Dr. Titus Tobler, a Swiss savan, has just published a work entitled Golgotha, its Churches and Cloisters, in the course of which he undertakes the "Jerusalem question," or the discussion of the probable localities of the Scripture narrative of the crucifixion. Among the able German accounts of this treatise, which cannot fail to arrest the attention of the sacred student, we find the following notice of Professor Robinson, the first profound and adequate contemporary authority upon the subject: "Until the American Robinson, all the early comparisons and criticisms upon the holy sepulchre were based much more upon instinct and furious sectarianism, than upon a generous love of truth and a genuine insight into the matter. Only with wearisome effort, and not without the consent of the whole Church power, was Robinson's mighty grasp upon pious tradition repelled. In the main question the learned Yankee was not altogether wrong. But he is too rash in battle, too impatient, too reckless, too ambitious, and his armor was evidently not proof in all parts. Even the knowledge of the Semitic orient, of its antiquities and customs, seems, if we may say so without offence to transatlantic vanity, a little threadbare. But the Robinsonian breach in the wall was not to be entirely plastered up and its traces concealed. This American has first recognized the right way of breaking into the citadel of tradition; others, with more or less skill, have followed his track and widened the breach. But it was reserved for the inflexible ability of Dr. Tobler to dig up the very foundations, although he is no centaur, no giant, and in the pride of strength, does not scorn a childlike faith."
Among recent German romances we note second and third editions of Jeremias Gotthelf's Sylvester-Dream, and the Peasant's Mirror, or a Life-History. The author is not much known beyond Germany, but is there recognized as having the greatest certainty and correctness in delineation, the most genial principle, and the soundest and freshest life of any contemporary writer. The Sylvester-Dream is as vague and fantastic, and of the same electrical effect, as the similar sparkling flights of Dickens and Jean Paul. Uriel the Devil, a satirical romance, in eight pictures, bears the name of Kaulbach, but whether the author is related to William Kaulbach, the great painter, we have no means of ascertaining. This, with the Memorabilia of a German House-Servant are spoiled by their imitations of Jean Paul, and the latter is somewhat strongly infected with Hoffman's Phantasies. But they are both books of more than common talent. Two romances by two women are most curtly and contemptuously noticed, in a style of uncourteous condemnation hardly to be paralleled in England or America, in which countries the chivalry of private respect for the fair sex always ameliorates condemnation of their writings. "Of these two books there is little else to say than that they are moral and respectable, and extremely well written for women. The former author has the rare and memorable heroism in a woman to allow her heroine to reach her thirty-fourth year."
Levin Schuneking formerly Grand-Master at the Court of the Elector of Cologne, has just published The Peasant Prince, a romance, called in Germany his best work.
Kohl, the traveller or writer of travels, has just published a book upon the Rhine, which is not of the usual character of his works, as the author perhaps feared too much the criticising contrast of Victor Hugo's Rhine, to undertake a detailed and sprightly description of the present life and aspect of the country. The new work is, in fact, an attempt to portray, according to Ritter's principles, a famous river region in its geological, historical and statistical relations; and from this point of view to present it vividly to the mind. The contents are simple and succinctly arranged, and the book is a signal success in the popularization of the results of recent geographical research. It has the same relation to the old river guide books, that Ritter's philosophical geography has to the old geographies.
Anastasius Grun, the famous German poet, has just edited the poetical remains of Nicolaus Lenau, of whom Auerbach wrote a graceful reminiscence for the German Museum, under the title of Lenau's last Summer. The chief poem of the collection is entitled Don Juan, which, although not fully finished, the German critics highly extol. Soon after the death of Lenau, in a madhouse, last year, we gave some account of him in the International.
Of Sir Charles Lyell's Second Journey in America, which Mr. E. Dieffenbach has rendered into German, the Germans say that its geniality and gentlemanliness, its graceful and striking pictures of the state of society, politics, and religion, and its popular treatment of scientific subjects, make it altogether charming. A reviewer notes what Lyell says of the universal tendency to read among the American laboring classes, and quotes some interesting facts, as that one house published eighty thousand copies of Eugene Sue's Wandering Jew, in various forms and at various prices. The same house had sold forty thousand copies of Macaulay's History of England, at the end of the first three months, at prices varying from fifty cents to four dollars, while other houses had sold twenty thousand copies, and this sale of sixty thousand copies while Longman was selling fifteen thousand at one pound twelve shillings.