ns of lower life with humour and spirit; the poets
endeavoured to embellish, with a genial interest, the character and
condition of the countryman: their village tales, and the interest
which they excited in the reading world are always considered as a
symptom of how great was the longing in the educated for quiet comfort
and a well-regulated activity.

A village tale shall be here given, descriptive of the condition of the
people at this period; for the life of the southern German, which is
related, is in many respects characteristic of the fate and inward
changes in the best spirits of the time which has just passed. The
movement which, after the revolution of 1830, vibrated all over Europe,
had excited in him also a lively interest in the national development
of the Fatherland. The debates of the Chambers of his small country
were his first auxiliaries. The struggles which took place there did
not remain without fruit; they relieved agriculture and the peasant
from the burdens which had hitherto oppressed them; they introduced
municipal institutions and public and verbal proceedings, even a law
against the censorship of the press. But the German Diet interposed,
the law of the press was put an end to, and the complaints of the
landed proprietors against the exemption laws found favour with it; and
the Frankfort outrage of the 3rd of April, 1833, produced a re-action.
Then the author left his official position in a fiscal chamber and
devoted his energies to the press. When he was deprived of even this
share in the political destiny of his country, by the malicious
chicanery of a lawless police, he settled for a few years in
Switzerland. All his life it had been a pleasure for him to teach. As a
student, as candidate for the service of the State, he had given
instruction to young men; he was therefore not unprepared for the
office of teacher; which he entered upon in that foreign country. He
relates as follows:--

"On Easter Monday, 1838, in the church at Grenchen, in the canton of
Solothurn, the Roman Catholic community appointed a Protestant and a
German as teacher in the newly-erected district school. The community
had chosen him, and the government had confirmed the choice; I was the
teacher.

"It was a raw spring morning. The monotonous grey of the clouds covered
the sides and summit of the Jura, large snow-flakes fell in thick
drifts, and enveloped the procession that was moving towards the
church. The words