We arrived in Geneva, late in the autumn of 1844, and made it our principal residence till the spring of 1846. We had made no prolonged stay in Poland, for we found the Poles already mesmerized. Cold and callous as I had become, I yet had a tear for poor Poland, and, let my conservative brethren say what they will, I still weep her fate. I am not affected by the prevailing Russo-phobia, and in the contest now raging between Russia and the Western powers, I believe that she has the advantage on the score of justice, though now that they have been mad and foolish enough to wage war against her, the interests of Europe perhaps demand their success; for if they fail, she becomes quite too powerful. There are traits in the Russian character I like, but I can never forgive the murder of Poland. Catherine, Frederic, and Maria Theresa, in that crime opened the way to modern revolutions, and deprived crowned heads, to a powerful extent, of the sympathy of the friends of justice and order. The Poles had their faults, great and grievous, but the partition of their kingdom by the three powers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, was a crime that no faults could justify, and, what some would say is worse, a political blunder. Since then, the Polish nobles have been, and will long continue to be, their evil genius. We did not remain long in Germany, for we found most of the German states already prepared, and already in close communication, after the German fashion, with the powers of the air. The German genius is mystic, and plunges either into the profoundest depths of Christian mysticism, which unites the soul with God, or into the demoniacal mysticism, which unites it in strictest union with Satan. The German, whatever his efforts, can never make himself a pure rationalist. He has too much religiosity for that. He must worship, and when he worships not God, he worships the devil, and either through the elevating power of the Holy Ghost rises to heaven, or, through the depressing power of Satan, sinks to hell. You never find him standing on the simple plane of human nature, and he is always either superhumanly good or superhumanly wicked. For an Englishman, an American, an Irishman, there is a medium, a possibility of compromise, a sort of split-the-difference character—now saying, good Lord, and now saying, “good devil,”—a _via media_ genius, which offends both extremes, and satisfies nobody. I like the German genius better. If the Lord be God, then serve him, if Baal be God, then in Satan’s name serve Baal. Be either cold or hot, not lukewarm. _Ernst ist das Leben_ is the German’s motto, and whatever he proposes to do, whether good or evil, he sets about it in downright earnest. There is more to hope, and more to fear from the German or Teutonic race than any other in Europe, for it has very little of the Italian and French, or the English and American _frivolezza_, that curse of modern society.