gard such
property almost always as a mere subject for speculation, and it is but
rarely that the quondam innkeeper or peddler settles down as a tiller of
the soil. In Silesia, their chief seat is in Breslau, where the general
trade of the country, as well as the purchase and the sale of land, is
for the most part transacted. It is a pretty general feeling in Germany
that Freytag has not dealt altogether impartially with this class, by
failing to introduce in contrast to the abandoned men whom he selects
for exhibition a single honest, upright Jew, a character not wanting
among that remarkable people. The inextinguishable higher element of our
nature, and the fruits of German culture, are manifested, it is true, in
the Jewish hero of the tale, ignorant alike of the world and its ways,
buried among his cherished books, and doomed to early death; but this is
done more as a poetic comfort to humanity than in honor of Judaism, from
which plainly in his inmost soul he had departed, that he might turn to
the Christianized spirit and to the poetry of the Gentiles.

The Polish element, however, is of still far greater importance.
Forming, as they once did, with the exception of a few German
settlements, the entire population of the province, the Poles have
become, in the course of the last century, and especially since the
removal of restrictions on the sale of land, less numerous year by year.
In Posen proper they constitute, numerically, perhaps the half of the
population; but in point of prosperity and mental culture their
influence is scarcely as one fourth upon the whole. On the other hand,
in some districts, as, for instance, in Gnesen, the Polish influence
predominates in the towns, and reigns undisputed in the country. The
middle class is exclusively German or Jewish; where these elements are
lacking, there is none. The Polish vassal, emancipated by the enactment
of 1810, is gradually ripening into an independent yeoman, and knows
full well that he owes his freedom, not to his former Polish masters,
but to Prussian legislation and administration. The exhibition of these
social relations, as they were manifested by the contending parties in
1848, is, in all respects, one of the most admirable portions of our
novel. The events are all vividly depicted, and, in all essential
points, historically true. One feature here appears, little known in
foreign lands, but deserving careful observation, not only on its own
account, bu