Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      "You don't mean to say that that crossgrained surly old fellow is the author of the famous ballads!" exclaimed I. "Why, there is a snarl on his visage that might qualify him to sit for a fancy portrait of Churchill in extreme old age!"

      "He is the last of a great race. Look yonder, at that other venerable figure – "

      "The gentleman who is twiddling his stick across his arm, as though he were practising the bars of a fandango? Who may he be?"

      "Arndt, the great composer. Have you men like him in your British parliament?"

      "Why, I must confess we have not yet thought of ransacking the orchestra for statesmen. Any more?"

      "Yes. You see that tall grizzled man over the way. That is Anastasius Grün."

      "Graf von Auersperg? Well, he is a gentleman at least; though, as to poetical pretension, I have always considered him very much on a par with Dicky Milnes. But where are your statesmen, professor? Where are the men who have made politics the study of their lives, who have mastered the theories of government and the science of economics, and who have all the different treaties of Europe at the ends of their fingers?"

      "As we are commencing a new era," replied Klingemann, "we need none of those. Treaties, ideologically considered, are merely the exponents of the position of past generations, and bear no reference to the future, the tendency of which is lost in the mists of eternity. Such men as you describe we had under the Metternich system, but we have discarded them all with their master."

      "Then I must say that, idiotically considered, you have done a very foolish thing. Where at least are your financiers?"

      "My dear friend, I must for once admit that you have stumbled on a weak point. We are very much in want of a financier indeed. Would you believe it? the sum of five florins a-day, which is the amount of recompense allowed to each member of the Assembly, has been allowed to fall into arrear!"

      "What! do each of these fellows get five florins a-day, in return for cobbling up the Empire? Then it is very easy to see that, unless the exchequer fails altogether, the parliament will never be prorogued."

      "Certainly not until it has completed the task of adjusting a German constitution," observed the professor.

      "Which is just saying the same thing in different words. But, pray, what is exciting this storm of wrath in the bosom of the respectable Mr Simon?"

      "He is merely denouncing the sovereigns and the aristocracy. It is a favourite topic. But look there! that is a great man – ah, a very great man indeed!"

      Without challenging the claim of the individual indicated to greatness, I am committing no libel when I designate him as the very ugliest man in Europe. The broad arch of his face was fringed with a red bush of furzy hair. His eyes were inflamed and pinky, like those of a ferret labouring under opthalmia, and his nose, mouth, and tusks, bore a palpable resemblance to the muzzle of the bulldog. Altogether, it is impossible to conceive a more thoroughly forbidding figure. This was Robert Blum, the well-known publisher of Leipzig, who has put himself prominently forward from the very commencement of the movement; and who, possessing a certain power of language which may pass with the multitude for eloquence, and professing opinions of extreme democratic tendency, has gained a popularity and power in Frankfort, which is not regarded without uneasiness by the members of the more moderate party. As this worthy was a bookseller, and Klingemann still in possession of piles of unpublished manuscript, I could understand and forgive the enthusiasm and veneration of the latter.

      Simon having concluded his inflammatory harangue, the tribune was next occupied by a person of a different stamp. He was, I think, without any exception, the finest-looking man in the Assembly – in the prime of manhood, tall, handsome, and elegantly dressed, and bearing, moreover, that unmistakeable air which belongs to the polished gentleman alone. His manner of speaking was hasty, and not such as might be approved of by the practised debater, but extremely fluent and energetic; and it was evident that Simon and his confederates writhed under the castigation which, half-seriously, half-sarcastically, the bold orator unsparingly bestowed. Judging from the occasional hisses, the speaker seemed no favourite either with the members of the extreme left or with the galleries; but probably he was used to such manifestations, for he went through his work undauntedly. I asked his name. It was Felix, Prince of Lichnowsky.

      Poor Lichnowsky! a few weeks after I saw him in the Assembly, he was barbarously and brutally murdered by savages at the gate of Frankfort – the flesh cut off his arms with scythes – his body put up as a target for their balls – and every execrable device of ingenuity employed to prolong his suffering. O ye who wink at revolutions abroad, and who would stimulate the populace to excess – ye who, in days past, have written or been privy to letters from the Home Office, conniving at undeniable treason – think of this scene, and repent of your miserable folly! In a civilised city – among a Christian and educated population – that deed of hideous atrocity was perpetrated at noon-day: the young life of one of the most accomplished and chivalrous cavaliers of Europe was torn from him piecemeal, in a manner which humanity shudders to record, and for no other reason than because he had stood forth as the advocate of constitutional order! Liberal historians, in their commentaries upon the first French Revolution, spare no pains to argue us into the conviction that such tragedies as that of the Princess de Lamballe could not be enacted save amongst a people degraded and brutalised by long centuries of misgovernment, oppression, and superstition. They have lied in saying so. A pack of famished wolves is not so merciless as a human mob, when drunk with the revolutionary puddle; and were the strong arm of the law once paralysed in Britain, we should inevitably become the spectators, if not the victims, of the same butcheries which have disgraced almost every country in Europe now clamouring for independence and unity. The sacerdotal robes of the Archbishop of Paris – the gray hairs of Major von Auerswaldt – the station and public virtue of the Counts of Lamburg, Zichy, and Latour – could not save these unhappy men from a fate far worse than simple assassination: and this century and year have likewise been reserved for the unexampled abomination of Christian men adopting cannibalism, and feeding upon human flesh, as was the case not a month ago at Messina! Well might Madame Roland exclaim, "O Liberty! what things are done in thy name!" Poor Lichnowsky! Better had he fallen on the fields of Spain, in the combat for honour and loyalty, with the red steel in his hand, and the flush of victory on his brow, than have perished so miserably by the hands of the cowardly and rascal rout of the free city of Frankfort!

      "That's Zitz of Mayence," said the professor, as a heavy-looking demagogue stumbled clumsily up to the tribune.

      "Oh! that's Zitz, is it?" replied I. "Well, professor, I think I have had quite enough of the Assembly for one morning, and as I feel a certain craving for a cigar, I think I shall leave you for the present."

      "Won't you dine to-day at the Swan?" said Klingemann, "most of my friends of the left frequent the table-d'hote there, and I should like to introduce you to Zitz."

      "Thank you!" said I, "I shall be punctual, and pray keep a place for me;" and so for the present we parted.

      "The dunderheads!" thought I, as I emerged into the street and lit an undeniable havannah, "here is a nation which, for thirty years past, has been eating its sauer-kraut and sausages in peace, paying almost no taxes, and growing its own wine and tobacco, about to be plunged into irretrievable misery and ruin, by a set of selfish hounds who look to nothing beyond their stipend of five florins a-day! Heaven help the idiots! what would they be at? They have got all manner of constitutions, liberty of the press – though there is not a man in Germany who could write a decent leading article – and a great deal more freedom than is good for them already. And now the world is to be turned upside down, because a parcel of trash, not a whit more respectable than Cuffey and his confederates, and very nearly as stupid, have taken the notion of unity into their heads, and are СКАЧАТЬ