"The beauty of the work lies in the idyllic charm of the good, true-hearted cottage life. Nothing in literature surpasses it; we think it would be no exaggeration to say that nothing rivals it. We will not recount, however briefly, the story here; that were to mar a pleasure for some reader whom we hope to draw to this great work. Suffice it to say that it is a record of sin and of expiation,—not of sin in its outward act, but in its essence. There is nothing sensational here, nothing lurid,—no bigamy, no savage murders; this book is a soul history, and a great crime—no less a one than the ruin of a family through a falsely directed love—is seen in the distance,—obscurely, as in the death of Mary Stuart in the last scene of Schiller's play. Amid the development of sin in a pure but passionate soul, and amid its expiation, there are brought upon the stage characters of Roman grandeur, not attractive, indeed, because stiff and hard, but truly noble and quickening.
"To the Christian reader the book appeals with special force, for being absolutely Christless, and yet dealing with the deepest needs of a sinning soul, it presents an argument stronger than any which we have ever seen for a Saviour who shall expiate sin, and leave the offender free to go on and labor and enter into the joy of life, without condemning himself to an expiation which shall end only with his death. Thus the book, which is a special plea in behalf of an absolutely Christless philosophy, leads directly and irresistibly to the cross of Christ. No religion is worth much, according to Auerbach, but for the poetry it guards and expresses. Yet, while this is the tone of the book, the writer of this article confesses that he rises from 'On the Heights' with a clearer sense of the need of Christianity to solve the deepest mysteries of woe and sin and suffering than he has had before, and that all who are able to see anything in this book but a charming and yet saddening story, will find themselves like-minded."—Extract from a review by a Clergyman in the Hartford Evening Post.
"The author's last work, 'On the Heights,' has been pronounced the finest German novel since Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister.'"
"Auerbach is thought by many to be the first writer of fiction living."—New York Evening Post.
"Among the living European novelists, Auerbach holds a pre-eminent rank."—New York Tribune.
"The leading German novelist of these days."—New Haven Palladium.
"The genius of the master is stamped on the production of his pen."—Providence Post.
"'On the Heights' is the most remarkable novel that has come to us from the home of Goethe during the present century."—Northern Monthly, May, 1868.
"One of the few great works of the age."—JOHN G. SAXE, in Albany Argus.