Next comes "Prinzessin Ilse," a graceful little story by Von Ploennies, almost as charming as "Undine,"—with its scene laid in the Hartz Forest, by the legend-haunted Ilsenstein. Then follows a similar wreath of fancies, called "Was sich der Wald erzählt," by Gustav zu Putlitz, in which fir-trees and foxgloves tell their tales, and there are sermons in stones and all the rest of it. Why is it that no language but the German can possibly construct a Mährchen, so that Englishmen and Americans grow dull, and Frenchmen insufferable, whenever they attempt that delicious mingling of the ideal and the real?
Then we have two of the most popular novelettes of Paul Heyse, "Die Einsamen" and "Anfang und Ende,"—two first-class æsthetic essays by Hermann Grimm, on the Venus of Milo and on Raphael and Michel Angelo,—and two comedies by Gustav zu Putlitz. There is also Von Eichendorff's best novel, which in Berlin went through four editions in a year, "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts," or "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing,"—and, finally, Tieck's well-known story of "The Elves," and his "Tragedy of Little Red Riding-Hood."
Among these various attractions every reader of German books will certainly find something to enjoy; and these editions should be extensively used by teachers, as the separate volumes can be easily obtained by mail, and the average cost of each is but about half a dollar. We hope yet to see editions equally good of the complete works of the standard German authors, printed in this country and for American readers. Under present circumstances, they can be more cheaply produced than imported.
Reynard the Fox. A Burlesque Poem, from the Low-German Original of the Fifteenth Century. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra, & Co.
The mocking legends of the Wolf and the Fox were wielded without mercy by many mediæval satirists, against the human animals of those species, then prevailing in courts and cloisters. But the jokes took their most permanent form in the fable of "Reyneke de Vos," first published in the year 1498. Written in Low-German by Nicholas Bauman, under the pseudonym of Hinrek van Alkmer, the satire did a similar work to that done by Rabelais, and Boccaccio, and Piers Plowman. It has since been translated into many languages, and as Goethe at last thought it worth putting into German hexameters, one may still find it worth reading in English Hudibrastic rhymes. The present attractive edition is a reprint of the paraphrase of Von Soltau, published at Hamburg in 1826,—though, for some reason, this fact is not stated in the present issue. New or old, the version is executed with much spirit, and is, to say the least, easier reading than Goethe's hexameters.
The Cradle of Rebellions: A History of the Secret Societies of France. By Lucien de la Hodde. New York: John Bradburn.
The translator of this sharp and pungent sketch of the later French revolutionists is understood to be General John W. Phelps of Vermont,—a man whose personal services, despite some eccentric traits, will give him an honorable place in the history of these times. It is possible that readers may not agree with him in his estimate of the dangers to be incurred by American institutions from secret societies. They are a thing essentially alien to our temperament. The Southern plotters of treason were certainly open enough; it was we who were blind. The "Know-Nothing" movement was a sort of political carnival, half jest, half earnest, and good for that trip only. If anything could have created secret societies, it would have been the Fugitive-Slave-Law excitement: that, indeed, produced them by dozens, but they almost always died still-born, and whatever was really done in the revolutionary line was effected by very informal coöperation.
Indeed, even the French nation is, by its temperament, less inclined to deep plotting than any nation of Southern Europe, and as De la Hodde himself admits, "not one of our revolutions during the last sixty years has been the work of conspirators." "There is but one maker of revolutions in France, and that is Paris,—idle, sophistical, disappointed, restless, evil-minded Paris. We all know her." "Of one thing we may rest assured: the greater part of our revolutions signify nothing." And this has been notoriously true since the days of the Fronde.
Yet the moral of the book is not without value, and its historic interest is considerable, taken in connection with the other memoirs of the same epoch. The style is rather piquant, and the translation good, though a little stiff. The writer is an Orleanist, and thinks the Revolution of 1848 a mere whim of the populace, favored by a "vertigo" on the part of Louis Philippe. It was "an incomprehensible contingency,—sovereign power giving way to a revolt, without the test of a combat."
The book was first published under the Republic, to which the author professes due loyalty. He suggests, however, that, as no one is required by duty to fall in love with a very ugly woman who may have been imposed on him in marriage, so he is not yet very much smitten with the Republic. But he is ready to respect the dame, if she proves to deserve it, as a legitimate connection.