A SPANISH VIEW OF GERMANY.
ITo THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIE,—In Vol. IV., Part I. (Madrid, 1:::), of his Historia de las Ideas Estiticas en Espana the eminent Spanish critic Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, who greatly admired Goethe and other Ger- man authors of the early nineteenth century, wrote as follows :-
" Nothing is more opposed to this humanitarian spirit than the. blind, .pedantic, 'and brutal tcutoniania which obtains to-day, and. which is making modern Germany as odious to all noble minds as the idealistic, optimist, expansive Germany of the first years of the century was attractive. So true is it' that the wine of prosperity intoxicates nations as it intoxicates individuals, and that there is no worse atmosphere for the genius of philosophy than that of the barracks." (p..156.) It would be difficult to find a more impartial or more crushing opinion than that of this broadly tolerant writer and ardent Roman Catholic. I know that it is shared by many Spaniards
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