SOCIAL LIFE IN GERMANY.

TIME volumes containa selection from the Dramas of' the Princess AMELIA of Saxony ; each one being chosen by Mrs. JAMESON, less for its intrinsic merits, than to display the peculiar characteristics of German manners, and the sort of dramatic literature that people approve of: for it should be known that the Princess is not a mere royal author—she has felt the vicissitudes of life, having par- taken of the troubles which the fraternizing crusades of the French Revolution and the conquests of the Empire entailed upon her fatherland. She had also her proper pride in literature, and her mortifications. Her first work was offered to the theatre at her uncle's capital, and rejected ; nor was it till after a successful re- presentation at Berlin and Hamburg that the poetess was honoured in her own city. Even then, although she continued to pour forth her dramas with considerable fluency, it was some time before the writer was suspected, and longer before she was discovered. But such a secret is difficult to keep in a court, especially when that court began to have the first representation of the pieces at its own theatre; and the fair writer herself might not have been in- different to popular favour yielded to the dramatist rather than the Princess.

These particulars, with many others more minute, are given by Mrs. JAMESON, in a general introduction, together with some ela- borate remarks on each of the five dramas she has translated, and which form together an informing though not a very full picture of classes and social feeling in Germany. The Introduction is in dia- logue. An objector, Diction, demurs to the translation, as scarcely adapted to the British public ; to which the authoress, Alda, replies with her reasons. The nature of dialogue enables her to embrace many topics,—as the rise and progress of the German drama ; its degradation to Fate-dramas where housewives struggled with Des- tiny, from which the Princess rescued it ; the general character of her pieces, and a sketch of her career. :Mingled with these are worse things, hitched in by the facility of dialogue,—as the condition of women, and their proper privileges. The remarks upon each piece generally illustrate the particular class of life they happen to portray, and form by far the most valuable part of Mrs. JAMESON'S lucu- brations—the most condensed and the most real. For example :

BETROTIIMENT, PRO AND CON.

Another point requiring some further explanation is the ceremony of be- trothing, (I erlobung,) previous to the solemnization of a marriage. It has been frequently alluded to in the former dramas; but as it forms a principal incident in the plot of the " Young Ward," I have reserved till now what I had to remark on the subject.

The " Verlobung," or betrothing, is often, but not always, a solemn cere- mony. 4' Sich verloben " means, generally, that in answer to formal proposals the lover is formally accepted by the lady or her tinnily : then, if there be no reason for keeping the affair a secret, the relations and intimate friends on both sides are assembled, and the young people are presented as " verlobt," c. affianced.) Sometimes an exchange of rings takes place in token of this en- gagement : 1 frequently met young ladies iu company who wore the " Verlo- bung,-ring." The couple thus affianced are henceforth " Brant and Brauti- gam," (i. e. bride and bridegroom, which exactly answers to the French ,tianeic futnr(le); and visits are paid in society with the two names printed on the same card; or it is announced to all whom it may concern in the public papers, and congratulatory visits are paid in return. If the parties are noble, they are presented together at court us " verlobte." These ceremonies vary little in the different states of Germane.

The custom of betrothing bias, like all human institutions, its advantages and disadvantages. As a considerable time must often clap-:e before the Llis211- Oman is in a position to marry, it is an advantage that the intimacy bet :'veen the engaged parties should not be subject to misapprehension, and the lady's reputation suffer front the gentleman's assiduities: that she should not he exposed to the attentions of other men, nor they- to the mistake of falling in love with her. It is also an advantage that this'fiwility of intercourse enables persons to judge more truly of each other ; to see more clearly What chance of happiness thev may have in each other's society before they ;11%. linked together by a more sacred -tie; for it not unftequentiv happens dint this better know- ledge of each other leads to the cancelling of the engagement ere it be too late. Ott the other hand, when this intercourse lasts ton long, it sometimes has evil consequences ; not only in the hope deferred that maketh the heart sick, but others more final still. Then, as the bridegroom is expected to devote weer leisure moment to the society of his betrothed, as he attends her to all public places and to every party, Ow it is not considered good manners to invite them separately,) as tiny are invariably seated next to each other, they have time to become tolerably tired of each other's society befiwe marriage, and have no- thing left to say. As little restraint is placed on their intercourse, and as it is

the gentleman's duty to be very much in love, Ile is sometimes reduced to the dilemma so humorously stated by Rosalind, " gravelled for lack of matter," &c. In fact, the display of tenderness is each now and then, even in a room full of people, as to make the rest of the company look rather foolish and feel themselves rather de trop. Perpetual and devoted attention on the gentle- man's part during this interval, be it longer or shorter, is a thing of course not to be dispensed with : hence it will sometimes happen that the poor fiance is glad to be relieved at last from this display of tenderness obligato by the rites of marriage. A neglect of all little graceful attentions immediately ensues to the utter consternation of the poor wife, who is apt to mistake for a change of feeling what is only a change of manner.

Notwithstanding these remarks, I should say that, considering the peculiar constitution of German society, the advantages of the custom far exceed itS disadvantages. It appears to me that a familiar and confidential intercourse, when not too long protracted, increases the chance of eventual happiness to both parties, and is on the whole particularly favourable to the woman.

There arc traits of quiet satire, and what is better, of truth, in this picture of the

EDUCATION OF FEMALE ARISTOCRACY.

The English reader may imagine the Princess-Bride, the heroine of the drama, to be the daughter of one of the petty sovereigns of the German Con- tWeration—of some Duke, or Grand Duke, or Prince, with a territory perhaps halt' as large us Yorkshire, and a revenue of two or three hundred thousand a year. The daughter of such a Prince would in these days receive an education very similar to that of our female aristocracy of the highest rank. She would be as caret illy instructed in the usual accomplishments; her intellect as well cultivated within the usual bounds ; and she would he even more watchfully excluded from all knowledge of her own nature and the nature of the wide, many-peopled world around her, with which she must never come into contact but under artificial or illusive circumstances. She would be taught that the first ditties of her high station were an affable demeanour to her inferiors and charity to the poor ; and while the whole tendency of the education given to her and the circumstances of Tier position would be to foster individual pride, the slightest assumption of it would be suppressed, because it would remain unprovoked by any competition of pretensions ; or checked, because it would be regarded as a fault of manner—unpopular, unprineess-like, unlady-like. *

From such a girlhood the young Englishwoman of high rack emerges at once into a world of realities, and falls under the influence of an order of things which completes the formation of her character one way or another. Not so with our young German Princess. The transition with her is from one dream-world into another : she never quits the precincts of her father's court but to enter another and similar circle of forms and ceremonies and represen- tation, uniting in all the unsubstantialness and glitter of a vision with all the tedium and flatness of the flattest of worldly realities.

At the age of eighteen or twenty a marriage is arranged for her with some neighbouring Prince whose alliance is considered as advantageous. There is an exchange of embassies, proposals, pictures, letters, and the thing is settled.

MARRIED ran; OF A GERMAN PRINCESS.

But to return to the Princess, whose destinies we are following in fancy—the Princess of our drama. Brought up in retirement, surrounded by sentimental women whose education has been as confined as her own, all the fervour of her German imagination—all the fresh feelings of her young heart only waiting to be kindled and called forth, she consents to the marriage arranged for tier as matter of course; and as a matter of course, probably falls in love with the idi%al she has formed of her unseen husband. On reaching her new home, she sees the man to whom she has been given, the very opposite of all she bad pictured him in fancy ; or possibly finds him as in the drama, devotedly at- tached to another, (and such was the flute of one of the loveliest and most ac- complished among the Princesses of Germany); happy, however, if, where she meets weakness or indifference, she find not unworthiness also. Then comes the awakening, reluctant and slow ; there is a wringing at the heart, a sharp silent struggle, which, in the cherished pride of sex and of position, she hides from all, and with which, in her simplicity, she reproaches herself as with a crime hitherto unheard of and uncommitted; and then, if a weak passionate woman, she becomes miserable or profligate, through all the usual gradations, and dies of ennui ; but if, like the Princess of our drama, she be gifted, and high-minded, and high-principled, she turns for consolation to pure and lofty sources ; site patronizes art, and does good as well as she may—her best intentions and purposes still subject to practical error from the confined sphere and intense ignorance of humanity in which she has been educated : she takes a pride in gathering to her little court men distinguished in literature and science ; she even obtains quietly and silently the upper hand iu the.govern- ascot ; for it is the inevitable law of God and nature, that where the power is, there will the rule be also, in spite of salique laws and any other laws. Then she may have children, in whom she centres her pleasure and her pride ; in educating them she in a manner new educates herself. She culti- vates the promising talents of her eldest son, the hereditary Prince, or sees him in silent despair become like his father, weak and dissipated. Her younger sons enter the military service of one of the great powers, Prussia or Austria, be.. came captains or colonels. wearing rich uni-brins and half-a-dozen orders, and spending a small paternal allowance in addition to their pay. The daughtent of the Princess-Bride are brought up as their mother was before them : sighing, she sees them one after another depart from her to fulfil a destiny similar to her own; but without a suspicion that all this is not in the essential nature of things; and the once hopeful and feeling heart, and the once bright and aspiring mind, subdued at last to the element in which she moves, she goes through bee state and court duties, holds her land et petit eercle with habitual grace and suppressed ennui. plays piquet every night with the Prince, sees every day the same faces, and does and says every day the same thin and so she dies, leaving behind her, primps, one favourite /1!(.1wile is grieve fir her. and the pensioners on her bounty to weep for her—or for their pensions; and there an end.

We have left ourselves little space to criticize five dramas and to estimate the literary character of a princess-poetess. We must therefore return to Amma.t of Saxony. if we tied her worthy of the panegyric Mrs. .1 ANIESON has bestowed upon her.