NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. I SAT an hour to-day, John, I scarce believe that you would know The school-house is no more, John, The wild rose by the window's side Has been ploughed up by stranger hands, The chestnut-tree is dead, John, The broken grape-vine of our swing The harebells quake, sway their blue coronals, What time the breeeze of dawn, piercing and keen, Sweeps o'er their heathery bed. The ptarmigan And bounding o'er the glade, is lost to sight. Within the whins, the red-legged coveys crouch, And fear not sportsman's gun. Scarce e'er does foot Of man crush down the few green blades that From The Edinburgh Review. "FATHER ARNDT." With so much unconscious skill does he lead us into that simple country life, that ERNST MORITZ ARNDT, in his well- we pass with a certain feeling of regret to known song "What is the German's Fa- the part of his history where the young therland," may be said not only to have home life ends and the struggles of the asked of History a question, but to have world begin. With him they began early, dictated to her its answer, which now, and were, in some sense, self-imposed, after more than half a century, she echoes Filled with an unusual instinct of manlithrough the countless throats of the tri- ness, and in some sort, as we shall see, umphant German race. For, though Arndt fore-conscious of the part he should have was never a minister or a statesman; to play, he exercised himself whilst still a though history gives, as it should give (as child in every sort of hardship and disciArndt himself gave in all generous sin- pline, physical as well as moral. Many of cerity), the glory of the great liberation his verses refer to this period of his life to Von Stein and the other mighty leaders with a very striking and simple truthfulof that glorious time, still it was Arndt, ness. Having, like many another clever and Arndt alone, to whom the true in- boy, read very much more than his friends stinct of the race has given the proudest supposed, we find that even the perusal of all titles for a patriotic man. Others of Rousseau's works, so far from corruptmight be called guardians, defenders, ing, actually fortified his mind against saviours of their country, but his title was higher than these, since to every German heart the name of "Father Arndt" for many a year was as familiar as it was honoured and welcomed. many temptations to evil, and strengthened him in his determination to become, with the aid of his self-imposed discipline, a man in the truest sense of the word. Sent to Stralsund to the upper school at seventeen, we find him, while zealous in his work and hearty in his play, yet persistently taking hours from his sleep to weary and harden his frame with long solitary walks of many miles at a time. An extract from his "Recollections" will not be here out of place :— In ordinary circumstances it might be called a misnomer, for the man who was known at his death as "der Deutschester Deutsche," was Swedish born. His birth occurred at Schoritz, in the Island of Rügen, on the 26th of December, 1769, in the same year with "the Corsican," Napoleon I., whose might he helped at last "Every spot of wood and copse and seashore to overthrow. He gives us, in his "Recol- within a dozen miles of Stralsund was often lections," a charming picture of his boy- pressed by my wandering feet; the hours I hood's home, of his relatives and inti- spent thus and in the company of friends were mates, his growth and adventures. He taken from the night. Thank God! I never .recalls what all men can feel, while so few needed very much sleep; perhaps I should have can describe- the touching influences of wanted more but for my principle of keeping the early home, looked back upon, after a under my body, and bringing it into subjection lapse of sixty or seventy years, with more by hard discipline and constant weariness. And pleasure and distinctness than things so the years 1787, 1788, and 1789 saw me conwithin his closer gaze. In the genial sim- stantly pursuing this lonely course, and quoting plicity which was part of his nature, he to myself continually the words of Horace, interests his readers in the strict, manly, true motto: Hoc tibi proderit olim.'"' which many a time since have proved to me a honest father, who brought his boys up to "rough it" in life, and the gentle, praying, pious mother, whose sweet influence never faded from the soul of her famous son. It may be well to remind our readers that the Island of Rugen, with that part of Pomerania including Greifswald and Stralsund, though Prussian since 1815, was Swedish territory from 1720 till that date. In his twentieth year, this young Christian philosopher for so he might be called, though his faith lay in what is nowa-days called the muscular form of Christianity finding his strength to resist temptation too small, took a great step consistent with the principles he had laid down for his life-guidance. He was brave truly pious, faithful believer, as we may gather from his many hymns, and his famous "Catechism for the German Army and Landwehr," to which we shall have occasion to refer further on as one of the most influential and most characteristic of his many writings. enough to run away from Stralsund alto- [the events and ideas of the period (1796). gether, and, with only a few shillings in That he was a conscientious and practical his pocket, to wander beyond Demmin, Christian then, even though not feeling seeking for employment as a clerk or farm-fitted for a clerical life, is unquestionable, bailiff. An old officer to whom he applied as is the fact that in after-years he was a took him in, treated him kindly, and promised to employ him, provided he obtained his father's consent; a kindly way of bringing the lad again into communication with his friends. In due time a reply came from his father, wisely leaving him a free choice as to his future course, but at the same time pointing out that if he wished Thus he arrived at twenty-eight years to be a farmer he could have no better of age, a man with all his energies active, opportunities for the purpose than by re- of more than average reading, and of exmaining at home. So he returned to his ceptional talent in various directions, but father's house at Löbnitz, where he re- without any settled course of life— the mained nearly two years, pursuing his sort of man over whom, in ordinary cirstudies and his bodily discipline with cumstances, even the wisest and most exundiminished energy; he says of this perienced are apt to hold up their hands time: a “These nobler pursuits, however, (intellectual study), did not prevent my continuing my system of toil and endurance. I would sleep constantly on bare boards like a guard bed, or on faggots; sometimes in the open air, under haystack or a tree, wrapped up only in a cloak; or I would stretch off on long walks many miles in all directions, often starting after the rest of the household were in bed; and all to keep my frame hardy and under subjection. It greatly surprised and troubled my parents, whom I often saw shaking their heads over my oddities, but as they saw that in other points I behaved rationally, and did what I had to do like a man in his senses, they wisely let me go my own gait." and shake their heads, and say, "Alas. But 66 When twenty-two years of age, he went to the University of Greifswald to study divinity, and then spent a year in that of Jena for the same purpose; and while a candidat, or, as we should say, while waiting for a title to orders, was invited by Kosegarten, the pastor of Altenkirchen, to undertake the post of tutor in his family. As is customary in Germany, a candidat," Recollections" tell us, his walking habit, begun as a corporeal discipline, was continued as the best means possible for the study of mankind, which became with him a sort of zoological passion. if licensed, is permitted to preach before ordination, as Arndt frequently did, and as it appears with great success. And yet it was during his stay here that he came to the decision of not seeking ordination. So he travelled for the best part of two He admits his reason to have been the un-years (1798 and 1799), spending three settled state of his religious convictions, months in Vienna, traversing Hungary disturbed, like those of many others, by and crossing the Alps into Italy. When in Tuscany the fresh outbreak of war | taken root in my mind, which even now, when changed his plans, and compelled him to my hair is white, will not altogether yield their leave Rome and Sicily unvisited. As the place to more far-sighted views. As a little war advanced he betook himself to Nice, news-reader between nine and twelve years old, thence to Marseilles and Paris, where he I had my political prejudices and prepossessions. spent the whole summer of 1799, making From my earliest remembrance I was a sturdy, his way slowly home in the autumn by perhaps an extravagant, royalist, probably unBrussels, Cologne, Frankfort, and Berlin. consciously made so by my daily surroundings. We mention these particulars of his jourMy father was no politician, but my two uncles, on the other hand, the one in his views a thorney, as showing how his sojourn among ough Swede and a worshipper of Gustav Adolf, these various nationalities gradually, with- the other a Prussian to the back-bone and an out his own consciousness, was fitting him upholder of the fame of Frederic the Great, for the part he was to play in the history each taught me to regard a king, such as they of his country. His pedestrian mode of exalted, as infinitely superior to any republic. travel was that best fitted, in conjunction As might be supposed, holding such strong with his own peculiar geniality of temper opinions in favour of monarchy, I always took and address, to supply him with a thorough the side of England against her revolted Amerknowledge of the various peoples whom ican colonies, when that subject gave occasion he visited, and to remove many prejudices to debate. which, in those days of difficult communication, might have warped his judgment and restricted his usefulness. He next settled as a Privat-Docent or tutor, at his first university - Greifswald. To this period of his life we may assign his first political activity, and we shall abridge from his own words the account he gives of his political views and their history, describing, as he felt them to do, the kindred growth of sentiment and opinion in millions of his fellow-men: "And with regard to the French? While still a child, and at the time when my parents' means had been insufficient to afford me such educational opportunities as I afterwards enjoyed, I had spent much of my time in reading such old chronicles and histories as came in my way. Such works, for instance, as those of Puffendorf and others, descriptive of the Thirty Years' War, of the ambitious intrigues and the atrocious deeds of Louis XIV. And these had filled me with dislike, almost with detestation, of the people whom he ruled. And so it was that I rejoiced at every French reverse I heard of, and was quite a little Englishman in my hatred of the race. "Then in my young manhood came the Great Revolution, and its course gave rise to many discussions at home. Nor could I deny the truth of many of the accusations made against the government of Louis XVI., or dispute the justice of many of the principles laid down at the time by the revolutionary leaders, however desecrated and perverted those princiBut still I mourned over every reverse expeples may have been in the course of after events. rienced by the Germans and their allies, without being bound in any way to regard myself as one of them; living, as I did, a Swedish subject by the Baltic, far from the scene of conflict, and at heart far less a German than a Swede. Then came my years of travel, and I saw the French nation for myself; I learned to admire its amiability and gaiety, but also to measure its falsehood and deceit. I had lingered on my homeward journey at Aachen, Köln, Koblentz, and Mainz, and seen everywhere the remains of Germany's ancient glory trampled and dese |