Like a Sponge Thrown into Water: Francis Lieber's European Travel Journal of 1844-1845.

Edited with an introduction and commentary by Charles R. Mack and Ilona S. Mack. (Columbia: Published by the University of South Carolina Press for the South Caroliniana Library, c. 2002. Pp. [xxx], 193. $18.95, ISBN 1-57003-447-8.)

To students of the antebellum South, Francis Lieber, for twenty years a professor at South Carolina College, is perhaps best known for remarking that intellectual fame in the region seemed relegated to the authors of proslavery tracts--a bitter observation that has buttressed the perception that a preoccupation with slavery crippled southern intellectual life. Lest it be thought that the title of this book merely reinforces that caricature, consider that it actually understates Lieber's sense of intellectual frustration. The full quotation, contained in a letter written to Charles Sumner from Paris in 1844, reads that Lieber's return to Europe left him feeling like "a long dried sponge thrown into water" (p. xix). The publication of Lieber's journal should foster a fuller appreciation of his wide-ranging interests and influential writings. Editors Charles R. and Ilona S. Mack have provided an introduction that places Lieber's travels in the context of his life and intellectual development, and they have translated the German in which much of his journal was written. Lieber followed a conventional itinerary, spending several weeks in London, Paris, and Belgium--including a nostalgic visit to the field of Waterloo, where he had been wounded--before he departed these well-traveled paths to visit his native Germany. And while many of the sights Lieber mentioned would have been familiar to genteel readers of his day, the Macks have fleshed out his sometimes obscure jottings with extensive descriptions culled from the same travel guides Lieber employed in his journey.

The most striking impression that emerges from the journal is Lieber's double-consciousness. His sense of intellectual isolation was less a response to the milieu around Columbia, South Carolina, than to American conditions generally. Hence, Lieber threw himself into cultural life in Europe, and his journal documents his encounters with scientists, literary figures, and public men. Yet in these pages Lieber is surprisingly--and self-consciously-American. He applauds the superior physical and moral qualities of American women over their European counterparts, socializes with the Americans he meets, comments on Continental despotism, and feels a pang of nationalist pride when an Englishman praises Joseph Story as the highest authority on equity. Travel journals are matchless windows into personalities, and Lieber's is well illuminated here: his temperamental conservatism, his highly emotional responses to art, his near-obsession with the dancer Fanny Elssler, and his fondness for flattery and name-dropping.

It is a pity that the annotations explaining many of the sites Lieber visited depend almost exclusively on the John Murray guidebooks that he consulted. Thus, while the annotations---which are annoyingly located following the text of the entire journal--describe churches, museums, and other tourist sites, many of the individuals with whom Lieber circulated in Europe go unidentified. (There is, however, a separate section of brief biographies of some of the people Lieber met on his journey.) While the value of this edition of Lieber's journal is somewhat less than it might have been, it provides a vital window into the mind of an important and neglected nineteenth-century man of letters.

DANIEL KILBRIDE

John Carroll University