ledge. It may pretend to survive for a time, but its days are numbered, and the feet of those that shall bury it are at the door. This transition state from old forms to new is incongruous, harassing, maddening, and generally uncomfortable. Even the fathers of the Society of Jesus can do nothing against it. The spirit of the age divides their councils; they split into liberals and conservatives, and neutralize one another. It is the duty of superior minds to talk incessantly about political and religious reform, to emigrate to the United States, and to write letters to the friends they left behind

them.

To inculcate these wonderful maxims, Herr König introduces his readers to several sets of people. There is Kurt von Staufen, a brilliant young gentleman of the dishevelled school, and his father, a stiff old aristocrat, "done after Sir Leicester Dedlock." There is also Herr Goldschmidt, a converted Jew and a banker, who though he began life with sixpence, is now a millionaire, and who, exactly as men of business are in the habit of doing, sows his money broadcast over the world, while he never neglects an opportunity to get sentimental and talk philosophy. There is also Herr Goldschimdt's daughter, Pauline, a young lady with "black serpent locks" and the "bust of a Venus of Canova." (!) Besides these, we have an Italian refugee of the name of Paul Gozzi, who talks German, and writes German impromptu verses as good as any Herr König has produced; and Margaretta, his wife, whose hair is "blonde" on the first page of the fifth chapter, and "nutbrown" on the last page but one of the same chapter. Another very interesting woman is the countess Burgsdorf, whose "figure is noble, and as flexible as the voice of an accomplished orator." The countess Burgsdorf's brother; her lover, who is a painter; an old doctor, whose conversation is stolen from Sealsfield's "Backwoodsman;" and a choice assortment of Jesuits; these are the chief persons of the plot, which is extremely simple, and which, from great beginnings, advances to a portentous middle, and in the end leads to nothing.

Kurt von Staufen loves Pauline Goldschmidt. Her father gives his assent; but old Staufen, the aristocrat, proves contumacious. Father and son have a quiet talk together, and disown and curse one another with great politeness and good humour. Kurt goes to the house of his inamorata. He is met by her father, who tells him that his daughter is "gone, and for a long time." "Gone, and for a long time!" says Kurt, and hastens home, where he is laid up with a brain fever, thus preventing the banker from telling him that what he intends to impose upon the young couple is not separation, but merely a couple of years of

probation. The banker makes the same announcement to Pauline, who falls down in a swoon. In this manner are the first couple satisfactorily disposed of.

Next comes couple the second-Günther the painter, and Maria, countess Burgsdorf. Maria's mother was unfortunate, so was her father, and nobody knows why. Her mother dies first, and her father next, and the young lady with the flexible figure is confided to the care of a Jesuit guardian, a man with grey hair and fiery eyes, whose name is La Vergne. He takes her to Innspruck, conversing at great length about Jesuitism. At Innspruck, Maria becomes acquainted with, and is admired by, an unaccountable gentleman with a marble-white corpse-face, who is also a Jesuit, and La Vergne's junior. The latter, it would appear, falls in love with his fair ward, and treats the pale-faced Jesuit with great contumely. At length the affair is brought to a crisis. La Vergne asks the lady's consent, and is reminded of his white hair. He meets this very reasonable objection with a strange demurrer.

"Oh turn thine eyes from this white hair which time has heaped upon me as a curse, and contemplate with the eyes of the spirit the freshness and energy, the youth and the fire, of my mind. Consider the object of my life-the liberation and enlightenment of the human race; consider the horrible dangers which surround me; acknowledge the boldness with which amidst demons I would erect a temple for the Divine; and then say, if thou canst, that I am old. . . . This very year I mean to lay the first stone of my temple. A formidable enemy of the development of mankind is, through me, to be converted into an active, zealous, and gifted friend and promoter of the same!"

...

To cut the matter short, he means to reform the Jesuits. But alas for the perversion of the female mind! even this glittering bait is lost upon the flexible Maria. Of course this leads to a dialogue in the king Cambyses' vein :

"Thou tramplest heartlessly upon my boldest hopes? And dost thou compel me to tell thee that I know nought of despondency and resignation; and that I will and with crime!" call thee mine, though I had to conquer thee with blood

The lady's answer is not less grand and imposing. She says:

"Well, great reformer, who would commence your work of salvation by laying your impious hands upon the holiest right of man: it is confession against confession, and menace against menace. You love and

so do I!"

Whereupon La Vergne adjourns to his own room, and is forthwith struck with apoplexy. His marble-faced pupil, the chevalier D'Aubert, inherits his reform scheme, and Maria is at liberty to return to her brother, and prepare for her marriage with the painter. That painter has, in the meanwhile, been carrying on a slight flirtation with the wife of his friend Gozzi, just to keep his hand in; but when the plot thickens, and his flexible betrothed returns to his neigh

bourhood, he is ashamed of himself, and makes an excursion into the Riesengebirge by way of penance, which is exactly the same as if a man were to take a fortnight's trip into Scotland or Wales in the hope of expiating thereby an act of villainy. During his absence, the marblefaced Jesuit turns up again from a journey across the continent of America, and he, too, makes love to the countess Burgsdorf, by talk ing wildly about philosophy and his intended reformation. The countess, however, jilts him, the painter comes back, and they are all very sentimental together to the end of the first

volume.

Kurt von Staufen, whom we left in a brainfever, is, meanwhile, out of danger, though by no means restored to health. He is a very weak man. Pauline understands as much from his letters; and, with a touching consciousness of her own weakness, she also understands that Kurt, the object of her late sorrow, is not exactly the sort of husband to satisfy "the cravings of her mind."

Is he not indeed a good and honest, but also a sickly, weakly creature? And can I, the slender, tender tendril, confidingly lean upon him and cling to him? Is he not quite as much as I, and more, perhaps, in want of a strong arm to uphold him. ?

Brava, Fräulein Pauline! your's, indeed, is woman's love, that deep and touching devotion, that craving for self-sacrifice, of which the German authoresses say so many fine things. She suffers and struggles very much, especially when her lover, still pale, suffering, and "weak," reminds her of the early days of her affection; but nevertheless this good young lady remains firm. She marries her cousin Arthur, a remarkably strong man, who is very wicked in the first volume, while in the second he comes out as a reformed character. Poor Kurt, like the lady in the song

Called for swords and pistols; Brought they were at his command. But instead of shooting himself, he takes a more sensible view of the affair, and merely runs mad. The painter has meanwhile married the countess; the refugee Gozzi is reconciled to Margaretta; the marble-faced Jesuit, instead of reforming his order, has split it into

two fractions; Kurt's aristocratic father has been converted by a series of the most impossible incidents, including a robbery and an assassination; and the end is, the painter, Gozzi, and the Jesuit, together with Maria and Margaretta, emigrate to the United States, it is difficult to conjecture why; in order to do, it is impossible to know,-what. But it is a fact, and one which is not altogether devoid of significance, that all the heroes and heroines of almost all the German novels which came out since the revolution go to America, and there indite letters, (which form concluding chapters) to their friends in Germany.

It is almost superfluous to say that nothing can be more objectionable than novels of this class. A dreary, sinister spirit pervades them: they have neither beauty nor logic to compensate for their lax morality and outrageous diction. These German writers of Herr König's stamp, believe that they are inventive, when they crowd their pages with a score or so of wooden dolls, painted and dressed up to represent barons and Jewesses, diplomats and bankers, peasants and Jesuits; they flatter themselves that they are philosophers when they make these dolls chatter about the social, moral, and these gentlemen are too grand to write simply political future of the world. The fact is, all novels: they would be prophets and reformers. Hence their metaphysical hotch-potch is brought forward on every conceivable occasion: Jesuits of all shades, bankers, Jewesses, aristocrats, and servants in livery, pounce upon an abstract question as hungry dogs do on a piece of meat; marble-faced men, and women "with curly lips," discuss the chances of the next revolution; interesting couples on their wedding-day, hold forth on some very knotty point of Hegel's system of philosophy. These persons have not speech because they exist; they exist but to speak; they are mere vehicles of the author's astounding ideas and bewildering discoveries. They calm "the ocean waves of their feelings by a fervent embrace of nature;" and having accomplished that feat, they turn upon the world "a face which clearly shews that they are at a loss whether to pull, or bite it to pieces." We wish them a speedy deliverance!

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. History of Europe from 1815 to 1852. By Sir

A. Alison. Vol. I. 15s. Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore. Edited by Lord John Russell. Vols. I. II. 1/. 1s. Lives of the Queens of Scotland. By Agnes Strickland. Vol. III. 10s. 6d. Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. By William Stirling. 8s. Life of Bernard Palissy of Saintes, the Potter. By Henry Morley. Two vols. 18s. *Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn. Vols. III. IV. 8vo. 11. 1s.

TRAVELS, &c.

A Fortnight in Ireland. By Sir Francis B. Head, Bart. 12s.

Pictures from Sicily. By W. H. Bartlett. Plates. 16s.

*Historical Tour in Franconia in the Summer of 1852. By Charles Tylor. 8s. *The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints, in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, &c. By Lieut. J. W. Gunnison. 3s. 6d. Life of the Duke of Wellington. By an Old Soldier. Plates. 5s. *Australia as it is. By F. Lancelott. Two

Berlioz (Hector), Les Soirées de l'Orchestre. Foudras (Marquis de), Suzanne d'Estonville.

Two vols.