5 JANUARY 1856, Page 5

While the " German " Governments are still balancing )bme-

.where between neutrality, alliance, and complicity, the police which really governs that intellectual region is exhibiting its diligence and the tractability of the noble Teutonic race. A re- cent incident is the arrest of the Liberal publisher Campe at

Hamburg. Campe had published a dull work by Dr. Vehse, pur- porting to give the secret history of the German Courts ; the Governments of Saxony and Mecklenburg demanded his sources of information ; but he declined to give them. On this the police of Hamburg arrest Campe, and put him to a species of pecuniary torture : he is to pay a fine of ten dollars a day until he shall disclose his authorities. Meanwhile, note a curious operation of jealousy and curiosity : Austria prohibits Vehse's volume on Austria' but largely buys the volume on Prussia ; Prussia suppresses the Prussian volume, but is greedy of the Austrian ; and so on of the rest. Nor are the Viennese unaware of the existence of the police. A Bolognese residing in Vienna lately permitted a little music and dancing in his house : two gendarmes enter, to remind him that it is the season of Advent, and that Austria is under the rule of the new Concordat ; so the Bolognese is fain to succumb under gendarme piety. The Mi- nisterial journals of Austria have been assuring the populations of the empire, Catholic as well as Protestant, that the Concordat would not cause vexatious interferences ; but dancing, like book- selling, is a superfluous luxury, which no honest folks can regret to forego.