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NOTES ON CHAPTER XXVL 



German Literature, p. 330. 



1HE pernicious tendency* of many modern German publi- 

 cations has been often the subject of remark within a few- 

 years past. That works of solid merit, which cannot be too 

 generally known and read, are every year published in that 

 country, is not denied; but that a considerable number daily 

 issue from the German presses, of a very different and most 

 pestiferous character, can as little be doubted. A late writer, 

 in a memoir on this subject, makes the following striking re- 

 marks. How far they are just or otherwise is left to be de- 

 termined by every reader. 



" After all, it may not be chimerical to suppose, that the 

 general reception of 'the German writings, the universal pre- 

 valence of the German taste, and the love of the wild and 

 gloomy, are not to be accounted for from ordinary causes, 

 and have in them more weight and importance than are usually 

 attached to mere matters of taste and criticism. May not 

 these be among the elements of feverish agitation and mighty 

 change, afloat, by the permission of Providence, for pur- 

 poses, to us inscrutable, in the moral system ? May not this 

 revolution in taste be a prelude to other revolutions — a small 

 skirt of the cloud, like a man's hand, ushering in the black- 

 ening tempest? Are not the German writings calculated to 

 generate, in both sexes, a ferocious hardihood, and inde- 

 pendence of mind ; a dangerous contempt of established forms ; 

 a promptitude, to suffer and to dare; an enthusiasm of cha- 

 racter, fitting them for seasons of energy, of exertions, of 

 privations, dangers, and calamities ? It is natural for human 

 blindness and inattention to overlook the instruments and 

 operations by which Providence prepares and fashions great 

 and surprising events. It is the folly of man to ascribe too 

 little weight and importance to moral causes ; while it is the 

 course of Providence (as it were, on purpose to humble hu- 

 man pride) to act by seemingly minute and inefficient causes. 

 Who knows, then, but this preternatural appetite for the ir- 

 regular, the indecorous, the boisterous, the sanguinary, and 

 the terrific, may be the precursor of some strange moral or 

 political convulsion?" — Transactions of the Boj/al Irish Aea- 



