We have already briefly spoken of Dr. Andree's work on America which is now publishing at Brunswick, Germany, by the house of Westermann, a branch of which is established in this city at the corner of Broadway and Duane-streets. The book in question is to consist of three volumes of some six hundred and fifty octavo pages each, devoted respectively to North, Central, and South America. It is published in numbers of some eighty pages each; of these numbers four are already issued, and we have read them with great satisfaction. The broad and philosophical spirit, the exhaustive learning, and the spirited and picturesque style of Dr. Andree are beyond praise; among all the books on America which we have met with this impresses us as unique, and if the remainder shall prove equal to what is already published, we hope that some American publisher may undertake a translation of the whole into English.
The work opens with an introduction of some forty odd pages, in which, first, the physical characteristics of the new world are set forth with great clearness and beauty: its mountains, rivers, lakes, climate, vegetable and animal kingdoms; the origin of the aboriginal inhabitants, their languages, races, manners, customs, and civilization; the settlements of Europeans, the Spaniards, the Spanish and Portuguese states, the Creoles, Mexico, Brazil, &c. Amalgamation of races, the negroes, Slavery, influence of the Latin races, the Teutonic race, the United States, their growth and destiny, are made the subjects of a continuous discussion, remarkable alike for an air at least of breadth and profundity, careful and comprehensive knowledge, and for concise and often eloquent expression. The introduction is followed by chapters on Iceland, Greenland, and the various expeditions to the polar regions of the north, treating those topics both historically and ethnographically, and with a clear presentation of every interesting and important fact. Next follows a general survey of the continent north of the fiftieth, degree of latitude, its rivers, lakes, forests, animals, men, and commerce, including an account of the various Indian tribes, and the trading companies dealing with them. The trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, Lord Selkirk's colony on Red River, Labrador, Newfoundland, the British Possessions on the West coast, Russian America, are successively treated. Next the Indians in Canada and the United States are considered at length, in respect of their history, traditions, languages, monuments, customs, the influence of the whites upon them, and their probable destiny. In this connection we notice that Dr. Andree frequently cites Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Squier, and other American writers. The remainder of the first volume will treat of the United States, their political history and organization, their soil, climate, people, &c., not failing to give whatever information may be useful to the European settler looking for a new home, as well as to the savan looking for light upon ethnographic and social problems.
From this general outline the scope of the book may be inferred, but our readers will permit us to refer to one or two points which are dwelt upon in the introduction. Dr. Andree contends with the earnestness of a determined partisan for the originality of the vegetable and animal creations, as well as of the human race upon this continent, rejecting entirely the theory that either was transplanted from the eastern hemisphere. The unity of the human family, he maintains with a class of writers distinguishable chiefly for a sleepless activity in assailing the authority of the Christian religion, does not require the assumption of numerical identity of origin, but rather the contrary. "It is not necessary," he says, "to assume the arithmetical oneness of mankind, and the derivation of all from a single pair, thus arbitrarily confining and limiting the creative power of the Highest Being;" and this position he proceeds to advocate by a variety of arguments, at the same time controverting the opposite opinion, and especially the notion of the late Major Noah that the Indians of this continent were descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. In this impertinence is the only noteworthy fault we discover in the book. Discussions of such controverted points as this belong exclusively to the audience of scholars. A far more interesting and satisfactory part of the introduction is that devoted to the Spanish and Portuguese in America, and their influence on the native tribes, and vice versa. The contrast which these races and the states they have founded exhibit to the Germanic race in North America is brought out by Dr. Andree in a striking manner. All the South American republics except Chili are in a condition of comparative or actual disorder: no signs of expanding life and progress are visible among them; every where the conflict of races and castes is active or only partially suppressed; Brazil alone, by the monarchical form of its executive, (though its institutions are fundamentally democratic,) is spared from the anarchy which prevails among its neighbors, and there too, alone, the black, yellow, and red races are politically equal and in the way of complete amalgamation; but in all these states the European element, instead of growing more powerful and influential, tends constantly to greater weakness, and is likely to be completely absorbed and swallowed up; since the wars of independence the white race has diminished, not increased in number; and instead of conferring on the native races the civilization and refinement which was its native property, it is so far dominated by them as to relapse toward their ignorance and rudeness; and after three centuries all Spanish America, the West Indies included, contains not more than fifteen millions of inhabitants, about a fifth of whom are whites, that is to say as many as are found in the State of New-York alone. Or, reckoning for all America south of the United States, five millions of whites, this population still falls far short of that which within thirty years has taken possession of the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Such is the difference between the Latin and the Saxon races. The latter has spread itself with astonishing rapidity, never mixing, to any extent, with negroes or Indians, nor allowing mixed races to get the upper hand, or even exercise any influence. The Anglo-Saxon civilizes the other races or devotes them to extinction. And yet South America is naturally better than North. It is richer and more productive, and endowed with a system of rivers compared with which that of the Mississippi seems trifling. Had it been settled by Anglo-Saxons and Germans instead of Creoles and mixed breeds, it would long since have worn another aspect; steamboats would have covered the rivers up to the very foot of the Cordilleras, and the vast plains would have been occupied by flourishing towns and cultivated fields.
The parallel which Dr. Andree draws between the history of the United States and Europe for the last fifty years is so strikingly put, that we make room for a single passage by way of specimen:
"A comparison of the history of Europe and of North America during the time since the first French revolution is in every respect to the advantage of the United States. The old world has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms to restrain the people and serve the passions of monarchs and their cabinets. Only sixty years ago the entire valley of the Mississippi was still a desert, a wide wilderness, with hardly here and there a settlement. Now we see this empire in subjection—conquered, not by soldiers, with waving banners and sounding trumpets, but by the toil of the farmer, the skill of the artisan, the enterprising spirit of the merchant. They have drained morasses, cleared up forests, opened roads, dug canals, built ships, and founded flourishing states. Within the period of two generations they have peopled that wilderness with ten millions of industrious inhabitants, and opened a new home to the arts of peace, to civil and religious liberty, to culture and progress. In these sixty years, not so much blood has been shed in wars against Indians in the Mississippi valley as in one of the hundreds of battles fought by the soldiers of European states, most of them for useless or even pernicious ends. No blessing has followed the wars and conquests in Europe, but in the Great West, conquered by labor and enterprise, all is progress and unexampled prosperity."
There are numerous other passages tempting us to translate them, but our space is already exhausted, and we forbear.
We have already taken occasion to commend the Tausend und ein Tag im Orient (Thousand and One Days in the East) by Bodenstedt, the well-known author of the Wars of the Circassians. No writer gives so just an insight into the character of that portion of the great Oriental family which he visited—the Circassians and Georgians. The second part of his present book (lately published at Berlin) contains some interesting criticisms of a Tartar poet, whom Bodenstedt knew at Tiflis, upon European poetry. Our traveller, partly by way of practice in the Tartar language, and partly to inspire his eastern friend with greater respect for the bards of the Occident, used to translate English and German songs into Tartar. Mirza Shaffy, the name of the Tartar sage and poet, proved himself no contemptible critic of these foreign productions. Not once could he be induced to tolerate a poem whose only merit was the beauty and melody of its language in the original, nor to swallow the mere sentimentalism which plays so great a part in German poetry especially. This sentimentalism, says Bodenstedt, is as unknown as it is unintelligible to the Oriental poet. He aims always at a real and tangible object, and in gaining it puts heaven and earth in motion. No image is too remote, no thought too lofty for his purpose. The new moon is a golden shoe for the hoof of his heroes' steed. The stars are golden nails, with which the Lord has fastened the sky, lest it should fall with admiration and desire for his fair one. The cypresses and cedars grow only to recall the lithe and graceful form of Selma. The weeping willow droops her green hair to the water, grieving because she is not slender like Selma. The eyes of his beloved are suns which make all the faithful fire-worshippers. The sun itself is but a gleaming lyre, whose beams are golden strings, whence the dawn draws the loveliest accords to the praise of the earth's beauty and the power of love.
Mirza Shaffy was a great lover of Moore and Byron, and some of their songs which were translated needed no explanation to render them intelligible to him. Wolfe's marvellous poem on the death of Sir John Moore made a deep impression on him, and was a special favorite. Goëthe and Heine he liked greatly, especially Goethe's song of Mignon, "Knowst thou the Land," and Heine's Fisher's Song (which Schubert has set to such delicious and befitting music) which ends—
"My heart is like the ocean,
Has storm, and ebb, and flow,
And many a lovely pearlet
Rests in its depths below."