Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. II.

A series of historical sketches depicts everyday and institutional aspects of German life from the eighteenth into the early nineteenth century, with attention to military organization, conscription, and the harsh routines endured by recruits, including desertion and punishment; portraits of statecraft and reform under Prussian rulers examine childhood, military upbringing, literary pursuits, and wartime leadership; chapters also survey urban cultural life, education, social distinctions among nobility, citizens, and peasants, and the changing literary sensibility around 1790; the final section describes political disintegration and the weakened condition of the German states at the turn of the century.