"The Convicts,"[15 ] by Auerbach, will not increase that author's reputation in America. It belongs to the distinctively romantic school of German fiction. The story is that two convicts, reformed through the agency of a charitable society, marry and bring up a large family of children. These suffer pangs of sorrow when they learn of the stain on their parents' name, but otherwise they do not appear to be inconvenienced by their unfortunate origin. They marry into stations very much above them, though in addition to the embarrassing criminal history of their parents, they suffer what in Germany is the hardly less disaster, of being the children of a railway signal man! We suppose the object of this plot, and of much special social sentiment which is introduced in the story, is to represent the increased importance which the industrial classes have in Germany, as elsewhere in the world. Here in America the improvement in the condition of the working-man does not excite attention except from professed students of political economy. But in Germany it is contrasted with a previous state of almost complete vassalage, and the poets there seem to think it indicates an approaching brotherhood of man. Wealth and worth are to embrace each other, and the sins of the father are not to descend even to the first generation of children. We cannot but sympathize with the Councillor of State (whose granddaughter wants to, and does, marry one of the convict flagman's sons, an artisan) when he says:
See! see! This then is the latest ideal? Formerly the ideals were painters, musicians, hussar riding masters, and players. Now love also is practical. So then an artisan? All the enthusiasm runs to tunnels and viaducts.
The book is marred by unnecessary exactitude in translation. Thouing and theeing make no impression of intimacy and confidence on the American understanding as they do on the German, and should be omitted. Nor has the author the strength of his youth, and the beauty of his fancy no longer atones for the weakness of the story. Nothing in the whole of the book proper is so good as the following from the preface:
A generation has passed away since I began to present in a framework of fiction the interior life of my countrymen and neighbors. If after another generation a poet shall again undertake to express the village life of my home, what will he perhaps find? Flowers bloom in all times out of the German soil, and Beauty will in all times bloom out of the German soul.
Of late years there has been a tendency to abandon the exhaustive "manuals" which once formed the only style of school and hand-books known, and to use in their place books which contain only so much of a science as is taught in some one well-proportioned school. The change is based on the rational supposition that whatever suffices for the thorough instruction of students should also satisfy the wants of an ordinary practical worker. Mr. Ricketts's "Notes on Assaying"[16 ] belong to this modern kind of text-book. They contain what the students in the School of Mines in New York learn, and as a thorough knowledge of assaying is obviously necessary to a mining engineer, the author considers that the same course if honestly worked through should suffice for practice outside the school. The book covers both dry and wet assaying, and gold parting, and there are chapters in which the apparatus and chemical reagents are described. A few condensed notes on blowpiping finish an extremely concise and useful book, always available for reference, and in which the self-taught workman may find his way without confusion.
—Under the pressure of incessant examinations for admission to and promotion in many fields of human activity, from the Government service to apprentices' workshops, English literature is receiving important accessions to its facilities for teaching science. All kinds of positive knowledge are condensed into class books, sometimes by the very master minds of scientific research, sometimes by experienced teachers. Of the latter kind is Mr. Lee's "Acoustics, Light and Heat,"[17 ] which he has written to meet the wants of students for the Advanced Stage Examination of the British Department of Science and Art. Excellence in such a work requires that the main principles of the science should be sufficiently covered, explanations be clear, illustrations sufficient, and language as simple as possible. Mr. Lee's book appears to us somewhat over-condensed, but otherwise conforms to these requirements.
Lord Dufferin's "Letters from High Latitudes," describing the yacht voyage he made in 1856 to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen, are so well known that it is only necessary to say they are republished by Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co., a Canadian firm that has lately established itself in New York. In reading these familiar and gossipy letters, one is painfully impressed with a sense of the dreariness of the Northern regions. Whatever there is of interest is carried there by the traveller. The country itself, even including Iceland, adds little to the narrative, and sea life, whether stormy or calm, is not provocative of incident. But in spite of these inherent discouragements, the author maintains his cheerfulness throughout with such uniformity that we cannot resist a suspicion of its genuineness. He comes up to the inditing of each epistle with the determined smile of a much battered pugilist, when a new round is called—and we are very much in his debt for his pluck.