d up ill-digested university-recollections
of German philosophy, and misunderstood gleanings from French
Socialism, particularly Saint-Simonism; and the clique of writers who
expatiated upon this heterogeneous conglomerate of ideas,
presumptuously called themselves "Young Germany," or "the Modern
School." They have since repented their youthful sins, but not
improved their style of writing.

Lastly, German philosophy, that most complicated, but at the same time
most sure thermometer of the development of the German mind, had
declared for the middle class, when Hegel in his "Philosophy of Law"
pronounced Constitutional Monarchy to be the final and most perfect
form of government. In other words, he proclaimed the approaching
advent of the middle classes of the country to political power. His
school, after his death, did not stop here. While the more advanced
section of his followers, on one hand, subjected every religious
belief to the ordeal of a rigorous criticism, and shook to its
foundation the ancient fabric of Christianity, they at the same time
brought forward bolder political principles than hitherto it had been
the fate of German ears to hear expounded, and attempted to restore to
glory the memory of the heroes of the first French Revolution. The
abstruse philosophical language in which these ideas were clothed, if
it obscured the mind of both the writer and the reader, equally
blinded the eyes of the censor, and thus it was that the "young
Hegelian" writers enjoyed a liberty of the Press unknown in every
other branch of literature.

Thus it was evident that public opinion was undergoing a great change
in Germany. By degrees the vast majority of those classes whose
education or position in life enabled them, under an Absolute
Monarchy, to gain some political information, and to form anything
like an independent political opinion, united into one mighty phalanx
of opposition against the existing system. And in passing judgment
upon the slowness of political development in Germany no one ought to
omit taking into account the difficulty of obtaining correct
information upon any subject in a country where all sources of
information were under the control of the Government, where from the
Ragged School and the Sunday School to the Newspaper and University
nothing was said, taught, printed, or published but what had
previously obtained its approbation. Look at Vienna, for instance. The
people of Vienna, in industry