By the side of this thoroughly English picture should be placed, in justice and in harmony, another which is as thoroughly German,--Rahel Varnhagen sending to her brother money to bring him to Berlin. The letter which accompanies this sisterly gift is one of the most touching in literature. The brilliant, big-hearted woman is yearning for her kinsman’s face. She has saved the trifling sum required through many unnamed denials. She gives it as generously as if it cost her nothing. Yet with that wise thrift which goes hand in hand with liberality, she warns her brother that her husband knows nothing of the matter. Not that she mistrusts his nature for a moment. He is good and kind, but he is also a man, and has the customary shortsightedness of his sex. “He will think,” she writes, “that I have endless resources, that I am a millionaire, and will forget to economize in the future.”
Ah, painful frugality of the poor Fatherland! Here is nothing picturesque, nor lavish, nor light-hearted, to tempt our jocund fancies. Yet here, as elsewhere, the generous soul refuses to be stinted of its joy; and the golden crown of King Canute is not more charming to contemplate than are the few coins wrested from sordid needs, and given with a glad munificence which makes them splendid as the ransom of a prince.
Nations, like individuals, stand self-betrayed in their pastimes and their jests. The ancient historians recognized this truth, and thought it well worth their while to gossip pleasantly into the ears of attentive and grateful generations. Cleopatra playfully outwitting Anthony by fastening a salted fish to the boastful angler’s hook is no less clear to us than Cleopatra sternly outwitting Cæsar with the poison of the asp, and we honor Plutarch for confiding both these details to the world. Their verity has nothing to do with their value or our satisfaction. The mediæval chroniclers listened rapturously to the clamor of battle, and found all else but war too trivial for their pens. The modern scholar produces that pitiless array of facts known as constitutional history; and labors under the strange delusion that acts of Parliament, or acts of Congress, reform bills, and political pamphlets represent his country’s life. If this sordid devotion to the concrete suffers no abatement, the intelligent reader of the future will be compelled to reconstruct the nineteenth century from the pages of “Punch” and “Life,” from faded play-bills, the records of the race-track, and the inextinguishable echo of dead laughter.