2.
When shall I see, when shall I see,
As I have seen before,
The gathering crowd beneath the tree,
With her that I adore?
And happy hear
Her voice so clear,
Blend with my own,
In liquid tone.
When shall I see, when shall I see,
The things I hold so dear?
2.
Zwar glaenzt die Sonne ueberall
Dem Menschen in der Welt;
Doch we zuerst ihr goldner Strahl
Ihm in das Auge faellt?
Wo er als Kind,
Sanft und gelind,
An mütter Hand,
Sprach und empfand,
Da ist allein sein Vaterland
Koennt' ich's noch einmal seh'n?
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
Edith Kinnaird, By the Author of "The Maiden Aunt." Boston: E. Littell & Co.
Fiction has exercised an important influence over the public from the earliest ages of the world. Nor is the reason difficult to determine. Where one man takes delight in the subtleties of logic, ten derive pleasure from the indulgence of the fancy. The love of fiction is common to the unlettered savage as well as to the civilized European, and has marked alike the ancient and the modern world. The oldest surviving book, if we except the narrative of Moses, is, perhaps, a fiction—we mean the book of Job. To reach its date we must go back beyond the twilight of authentic history, far into the gloom of the antique past, to the very earliest periods of the earth's existence. We must ascend to the time when the Assyrian empire was yet in its youth, when the patriarchs still fed their flocks on the hills of Palestine, when the memory of the visible presence of the Almighty among men remained fresh in the traditions of the East. The beautiful story of Ruth comes next, but ages later than its predecessor. Then follows the sonorous tale of Homer, clanging with a martial spirit that will echo to all time. Descending to more modern eras, we reach the legends of Haroun El Reschid; the tales of the Provençal troubadours; the romances of chivalry; and finally the novels of this and the past century. For nearly four thousand years fiction has delighted and moulded mankind. It has survived, too, when all else has died. The Chaldean books of astrology are lost to the moderns; but the story of the Idumean has reached us unimpaired. The lawgivers of Judah are no more, and the race of Abraham wanders over the earth; but the simple tale of Ruth preserves the memory of their customs, and keeps alive the glory of the past.
It will not do to despise that which is so indestructible, and which everywhere exercises such powerful influence. Pedants may scorn fiction as beneath them, and waste their lives in composing dry treatises that will never be read; but the wise man, instead of deriding this tremendous engine, will endeavor to bend it to his purposes; and whether he seeks to shape the tale that is to be rehearsed on the dreamy banks of the Orontes, or to write the novel that will be read by thousands in England and America, will labor so to mix instruction with amusement, that his audience shall insensibly become moulded to his views. The moral teachers of both ancient and modern times have chosen the vehicle of fiction to inculcate truth; and even inspiration has not scorned to employ it in the service of religion. The most beautiful fictions ever written were the parables of the Savior. But it is also true that some of the most deleterious books we have are romances. This, however, is no reason why fiction should be abandoned to bad men, or proscribed as it is by many well-meaning moralists. Wesley said, with his strong Saxon sense, that he did not see why the devil should have all the good tunes.