It is with the slavery question as it is with the over-refinement of all other feelings,--it only requires to be looked into and analysed to be detected in all its flagrant folly and absurdity. Had our pious "free and easy" sugar friend followed up his own doctrine, he would long before this have quitted his villa, disposed of his dennett, and retired to some cave, where neither eating nor drinking, nor furniture dyed with fustic and logwood, were required, and have shown himself a sincere saint, an abjurer of all the good things of this world, and a man of ten thousand; but until we see the whole life of a man in the same keeping, and find him equally scrupulous upon all points, and not exhibiting his piety only where his mercantile prospects are implicated, we must beg to avow our opinion that the "free and easy" sugar system at fourteen-pence per pound, however profitable to the grocer, and gratifying to the East India proprietor, is neither more nor less than a contemptible absurdity, and a most unqualified humbug. PRINCE PUCKLER-MUSKAU'S TOUR.[62] It would appear that the German publishers are before even our own in the arts of the puff; at least we have not yet seen a "fashionable novel" of the Burlington Street manufactory ushered into public life with the trumpetings of a first-rate English author. This "celebrated tour," as the advertisements style it, has, however, the advantage of a preliminary flourish from no less a person than Meinherr von Goethe, who, among other things, extols the tourist for the accuracy of his descriptions of English scenery and society, particularly "the hunting-parties and drinking-bouts, which succeed each other in an unbroken series," and which "are made tolerable to us" (_i. e._ M. Goethe) "only because he can tolerate them." "The peculiarities of English manners," continues the puff, "are drawn vividly and distinctly, without exaggeration;" but how the sage of Weimar should have fancied himself qualified to form so decided an opinion upon the accuracy of his _protegé_, we do not presume exactly to understand; inasmuch as we have reason to believe that he has suffered eighty-three years of his youth to slip away without availing himself of an opportunity of judging of our peculiarities from personal experience. "Like other unprejudiced travellers of modern times, (he proceeds) our author is not very much enchanted with the English form of existence--his cordial and sincere admiration is often accompanied by unsparing censure.... He is by no means inclined to favour the faults and weaknesses of the English; and in these cases--(what cases?)--he has the greatest and best among them,--those whose reputation is universal,--on his side.