Before putting foot on Danish ground, Mr Kohl is careful to make a kind of solemn protest touching Germanic patriotism, lest, we presume, he should be suspected of taking a heretical view of the question at issue at the present moment between the Sleswig-Holstein provinces and the mother-country Denmark. It is not for us to enter into any political discussions here, concerning matters of internal government which are no more business of ours than of his Majesty Muda Hassim, of the island of Borneo; but we must confess our inability to understand why such a terrific storm of patriotic ardour has so suddenly burst forth in Germany, respecting provinces which, until recently, certainly up to the time when the late king gave his people the unasked-for boon of a constitution, were perfectly happy and contented under the Danish rule, to which they had been accustomed some five or six hundred years.[2] It is only since the assembly of the states was constituted, that the Sleswig Holsteiners have been seized with the Germanic _furor_--a malady not a little increased by the inflammatory harangues of needy demagogues, and the pedantic outpourings of a handful of professors stark-mad on the subject of German liberty. If there is one thing more absurd than another, upon this globe of absurdity, it is the cant of "nationality," "freedom," "fatherland," "brotherhood," &c. &c., which is dinned into your ears from one end of Germany to the other; but which, like all other cants, is nothing but so much wind and froth, utterly without reason, stamina, or foundation. We should like to ask any mustached and bearded youth of Heidelberg or Bonn, at any one sober moment of his existence, to point out to us any single spot where this boasted "nationality" is to be seen and scanned. Will the red-capped, long-haired _Bursch_ tell us when and where we may behold that "vaterland" of which he is eternally dreaming, singing, and drinking? Why, is it not a fact that, to a Prussian, an Austrian or a Swabian is an alien? Does not a Saxe-Coburger, a Hessian, and any other subject of any small duchy or principality, insist, in his intense hatred of Prussia, that the Prussians are no Germans at all; that they have interests of their own, opposed to those of the true German people; and that they are as distinct as they are selfish? You cannot travel over the various countries and districts included under the name of Germany, without learning the thorough insulation of the component parts. The fact is forced upon you at every step. Mr Kohl himself belongs to none of the states mentioned. He is a native of Bremen--one of the cities of that proud Hanseatic League which certainly has never shown an enlarged or patriotic spirit with reference to this same universal "vaterland." Arrogant and lordly republics care little for abstractions. They have a keen instinct for their own material interests, but a small appreciation of the glorious ideal. We ask,