honoured objects of the highest reverence. The newspapers and literary journals published at Dorpat, Riga, Reval, Mitau, and Libau, are all printed in German, with the exception of one or two, written expressly for the peasants, in Lettish or Esthonian. All the books printed in the country, theological, scientific, economical, &c., are in German ; and it is calculated, that in Leipzig itself, more Russian is printed, than in all the Baltic provinces put together.
No city in Germany can be more fervent in its admiration of Schiller and Goethe, than Riga. Schlegel, Tieck, Platen, Miiller, Ruckert, &c., have all their disciples and admirers here ; nay, the very poverty of the country/ itself in literary merit seems to render it more alive to that of the mother-country. In fact, a German will feel himself quite at home in the Baltic provinces, in the two most important points of language and literature. The more cultivated inhabitants are content if they know enough Russian to get on with the Russian postilions and boatmen, and seldom amuse themselves in their leisure hours with other books than those of French and German authors. The works of Pushkin, Dershavin, Kruiloff, Karamsin, 8cc., are less known than in many parts of Germany.
Such, as far as I have been able correctly to portray it, is the situation of^our German brethren on the shores of the Baltic. German in language, manners, literature, religion, and institutions ; German in heart and soul, thev are yet threatened with the slow but regular loss of nationality, by the encroachment of the Slavonian race. In Courland it is that the least progress has hitherto been made in this respect ; in Esthonia the advances have been the most striking. It will, however, proceed very slowly, more slowly in the towns even than among the nobles, because the situation of a German nobleman in the Baltic provinces much more nearly resembles that of a Russian " Pamdshtshik,^' than the position of a citizen there does that of a Russian " Mdshtshanin" Long may we be able to S'mpathize with them as our countrymen, and long may they remain a part, if not of the great German league, at least of the great German family of nations !