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defiance. The punishments are often on a par in point of singularity with the delinquencies, and prison discipline appears to have been imperfectly understood. Instead of simple decapitation, one recorded sentence is, that the criminal be cut into two pieces, the head part the smaller, and the body part the larger, as a well-merited doom to him and a terrible example to others.' Three incendiaries were apprehended and convicted in Eilenburg. One was burnt to death, another beheaded, and the third condemned to be branded and kept in safe custody till his reform was ascertained. The branding was easy, but the safe custody embarrassed the town-council, who ended by putting him in irons and sending him daily to beg his bread from door to door, with a view to his reformation.' To the indignation and surprise of their worships, as they report, the ungrateful rascal, not appreciating their clemency, stole away.'

6

Peter Jokuff had been guilty of contempt by words or gestures against the tribunals of Wilthen, and refused to ask pardon or express contrition. Having no prison or legal place of confinement at their disposal, they placed the said Peter under arrest in the publichouse, where he was chained by the leg to the public table, from September 2, 1750, to February 15, 1751. Barring the awkwardness of the position, he led an agreeable life enough, as he had plenty of company, and could eat and drink his fill at the expense of the frequenters of the house, with whom he was in high favour for his spirited contumacy. So the magistracy caused a kind of wooden cage to be constructed in the same room, shut him up in it, and by strict prohibitions to the landlord and guests did all that in them lay to confine him to a bread-and-water diet. They tried to put both his feet in the stocks, but met with so determined a resistance that they were obliged to rest satisfied with putting one. He remained in the cage till

August 15, 1751, when, being still unsubdued, he was removed to the newly constructed house of correction at Waldheim, where, we regret to say, we lose sight of him altogether.

Valuable illustrations of the history of German morals and manners may be deduced from sumptuary laws against luxury and dress. Less than a century since, these were frequently and invidiously enforced in Germany. Thus a formal report of the courts at Hirschstein makes known to the administrative body, at the instance of the church-patron and judge, Julius Alexander von Hartitsch, that the excess of the peasantry in dress had become intolerable, inasmuch as three farmers' daughters had appeared at church attired in silks, furs, gold brocades, and spangles, which are detailed in the document with such minuteness as to justify a suspicion that the accusing elder was set on by the ladies of his family and had taken counsel with them. His demand was that the three damsels should be warned to dress according to their degree, under penalty of having their finery publicly stripped off. Their fathers pleaded in reply, that they had shown a particular liking for such attire: that they had town marriages in prospect; lastly, that the garients in question were by no means expensive, and were more convenient than the ancestral habits, veils, and hoods. Their persecutor was still unsatisfied, and called for summary judgment on their contumacy. The fathers appealed to the provincial government, who rejected the appeal, and ordered the appellants to forbid the alleged excess in dress, to give Hartitsch notice that they had done so, and to let the affair

rest.

So late as 1786, a fur cap excited much local agitation, and led to a serious conflict of the authorities. The daughter of the state-piper, Meischner, at Eisenbach, appeared at church with the cap. She was a

pretty girl; it became her; and the town-judge, Stölzel, looked at her oftener than was agreeable to his wife. The result was that the next day, under domestic compulsion, he issued an order to the piper to prevent his daughter from wearing the cap again. The piper appealed to the district magistrate, who, after inspecting the head-dress, and finding it composed of ordinary and unforbidden materials, formally authorised the damsel to wear it, and gave the judge due notice of the fact. The judge held to his prohibition, and the town was divided into two parties, who exhibited as much eagerness and animosity as the greens and blues of the amphitheatre, or the smallendians and bigendians of Lilliput. The old and ugly women, with their husbands, supported the judge; the young and pretty, with the bachelors, were mostly on the side of the magistrate. The married interest was strongest in the town council, and one of their myrmidons was commissioned to repair to the church on February 19, 1786, and before the whole congregation remove the cap from the fair head of the wearer. He performed this invidious duty without hesitation or compunction, and bore off the cap to the council, who condemned it as lawful prize; whereupon the leaders of the opposite party retorted by purchasing a finer and more becoming cap, in which the piper's daughter appeared the following Sunday, to the confusion of her enemies and amidst the triumphant congratulations of her friends. This coup-de-main carried the day. The council, taken by surprise, wanted courage or presence of mind enough for a second confiscation; and before the lapse of another week, the central authorities interfered. The council was eventually ordered to make restitution and pay the costs.

The exact number of dishes to be served at the table of each class of the community according to their rank

was carefully prescribed; and a licence was required for any departure from the ordinance. A long process is reported, in which a list of the dishes and the guests, with a minute description of their quality, was submitted to the Grand Duke in council, who, after deliberating with a gravity resembling that of the Roman Senate in the famous turbot case temp. Domitian, acquitted the accused. Musical instruments were the subject of equally stringent regulations; trumpets and trombones being especially confined to grand occasions and forbidden to persons of low degree. The trumpeters and kettle-drummers formed a close and highly privileged corporation. One Mather Richter, at Altenberg, was fined 200 dollars for allowing trumpets to be blown at his daughter's wedding; and so late as 1732 the trumpeters and trombone-players of Weissenfels lodged a complaint against the bailiff of Freiburg for daring to make the state-piper attend on him with trumpets and trombones. The defence was, that persons of distinction were present: and the cause came at last before the Law Faculty of Leipzig, who, on due examination of the circumstances and the precedents, let off the offender on payment of costs.

Amongst the numerous instances of popular prejudice which abound in this collection, the municipal ordinances against shepherds are the most unaccountable. Not only were they forbidden to settle in towns or to become members of guilds; but to intermarry.with the pastoral class carried into a family a taint like that supposed to be communicated by the smallest intermixture of black blood in the United States. With these curious and whimsical incidents of German morals and manners in the last century, we take leave of Dr. Weber.

123

ENGLAND AND FRANCE: THEIR NATIONAL QUALITIES, MANNERS, MORALS, AND SOCIETY.

Notes on England. By H. TAINE, D.C.L. Oxon, etc. Translated, with an Introductory Chapter, by W. F. RAE. Second Edition. London: 1872.

Two familiar lines of Burns' are constantly repeated under an impression that the soundness of the thought or sentiment that dictated them is unimpeachable :'Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us.'

The prevalent notion is that others must necessarily see us as we are- -through a clear, transparent medium, neither transfigured by vanity and flattery, nor distorted by prejudice and dislike. It is altogether a mistaken notion. People are quite as open to error in judging others as in judging themselves; and the point of view they take up for the purpose is far more frequently determined by misleading influences than by the unsophisticated desire of truth. The best intentions, the most earnest struggle for impartiality, are no guarantee for strict justness of appreciation: because we cannot shake off our idiosyncracy; we cannot, formed as we are, see things or persons with the calm, pure eye of reason. Where, in this world of intrigue, ambition, passion, and caprice, is the admired and envied wit, beauty, orator, or statesman to find the ithers' who are to serve as the infallible helps to self-knowledge? Is Mr. Gladstone to seek them at the Carlton, or Mr. Disraeli at Brooks's?'