping a trial before Jeffries, spent a long and quiet life in the position of a Somerset yeoman. The poet adds, however, that the race bore a coat of arms in times when such badges were not indiscriminately assumed. Be that as it may, the Sedgefield hero's heir adhered to his calling; but he had a numerous progeny, and one of them was sent to London as apprentice to a grocer. After he had been there for some years, a country lad passed the door one day with a hare in his hand; and, the sight awakening associations akin to those of Wordsworth's Susan, the young man resolved not to fix his lot so far from the paternal fields. In due time he become a draper in Bristol; and though his shop was in one of the noisiest thoroughfares, he gratified his fancy by surmounting it with the sign of the hare. Here Robert, his son, was born on the 12th of August, 1774; and though he evidently had few pleasant reminiscences in connexion with that locality, he adds that he had often thought of having a hare cut upon a seal in honour of the old shop;'-probably of the only touch of romance which he could associate with his father. The mention of him is exceedingly jejune:-not even on his death is there a sentence of tribute. Whatever may have been his merits as a shot, he was not a thriving tradesman in the poet's boyhood,

and

and became a bankrupt in his adolescence. Two elder brothers were more successful; but no love seems to have existed between them and the drapier; nor, though they were both childless, did his children ever profit by their opulence. On the other hand, nothing can be more enthusiastic than the devotion with which the narrative dwells on the mother. Her maiden name was Hill; and she also was bred among the yeomanry. Her family had lived for many generations on a small possession near Clifton; and it is impossible to read the few lines descriptive of their homestead without suspecting-as who would not willingly believe?that it supplied materials for the fourth chapter of the Doctor. Here in the poet's childhood presided his grandmother, the widow Hill, and here, happily for his health, he spent much of his time under her wing. In fact, he was little in Bristol till he went to school, and afterwards his many holidays were all for the farm. The old lady had been twice married, and had about her offspring by both husbands; but all agreed in making a pet of Robert, who, as the engravings show, must have resembled strikingly his own mother, the flower of the mixed flock. One Tyler uncle, the rightful head of that section, went by the name of the Squire. He could not have been many degrees above idiotism-he took no part in any labour that is done under the sun, but sat by the fireside in the winter, in an arbour during summer, from morning till bedtime, without a book, without even a pipe, chewing tobacco and swilling beer. His only outings were, that he walked into the heart of Bristol every Wednesday and Saturday-to be shaved for a penny. Weak as he was, he had a strong memory, and no story that he had ever heard but he could repeat, and occasionally apply with a startling aptness. From him Southey derived the Epigraph of his KEHAMA-Curses like young chickens always come home to roost: it owed its Greek dress to Coleridge-but the source is mysteriously indicated on the title-page—AлоQ9. Avɛx. TOU TUNIEλ. TOU MT.-On the death of the old dame, her Hill sons dispersed; some of the Tylers also went abroad into the world; and the Squire and a spinster sister removed to a village nearer to Bristol, which has since we believe surrounded it; but the spot was then rural. Robert was as welcome here as he had been at his grandmother's-and Miss Tyler, who, being a good many years older than Mrs. Southey, and also better off as to worldly circumstances, had always predominated over her, assumed the direction of whatever concerned her son. He thinks it worth while to give her history at considerable length. Miss Tyler had had all the benefits of a boarding-school-the mistress whereof is thus neatly sketched :

'Her husband carried on the agreeable business of a butcher in

Bristol,