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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

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Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

KOHL IN DENMARK AND IN THE MARSHES

Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogthümer Schleswig und Holstein. Reisen in Dänemark und den Herzogthümer Schleswig und Holstein.

Mr. Kohl, the most prolific of modern German writers, the most indefatigable of travellers, is already well known to the English public by his "Sketches of the English," "Travels in Ireland," and many other publications too numerous to remember. He is a gentleman of marvellous facility in travelling over foreign ground – of extraordinary capabilities in the manufacturing of books. Within five years he has given to the world, hostages for fame, some thirty or forty volumes; and explored, socially, politically, scientifically, and æsthetically, North and South Russia, Poland, Moravia, Hungary, Bavaria, Great Britain, France, Denmark, and we know not how many other countries besides. It is as difficult to stop his pen as his feet. He is always trotting, and writing whilst he trots, and evidently without the smallest fatigue from either occupation. He plays on earth the part assigned to the lark above it by the poet: he,

"Singing, still doth soar; and soaring, ever singeth."

He has already announced a scheme that has occurred to him for a commercial map, which shall contain, in various colours, the productions and raw materials of every country in the world, with lines appended, marking the course they take to their several ports of embarkation. We shrewdly suspect that this gigantic scheme has grown out of another, more personal and profitable, and already put in practice. We could almost swear that Mr Kohl had drawn up a literary map on the very same principle, with dots for the countries and districts to be visited and worked up, and lines to mark the course for the conveyance of that very raw material, which he is eternally digging up on the way, in the shape of disquisitions about nothing, and moral reflections on every thing. Denmark occupies him to-day. We will wager that he is already intent upon working out an article or book from neighbouring Norway or adjacent Sweden.

It was remarked the other day by a writer, that one great literary fault of the present day is a desire to be "so priggishly curt and epigrammatic," that almost every lucubration comes from the furnace with a coating of "small impertinence," perfectly intolerable to the sober reader. If any writer is anxious to correct this fault, let him take our advice gratis, and sit down at once to a course of Kohl. So admirable a spinner of long yarns from the smallest threads, never flourished. We have most honestly and perseveringly waded through his eleven or twelve hundred pages of close print, and we unhesitatingly confess that we have never before perused so much, of which we have retained so little. Does not every man, woman, and child, in these days of cheap fares and everlasting steamers, know by heart all that can be said or sung about "tones from the sea?" Are they not to be summoned, at any given moment, under any given circumstances, by your fire at twilight, on your pillow at midnight? Mr Kohl proses about these eternal "tones," till salt water becomes odious – about storms, till they calm you to sleep – about calms, till they drive you to fury – about winds and waves, till your head aches with their motion. We will not pretend to tell you, reader, all the differences that exist between high marsh-land and low marsh-land, broad dikes and narrow dikes, or to describe the downs and embankments which we have seen, go whithersoever we may, ever since we have risen from the perusal of Mr Kohl's book. We will not, because Mr Kohl has dealt hardly by us, have our revenge upon you. Nay, we could not, if we would. The picture is jumbled in our critical head, as it lies confused in the author's work, which is as disjointed a labour as ever puzzled science seeking in chaos for a system. Backwards and forwards he goes – now up to hi