Mr. Ross, the editor of Allgemeine Auswanderungszeitung (Universal Journal of Emigration), an excellent and useful German periodical, has just published in Germany the Auswanderer's Handbuch (Emigrant's Manual), devoted especially to the service of those who design emigrating to the United States. His manual is a valuable collection of whatever a new comer into this country should know. The constitution and political arrangements of the Union, its legislation, its means of intercourse, the peculiarities of soil and climate proper to different sections, the state of agriculture, and the chances of employment for persons of different classes, professions, and degrees of education, are all given. Mr. Ross was himself born in the United States, and understands what he writes about. At the same time his book gives a fair and thorough view of the difficulties with which the emigrant to this country must contend.
At Pesth, Hungary, is about to appear a biographical work on Hungarian statesmen and orators who were prominent before the revolutionary period. Paul Nagy, Eugen Beöthy, Franz Déak, Stephan Bezerédy, Bartholomaus Szemere, the two Wesselenyis, the two Dionys Pazmandys, Stephan Szechényi, and Joseph Eötvos (the last known in the United States by translations of his novels), are among the characters described.
A new book on the new world is the Europa ed America, by Dr. Ant. Caccia, an Italian litterateur, who has apparently been in this country and describes it, as he professes to do, from nature. He says that he found the people of New-York occupied mainly in making money.
The German authoress Fanny Lewald, has in press a book entitled England und Schottland (England and Scotland), made up from the notes of a journey through those countries. Its publication just at this moment is for the benefit of the crowds of Germans who are going to the World's Fair, and who may find in it all sorts of preparatory information. A specimen chapter published in one of our German papers reads pleasantly. Fanny Lewald is a phenomenon, of a class of women who know something about every thing. Nothing is too high or too low to become an object of consideration to these female Teufelsdröcks, petticoated professors of "the science of things in general." The intellectual cultivation among the middle and higher class of society in Prussia, the patronage bestowed by the court upon learning, the arts, and sciences; the encouragement to discuss freely every imaginable theme in politics or religion, with the single exception of the measures of the administration, all tended to create a taste for mental display in which it was necessary that women should participate, if they wished to retain their old position in the social world. In the salons of Berlin, therefore, women have been heard taking a prominent part in conversations in which the most abstruse questions in religion, politics, and general science were discussed. The philosophers, male and female, debarred by the spy system from any open investigation of passing political events, revenged themselves by treating these events as mere temporary phases of the great system of evolutions which forms the material of history, scarcely worthy of notice, and directed their attention to the great principles which underlie all great social and religious developments. A strange tone was thus given to conversation. Listening to the talkers at a Berlin conversazione, one might have fancied, judging from the nature of the subjects of conversation, that a number of gods and goddesses were debating on the construction of a world. Vulgar bricks and mortar they ignored, and were anxious only about primary and secondary geological formations. The actual state of any society was scarcely cared for, except in illustration of a principle, and the great forces which must unite to form the best possible society, were the only subjects of investigation. It may be taken as a great proof of the wonderful facility of adaptation of the female mind, that women joined in these conversations as readily as men, and frequently with far more brilliancy, in spite of the range of reading which it must require to obtain even a superficial knowledge of the subjects of discourse. Fanny Lewald is one of these prodigies. She has studied every thing from the Hegelian philosophy downwards. She is as great in revolutions as in ribbons, and is as amusing when talking sentiment over oysters and Rheinwein, in the Rathskiller at Bremen, as when meditating upon ancient art and philosophy in Wilhelm von Humboldt's castle of Tegel near Berlin.
We have read with great interest a series of articles which have appeared in the recent numbers of the Grenzboten upon George Sand. Though we have often failed to agree with the view of the writer, Mr. Julian Schmidt, one of the editors of that paper, we have rarely met with literary criticism of more ability, and a more just and catholic spirit. We translate the conclusion of the last article, in which Mr. Schmidt gives the result of his careful analysis of all the works of the author: "The novel, on account of its lax and variable form, and the caprice which it tolerates, is in my opinion not to be reckoned among those kinds of art, which, as classic, will endure to posterity. The authors who have been most read in modern times have already been checked in their popularity by the greater attraction of novelty offered by their successors. This is the case even with Walter Scott. Besides, in most of her writings, George Sand has dealt with problems whose justification later times will not understand; and thus it may happen that hereafter she will be regarded as of consequence in the history of literature alone. But in that sphere she will have a permanent importance. Future centuries will regard her as the most significant image of the morbid but intense striving which marks this generation. When it has long been agreed that the lauded works of Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, and others, are but the barren outgrowths of an untamed and unrestrained fancy, and a perverted reflection; when the same verdict has been pronounced on the poems of M. de Chateaubriand, whose value is now taken as a matter of belief and confidence, because there are few who have read them; then the true poetic element in the works of George Sand will, in spite of all its vagaries, still be recognized. And more than this, since the period of sentimentalism will be seen as more extensive, and as the works of Richardson, Rousseau (of course only those which belong in this category), and of Madame de Staël and others, will be included in it, then we say that the better productions of our authoress will carry off the prize from all the rest."
Two collections of songs, national and lyric, have made their appearance in Germany. The one is by George Scherer, and is called Deutsche Volkshelier, the other, by Wolfgand Menzel, is entitled Die Gesange der Volker (The Songs of the Nations). The former is exclusively German; the latter contains songs from every civilized tongue under heaven, as well as from many of the uncivilized, in German versions, of course. Both are elegantly printed, and highly commended by the knowing in that line of literature.