Temperance Tales are produced in Germany as well as elsewhere. Jeremias Gotthelf is the best author who there cultivates this style of composition. His Dürsli, the Brandy drinker, has just passed through a fourth edition, and How five Maidens miserably perished in Brandy, to a second. Gotthelf has the talent of combining great dramatic interest and artistic freshness of narration, with a moral purpose. Hence the popularity of these little books.
Niehl's Bûrgerliche Gesellschaft (Civil Society) is greatly praised by critics, as the most valuable work lately published in Germany, or indeed in Europe, upon the State of Society and the causes operating to change it. Especially good are its pictures of the different classes in Germany, such as the nobility, the peasantry, the industrious middle class, and the proletaries. These pictures are said to have the minuteness and fidelity of daguerreotypes. The chapter on the "proletaries of intellectual labor," gives any thing but a flattering account of the literary classes on the continent. Those classes are held up as in a great measure perverted, empty, and dangerous. Niehl divides Society in Germany into four great classes, namely: the peasantry, the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie or middle class, and the proletariat, or mere laborers for wages. The last he regards as the decaying and corrupting class, a sort of scum in hot effervesence. This is, however, one of the classes that produce social movement; the other is the middle class; the conservative or stationary classes are the peasantry and aristocracy. The learned professions he reckons among the middle class. He makes no distinction between the proletaries who live by the soil, and those who live by working in connection with manufactures and mechanical trades.
Another contribution to Goethean literature is the Correspondence between the great Poet and his intimate friend Knebel, which has just appeared in Germany in two volumes. The letters extend from 1774 to 1832, and contain the free expression of Goethe's opinions on a great variety of important subjects, as well as many interesting particulars in his personal history, hitherto unknown.
Mr. Wetzstein, Prussian Consul at Damascus, has returned to Europe, bringing a valuable collection of Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts, which he expects to sell to the Royal Library at Berlin. Of especial value is a history of Persia during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which casts light on several portions of Persian history that have hitherto been obscure.
Longfellow's Evangeline has been translated into German and published at Hamburg. The name of the translator is not given. The critics find that the poem has a very marked resemblance to Goethe's Herman and Dorothea.
Dr. Mayo's Berber has been translated into the German by Mr. L. Dubois, and published at Leipzig.
A new and splendid edition of the Pilgrim's Progress has been published at Leipzig, in German. It is curious to see the good old book discussed by the critics as if it were a new production.
German Historical Literature has lately been enriched by numerous valuable works. Among these we notice Wenck's Fränkische Reich (Frankish Empire), which treats that subject, from A.D. 843 to 861, with instructive thoroughness and philosophical insight; two essays by Ficker, the one on Reinhald von Dassel, the Chancellor of Ferdinand I., and the other on the attempt of Henry VI. to render the German empire hereditary; Arnthen's History of Carinthia; Rink's Tirol; Palazky's History of Bohemia; Minutoli's History of the Elector Frederic I.; Riedel's Ten years of the History of the Ancestors of the Royal House of Prussia; the History of Schleswig Holstein, by George Waitz; Ruckert's Annals of German History; G. Philip's Outlines of the History of the German Empire and German Law; Gengler's History of German Law; the Coins of the German Emperors and Kings in the Middle Ages, a large work by Cappe; the Celts and Ancient Helvetians, by J. B. Brozi; and the Campaigns of the Bavarians from 1643 to 1645, by J. Hellmann; Mayr's Mann von Rinn (Man of Rinn) deserves special mention. The man of Rinn is Joseph Speckbacher, the hero of the war of 1809 in the Tyrol. His deeds, and those of his countrymen, are here narrated in a style as attractive as the facts are authentic.
In all the States of the German Confederation there are 2,651 booksellers, 400 of whom deal only in their own publications, 2,200 sell books, but do not publish, and 451 keep general assortments of books, and publish also. At Berlin there are 129 booksellers, at Leipzic, 145, at Vienna, 52, at Stuttgard, 50, and at Frankfort, 36. A hundred years ago there were only 31 at Leipzic and 6 at Berlin, and at two fairs held at Leipzic in 1750, only 350 German booksellers' establishments were represented. No one is allowed in Germany to become a bookseller without a license from the government, and in Prussia the applicant has to pass a special examination.
Those desirous of acquiring languages by wholesale, may try a recent work by Captain J. Nepomuk Szöllözy, with which the scholar can learn, according to the Ollendorffian system, French, German, English, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, Wallachian and Turkish. Phrases and vocabularies of all the languages are appended.