MISS JOHNSON'S PEASANT LIFE IN GERMANY.

Tins volume is a singular example of American love of travel, and the manner in which a resolute determination can overcome diffieulties. Miss Johnson set her heart upon going to Germany, to Study the people, especially the peasantry, with, as it would appear, very slender external aid, and without that first of all inward acquisitions, the tongue. But "where there's a will there's a way,"- and her way was to engage as attendant and Companion some young German girl who could speak- English, and there are many such, it seems, to be had. Thus provided With the language, Miss Johnson went from town to town, ' and village to village, boarding with the better class of peasantry, taking lodgings in " tower'd cities," and occasionally sojourning at country inns ; but this last mode was not often resorted to, as it involved the process known as fleecing ; indeed the same inflic-

tion has to be undergone in towns.

"The whole system of inns in Germany is disagreeable for the traveller. Everything is done by the piece, and thus it is impessible to know before- hand what a week or a month will cost, for,iin a strange land you. cannot be acquainted with market-prices, and will be as likely to order the dearest as the cheapest food. This also varies greatly in different places. But every- where in the country, comfortable rooms and board are much dearer than in the country in Amenes--much ,dearer, too, in the cities than in the cities of the same size-at home. People who studreconomy can live as cheap in one place as another, and we know, families who live more comfortably in New York, even, on eight hundred or a thousand dollars, than any family can live in Germany for the same money. The people who come to Enrope to live, in order to economize, are strangers and do not care for appearances. They rent apartments in a street and building, such as they would not enter for any purpose at home, and live upon coarse food. Service is in- deed, cheaper ; but this and everything else has doubled in the last five years. But in all the smaller cities of America families live prettily and more comfortably on the same money, than families of the same rank do here. We have paid from seven to eight American dollars a week in a small country inn, where our room was small and insufferably dirty, our food literally boiled beef and cabbage. In a place of similar pretension in Ame- rica, one may have for two or three dollars atmost, a beautiful room and the fat of the land."

The book is not travels but the result of travels. Miss John- son has evidently traversed the country from north to south, and penetrated in various lateral directions ; she mentions different districts as distinguished for natural beauty, products of indus- try, or mediteval structures and remains ; but there are few ad- ventures by the way ; none of common travelling occurrences. When the author describes a place it is merely to relieve the ex- positional matter of which the book mainly consists, or as a theme on which to ground her expositions. When an incident is no- ticed, it is to illustrate or exemplify some of her social or moral deductions. What she chiefly regarded during her sojourn in Germany was the life and character of the people, below the aris- tocracy, as exhibiting itself in morals, manners, behaviour, con- versation, domestic economy, and accommodations, and indeed everything that comes under the head of social, home, and indus- trial life, so far as she could see the latter.

The picture deduced is bad, whether as regards comfort or morals. Allowances are clearly to be made, as the reader may himself discover from internal evidence. The north, we are told, far :exceeds the south of Germany in cleanliness, home conve- niences, physical wellbeing, and other matters—it is more like England. There are seeming contrarieties if not contradictions, though resolvable when considered into differences of place, with- out the writer herself sufficiently marking the distinction. Thus we hear of the extreme poverty of the peasantry in some places; in others, the skill and pertinacity of their cultivation are de- scribed, and the wonderful richness of the crops, where the pro- perty of the land was vested in the serf-occupier on the abolition of feudalism half a century ago. Such crops scarcely seem consistent with the poverty of the owner of the soil; and though we hear of the ill-working of equal partition, that principle would scarcely seem to have had time to develop itself. After all such seeming, or it may be real, inconsistencies are disposed of, a vast amount of evils—of social and moral sores—remain, to shock the English and Americans at all events.

Some of the alleged ills are in a degree matters of propriety or congruity. Cleanliness, indeed, is next to godliness ; and dirty linen or one knife to serve for all table duties may fairly be described as repugnant to it. But the absence of a table-cloth,

s Peasant Life in Germany. By Miss Anna C. Xobnson, Author of "The - Iroquois," "Myrtle Wreath," Ste. kublished by Scribner, New York.

and--similar—clefteieneies—found--ift—the--hetteee—ef--persees—who profeli findvingeelk paegesfigrest talitarEir art And idrilkiin *tune,

ae ethhigs citilatibrutUtzwining; finallyheilleoidnariupon MiMakett ideas,of Amerienn-gentleraen ,as.to the! ituluairriffrGerhian.'honse+wivesi, aompareck with thaflf.,of Titmeatlaretie ladiet,.mtiy-ber deft- fur ;the ladies.respectivq1pito, thingsi, in - maninars,.and ,eeonorry, 'i,opposed 41ki Angio4Sairon, ideas, yea Ifintillyrr esoiving' themselves' into are' also , of slender, importanee; sard rue subjects for sketches.' - - immorality that lurks 'below society or i rather that dem not lark at aJl, but stands -out' statingly tir those-who have a little me time than a scampering tourist to lodk beyomithe superficial upi, arances of things as 'seen from railway zearriages,:[roads, ,and otels, is a more terrible evil. Variona causesilicrel condom:A-to this. The devastating wars. to. which. Germany has been suited for the greater.part.of two centuries., namely. from.the fbegiziniug of the thirty ,years' war to the downfall of Napoleon.. muati have blunted if-not brutalized theanoral sense of the people.. l'hovnut• merous petty princes, witirtheir petty courts, have imitated' thedi4 centiOntness of Versailles and Vienna. -Without the eheftkofptzblje opinion in a great capital, and the wealth and taste which over -vice. In.' Miss , Johnson's opinion the 'two-. most causes, of 6-ormolu:immorality at present are the poverty of I people, and theatataof especially in relation to marriage and industry. Some five and- twenty years or more :ago, -when hard political economy was more the fashion. than it is rtoiv,..enst German . systems and instittitions more in,.favour, young Whig doctrinariea used -to admire; "inter alias" the law which forbids marriage without-means. According to Miss Johnson one portion of- the means consists in paying for permission- sad the ,,want of this permission does not aheckpopulation, Equally mischievous are the eivil regulations over indus. No anan can ;leave onalocieu.- potion for another ; . no workman can., quit oneplace to start in another ; neither. skill nor /industry will help him ; it is -only money that will buy .him permission or position. The evil of guilds, monopolies, freedoms, &e., never existing in America, and. almost got rid of here, flourish with inediteval luxurianee in

Germany. - .

"A great.propertion of poverty; and crime may be traced directly and in- directly to the unjust laws, and injudicious requisitions of the guilds.. Tia the case we have mentioned, [a very sad one] marriage would very soon have followed the betrothal; bat the young people lived in a small village where luxuries were few, and the trade of the young man was that of the finer department of cabinet-making. lie had been made master workman, but could not be allowed this position in any other place, and could not therefore earn enough by his labour to acquire the sum the law makes ne- cessary before marriage is allowed. If he removed to another place to Work as a journeyman he must buy his citizenship, which was also impossible with his means. So they waited in hope of some -better fortune and the lady with whom the young girl was at service was just about to Offer them the money to enable them to begin, when she heard that the young man had yielded to the temptation which so often besets them and married an old woman who offered him her deceased husband's establishment, if he would marry her, and thus he, with all others who do the same, doomed himself to a life of degradation and misery for the sake of labour and bread. "We knew one instance where a young man had married, in this way, a widow with one child, in order to acquire the right of citizenship and the position of master workman in a large town, and after her death wished to marry again, a young girl who was not a citizen of the place, though she had lived there several years. But her means did not allow her to pay the sum, which is two hundred and fifty dollars, and before he-could marry her he must pay this, and also deposit a certain sum for the support of the child of his former wife, and another, to make sure that he had a competency for his new housekeeping, as the state in its parental wisdom and kindness will not allow people to marry without the certainty of a provision for a family. All this required so much that both together, with the generous assistance of friends, could not make up the sum, and so they were obliged to give up the idea of embarking their fortunes together on the sea of life. In such instances it is very common for fathers to say, if you will marry my daughter I will pay the price, and though the daughter has never seen the man to whom she is thus offered, she is sold without scruple, and thus made what the law and the world call respectable. "That hundreds of children are born every year, for whose maintenance no one is responsible, is known and permitted; but people cannot be al- lowed to wear the badge of respectability without paying the state so much money, though we presume they do not frame the statute in these words. "Nothing procures the right of citizenship but money."

The subject turns up at almost every place and in every form. Some parts of the following seem almost incredible, but there they are in the printed page. "What in the agricultural portion of Old and New England -is termed morality, seems at a low ebb everywhere on the Continent. We read' in authentic documents, what must be true, though scarcely credible, that in Rhenish Prussia the proportion of illegitimate children is from three to four in every hundred ; and in all other parts of Germany, from twenty to twenty-five in every hundred ; or one-fourth of all that are born.

"The reason given for the difference in favour of the former, is the bet- ter condition of the people, which admits of earlier marriages, the establish- ment of homes, and the support of families. Yet one writer says the Irish are rich in comparison to the people of Rhenish Prussia ; that they have no beds but naked straw, and no food year after year but black bread and po- tatoes, and the poorest cottage in.England is richer than the richest in many towns on the Rhine. There, too, you may see a donkey and a woman har- nessed together to draw a plough. "In the little town of Gear it has been the custom for three hundred years, to collect the young girls upon an open plats and rout them up to the highest bidder—the whole lot for fifty dollars—and then each one sepa- rately. A man having bought and paid for one, she is subject to him for-a

year, and must during that time, be his partner in the village dances, or at least dance with no one else, and consider herself at all times at his disposal when required for his gratification.

"In Hesse Camel, we were told that a young girl could anywhere be bought in the same way., and for a very trifling sum, merely because of their poverty. This is considered the poorest of any state in Germany, .and sup- ports the largest military force ; the Elector being essentially warlike in his propensities. "It was another curse, we heard often from the mouths of women, that WZarrerament officials were every-Where The eniployis of the in-Vial:6r 1-5.—nd ria&ttier;-'intinsarY *ere 'ffiestories,' ire -heard 'of t baseness in 'becoming thnlestrumenta of consigning:young 'and Meridiem girls to the niestniieti- dere& tit all thraldoms, who had noralteinativehut starvation inime."•• '" Nine confirnialiefi,' is ..given to the lastratateinent by the:trade tif.r06.* girls imported into this country fi.ore,'Perniany unveleil by tdie.EngliSh police; and there ivaS a ease. in4t veryjeng since a an English,olrl carried to Illtuthitrgh,. Where the city pollee refused to trouble their heads about. the. =atter when applied to

try London ofAcer. .

ZaCriggiltr aveller through Germany who sees grapes hanging apparently unprotected on the vines, and orchard 'fruits 'impend- int: over the read; jumps at' °nee to • 'ocinelusion. in *our of 113*liOnesty of the people'. johnsOn's residence, explains

tit() *ander- '

"There are no, fences to -.guard the vifieyaids. or the fields; and this we have Often seen notieedby travellers, who ,concluded from it that the- people were Wondrous honest, and unruly boys with light-fiegered propensities, not known in this old world. It is like. many other, equelusions of those who only pass be and know nothing but what -a passieg glance reveals. . ,As soon as the fields produce anythifig that Would' .teMpt the 'thief; , or that it would be an injury to the owners to lose, a watch 'et, and one 'may eke everywhere among the hills and valleys, night and day, these watehere, who are employed and paid by Government., When the harvests are , ripening; a man may not even enter his ownield without permission, as at a distance the lettaher would not be able to a444Lib.individuala,, and could not be eon- qmially milled from his -post to, ascertain. . When any partioular harvest to rtperlhe police fix, the day. for eonameneing the, labour of .reaping, mowing, vthenag. Whilst the labourers, are there the watch is not necessary, If any neglects .to obey, his field is left unprotected, or he must have it done at his own expense." - This notice has only exhibited extracts on one or two classes of questions; but there are numerous others bearing on those phases of social and domestic life which come under a woman's observa- tion to be found in the book. There are also some sketches of landscape considered merely as scenes and Many in which nature is secondary to man's comfort, as 1,1; homesteads of the North, the forests, and cultivated lands of Other' regions. There are also notices of medimval relics as well in edifices as manners, with some legends appropriate to the matter. in hand, and net -so commonplace as usual. To what extent Peasant Life in Ger many may be thoroughly true we 'will not. undertake to say, but it is unquestionably an able, substantial, and remarkable book.