THE

SECOND

LANDING-PLACE:

OR

ESSAYS

INTERPOSED

FOR AMUSEMENT, RETROSPECT,

AND

PREPARATION.

MISCELLANY THE SECOND.

Etiam a musis si quando animum paulisper abducamus, apud Musas nihilominus feriamur: at reclines quidem, at otiosas, at de his et illis inter se liberè colloquentes.

ESSAY I.

It were a wantonness and would demand
Severe reproof if we were men whose hearts
Could hold vain dalliance with the misery
Even of the dead; contented thence to draw
A momentary pleasure, never mark'd
By reason, barren of all future good.

But we have known that there is often found
In mournful thoughts, and always might be found
A power to virtue friendly.-WORDSWORTH. MSS.

I know not how I can better commence my second LANDING PLACE, as joining on to the section of Politics, than by the following proof of the severe miseries which misgovernment may occasion in a country nominally free. In the homely Ballad of the THREE GRAVES (published in my SYBILLINE Leaves) I have attempted to exemplify the effect, which one. painful idea vividly impressed on the mind under unusual circumstances, might have in

producing an alienation of the understanding; and in the parts hitherto published, I have endeavoured to trace the progress to madness, step by step. But though the main incidents are facts, the detail of the circumstances is of my own invention: that is, not what I knew, but what I conceived likely to have been the case, or at least equivalent to it. In the tale that follows, I present an instance of the same causes acting upon the mind to the production of conduct as wild as that of madness, but without any positive or permanent loss of the Reason or the Understanding; and this in a real occurrence, real in all its parts and particulars. But in truth this tale overflows with a human interest, and needs no philosophical deduction to make it impressive. The account was published in the city in which the event took place, and in the same year I read it, when I was in Germany, and the impression made on my memory was so deep, that though I relate it in my own language, and with my own feelings, and in reliance on the fidelity of my recollection, I dare vouch for the accuracy of the narration in all important particulars.

The imperial free towns of Germany are, with only two or three exceptions, enviably distinguished by the virtuous and primitive manners of the citizens, and by the parental character of their several governments. As exceptions, however, we must mention Aix la Chapelle, poisoned by French manners, and the concourse of gamesters and sharpers; and Nuremberg, whose industrious and honest inhabitants deserve a better fate than to have their lives and properties under the guardianship of a wolfish and merciless oligarchy, proud from ignorance, and remaining ignorant through pride. It is from the small States of Germany, that our writers on political economy might draw their most forcible instances of actually oppressive, and even mortal, taxation, and gain the clearest insight into the causes and circumstances of the injury. One other remark, and I proceed to the story. I well remember, that the event I am about to narrate, called forth, in several of the German periodical publications, the most passionate (and in more than one instance, blasphemous) declamations, concerning the incomprehensi