Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848
Various
Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848
A GLIMPSE AT GERMANY AND ITS PARLIAMENT
We are not old enough to have been politically detained at Verdun. Our impressions of Napoleon are soured by no recollections of personal tyranny; and though a near relative wasted the better portion of his life in the dreary enjoyments of that conventional fortress, we do not carry the spirit of clanship so far as to entertain on that account a revengeful hatred towards the memory of the Corsican. At the same time, it must be confessed that, towards the latter part of this past August, the idea of Verdun more than once recurred unpleasantly to our mind. It became clear to us that, for this year at least, there was little probability of our realising certain visions of Highland sport which had been called up by a perusal of the exciting work of the Stuarts. Her Majesty was coming down to Balmoral, and, in consequence, the red deer of Aberdeenshire were safe, at least from a private rifle. The grouse, with a degree of obstinacy truly irritating, had again failed, and we were little disposed to levy war against the few and feeble remaining broods of the cheepers. The Duke of Sutherland, with a just economy, had shut up his rivers, and given the salmon a jubilee; so that there was no hope of throwing a fly on the surface of the Shin or the Laxford. On the other hand, there seemed to be plenty of sport, and no want of shooting on the Continent. Licences were not required, and restrictive seasons unknown. The odour of gunpowder was distinct in Paris as early as the month of February; and ever since then there had been occasional explosions and discharges all over the face of Europe. True, a garde mobile, or a gentleman in a blouse, especially when provided with a rusty detonator and bayonet, is an awkward kind of sportsman to encounter. Barricades may be curious structures to inspect; but it is not pleasant to be on either side of them when the Red Republic is in question; and still more ungenial to be placed exactly in the centre, as once occurred to a worthy bailie of our acquaintance, who, having been sent to Paris in 1830, on a special mission to fetch home some stray voters for an impending election in the west, found, to his intense horror, that the diligence in which he was located was built up as a popular defence; that the bullets were whistling through the windows; and that even his patron, St Rollox, seemed deaf to his intercessions for rescue.
But as we do not happen to hold stock in the French lines, and therefore have not thought it necessary, as yet, to identify ourselves with any of the parties who are presently contending for the palm of mastery in France; as the crusade under the white flag or the oriflamme in favour of the descendant of Saint Louis has not yet been openly proclaimed or enthusiastically preached by any bearded representative of Peter, the Miraculous Hermit; and as, moreover, we had seen quite enough of France in her earliest stages of paroxysm, and had no wish to behold the professors of the vaudeville and palette engaged, in the present dearth of money, at the novel occupation of cobbling shoes for the Sardinian soldiery in the ateliers nationaux– we resolved to abstain from Paris in the meantime, and rather to bend our steps towards Germany, then in the full ferment of the Schleswig Holstein affair. Germany has been an old haunt of ours from our boyhood. So far back as 1833, we had the pleasure of witnessing a tight little skrimmage between the Heidelberg students and the soldiery in the square of Frankfort; and since that time we have watched with great interest the progress of the arts, literature, and sciences, and the development of the interior resources of the country. Right sorry were we, though not altogether surprised, to learn that quiet Germany had lighted her revolutionary pipe from the French insurrectionary fires; that Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Hanau, thos