Alembic

“ Each of the new nationalities has an important part to play in the history of the following centuries, and we will therefore describe them separately:
1. The Alemanni.—The name of this division (Allemannen, [A] signifying "all men") shows that it was composed of fragments of many tribes. The Alemanni first made their appearance along the Main, and gradually pushed southward over the Tithe-Lands, where the military veterans of Rome had settled, until they occupied the greater part of South-western Germany, and Eastern Switzerland, to the Alps. ”

“ I have an idea that the waters will benefit me, at least it is something new: we penetrate at once into Germany. It is true, we do not understand German; but where better learn a language than in its native country?
“What’s in a name!”—You know the quotation: it applies to things known; to things unknown, a name is often everything: on me it has a powerful effect; and many hours of extreme pleasure have derived their zest simply from a name; and now a name is drawing me on—Germany—vast, unseen Germany! ”

“ Let us proclaim loudly to-day how truly we love the country where our cradles rocked. With tender yearning we see in memory the green waters of our native Rhine, where are reflected the castles gray with age, around which legendary poetry has woven its magic—where grows the precious grape—where man is gay, often without knowing why—where German song seems doubly poetic—where the victorious figure of Germania looks proudly from the Niederwald across the border. ”

“ You hear French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English indifferently. You taste the food of all nations in the various restaurants; passing from a French prix-fixe where every one is French, to a roaring German ordinary where every one is German; ending, perhaps, in a cool and silent Chinese tea-house. For every man, for every race and nation, that city is a foreign city; humming with foreign tongues and customs; and yet each and all have made themselves at home. The Germans have a German theatre and innumerable (163) beer-gardens. ”

“ Germany, the low countries, Switzerland for the most part, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and our own islands, are all in language, in blood and institutions, German most decidedly. But all South America is peopled with Spaniards and Portuguese; all North America and Australia with Englishmen. I say nothing of the prospects and influence of the German race in Africa and in India; it is enough to say that half of Europe and all of America and Australia are German, more or less completely, in race, in language, in institutions or in all. ”

“ Then we are going to Berlin to knock down all the ugly statues in the Sieges-Allee and smash the parvenu German Empire. Then we shall have a new age on classic lines. People will still use French and English and Italian because there is some beauty in those languages. But nobody outside of Germany will speak or read German. It is a barbarous tongue—shapeless and hideous—used by barbarians who gobble and snort when they talk. ”

“ I know that Germany is an ugly beast ready to jump at the throat of civilization the moment the word is said, the moment the leash is slipped. I know how they are working here, for that one end, blood and conquest and booty, with all their might, their energy, their strength. I know Germans. They believe. They obey. They think that whatever is told them by their master is the truth. ”

“ Not so beyond the Rhine. The German shrinks within the cloudy atmosphere of his pipe, like a snail within its shell, and there remains imperturbable, immoveable, and insensible to the external world. Meanwhile the soul retires to some remote nook or corner of the brain—probably the pineal gland—and there taking its metaphysical siesta, dreams of all imaginable and unimaginable things! This appears to be the real explanation of the idealism, mysticism, and transcendentalism of the German character. ”

“ Dutch wereld, Anglo-Saxon weorold, worold, English world, have the Modern High German meaning. The double sense ‘world' and ‘age' can hardly be explained from one primary form; the latter meaning is linked with Old Icelandic ǫld, Anglo-Saxon yld, ‘age'; the former seems to be based on a collective sense, ‘humanity,’ which follows from Old Low German ęldi, Anglo-Saxon ylde, Old Icelandic elder, ‘men.’ The first part of the compound (Gothic waír-aldus) is Teutonic wër, ‘man, person’ (see Werwolf) . Welt, like Himmel and Hölle is peculiar to Teutonic. ”

“ The German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German eyes--and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing-gown!--I meant to say that, let "German depth" be what it will--among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it--we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian "smartness," and Berlin wit and sand. ”

“ As a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a preponderance of the pre-Aryan element as the "people of the centre" in every sense of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more ample, more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising, and even more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves:--they escape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone the despair of the French. It IS characteristic of the Germans that the question: "What is German?" never dies out among them. ”

“ For he who has sinned against the German language has desecrated the mystery of all our Germanity. Throughout all the confusion and the changes of races and of customs, the German language alone, as though possessed of some supernatural charm, has saved herself; and with her own salvation she has wrought that of the spirit of Germany. She alone holds the warrant for this spirit in future ages, provided she be not destroyed at the sacrilegious hands of the modern world. ”

“ Here one sees German houses, German inscriptions over the doors or signs, German physiognomies. Here are published German newspapers; and many Germans live here who never learn English, and seldom go beyond the German town. The Germans in the Western States seem, for the most, to band together in a clan-like manner, to live together, and amuse themselves as in their fatherland. Their music and dances, and other popular pleasures, distinguish them from the Anglo-American people, who, particularly in the West, have no other pleasure than “business.” ”

“ Thus the word deutsch has a singular and comprehensive history; it was used in the earliest Old High German and Middle Latin writings only of the language (since 845 A.D. Theodisci occurs also as the name of a people, and first of all in Italy) ; deutsch, ‘popular,’ was the term applied to the native language in contrast to the Latin ecclesiastical speech and the Latin official phraseology. We may note English Dutch, because it is restricted to the language of Holland; till about 1600 A.D. the people of Holland were convinced that their language was German. ”

“ But the so-called "Anglo-Saxon" language - the group of half-German [Footnote: I say "half-German" lest the reader should think, by the use of the word "German" or "Teutonic" that the various dialects of this sort (including those of the North Sea Pirates) were something original, uninfluenced by Rome. It must always be remembered that with their original words and roots was mixed an equal mass of superior words learned from the civilized men of the South in the course of the many centuries during which Germans had served the Romans as slaves and in arms and had met their merchants.] ”

“ Before Charlemagne, Almayne was still Germany—that is to say, a shapeless chaos of pagan or Christian tribes, but all barbarian, enemies of one another, united by no single tie. There were Franks, Saxons, Thuringians, and Bavarians. After him there was a German people, and there will be a kingdom of Germany. It was great glory for him to have created a people—a glory which few conquerors have acquired; for they destroy much more than they found. ”

“ I remarked the special capacity of the German for descriptions of forest scenery,—of the feeling and sentiment of deep, dark woods, and woodland solitudes.
"May not that be," said he, "because the race lived for centuries in forests? A language is always richest in its epithets for those things with which the people who speak it are most familiar. Look at the many terms for 'horse' and 'sword' in Arabic." ”

“ English yellow - hammer (Goldammer) is a corrupt form. Whether Old High German *amaro was derived from Old High German amar, ‘summer-spelt,’ is as doubtful as its relation to Amsel.
Ampel, feminine, ‘lamp,’ from Middle High German ampel (also ampulle) , Old High German ampulla, feminine, ‘lamp,’ also ‘vessel.’ Borrowed in Old High German from Latin ampulla, ‘flask, vessel,’ whence also Anglo-Saxon ampelle, Old Icelandic ample, ‘vessel’ (Low German pulle, ‘bottle’) . ”

“ Your German likes the country, but he prefers it as the lady thought she would the noble savage—more dressed. He likes his walk through the wood—to a restaurant. But the pathway must not be too steep, it must have a brick gutter running down one side of it to drain it, and every twenty yards or so it must have its seat on which he can rest and mop his brow; for your German would no more think of sitting on the grass than would an English bishop dream of rolling down One Tree Hill. ”

“ The northern Germans (I am from the south) have perhaps slightly flatter feet than the southern Germans.’ The first part of the comparison is somewhat of a surprise to me, but not so the other part, that the southern Germans inhabiting a hillier country, and belonging to a different race, may well be higher in the instep than the more northern speakers of the German language. But on the whole the more one examines the qualtagh, the less clearly one sees how he can be the representative of a particular race. More data possibly would enable one to arrive at greater probability. ”

“ An English-speaking foreigner, it is true, would find himself equally nonplussed among the Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel; but the cases are not on all fours. Throughout Germany it is not only in the country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are maintained. Every province has practically its own language, of which it is proud and retentive. An educated Bavarian will admit to you that, academically speaking, the North German is more correct; but he will continue to speak South German and to teach it to his children. ”

“ Hear my vow, ye Muses and gods! Germania is my love. I will be her poet and her servant; on bended knees I will worship her; I will raise her to the skies, and never falter in my devotion, for to her belong the holiest impulses of heart and soul alike. And now, Frederick Schiller, be resolute, be strong and joyful. You are Germania’s lover and her son. Determine to do what is good and great, throughout your lifetime, to her honor and renown! Take up the pen, Frederick Schiller! The pen is the sword with which you must fight and conquer! ”

“ Well, even those vulgar dialects of Low-German, and the poems and novels that have been written in them by true Schleswig-Holsteiners, are well worth a moment's consideration. In looking at their language, an Englishman at once discovers a number of old acquaintances: words which we would look for in vain in Schiller or Goethe. We shall mention a few.
Black means black; in High-German it would be schwarz. De black is the black horse; black up wit is black on white; gif mek kil un blak, give me quill and ink. Blid is blithe, instead of the High-German mild. ”

“ Herder has said, "it is distinguished from all other nations.") —the faithful people (treues Volk ... Treu meaning everything: sincere, faithful, loyal and upright) —the People par excellence, as Fichte says—German Force, the symbol of justice and truth—German thought—the German Gemüt—the German language, the only original language, the only language that, like the race itself, has preserved its purity—German women, German wine, German song ... "Germany, Germany above everything in the world!"
Christophe would protest. ”

“ But whatever balance of blood and racial idiom one allows, it is really true that the only suggestion that gets near the Englishman is to hint how far he is from the German. The Germans, like the Welsh, can sing perfectly serious songs perfectly seriously in chorus: can with clear eyes and clear voices join together in words of innocent and beautiful personal passion, for a false maiden or a dead child. ”

“ The peasant brings grain only, and no money. Thus the word 'alone' or 'only' helps the word 'no' to become a complete, clear German statement. When you wish to speak German, you must not consult the letters in the Latin language, as these dunces are doing, but you must inquire of a mother how she talks to her children, of the children how they talk to each other on the street, of the common people on the market-place. Watch them how they frame their speech, and make your translation accordingly, and they will understand it and know that some one is speaking German to them. ”

“ I have known more than one, two, or three of these daws who, having plumed themselves in German feathers, strutted as proudly as if their habiliments had been of genuine indigenous growth!
The German seems to court, and to cultivate learning for the sake of itself, rather than of its attendant advantages. He climbs the rugged steeps of science—wanders over the flowery fields of literature—or explores the dark and mysterious labyrinths of metaphysics—with little hope, and less prospect of reaping more than empty fame,—and that too often posthumous! ”