ABSTRACT
The England to which Thackeray returned in 1831 was a monarchy, which, on the Reform Act had long made a cultural transition from a court-centred society to one more centred on the home, the club, the country mansion, the counting-house and the factory. Nineteenth-century England was interested in questions of 'national character', including that of a Germany which, in Geoffrey Tillotson's words, 'once again claimed the attention had in Luther's day', thanks largely, though not exclusively, to Thomas Carlyle. If the visit of German singers to Covent Garden could hardly be judged a success, a glimpse across the Channel also revealed things amiss in Germany itself. Thackeray reveals the area of German and British thought from which he will feel for ever excluded, even though he may recognize the 'genius' of a man whose 'spectacles' are less dim than his own.
