The Countess Hahn-Hahn, who for several years has occupied in German literature a position corresponding to that of George Sand in France, with whose views of life and society she strongly sympathized, and whose "Faustina" and other works were republished here, has recently become a Roman Catholic, as our readers will have seen, and has just written the following letter to a Hamburg journal:
"To correct some misapprehension, I feel it to be my duty to declare that the new edition of my complete works announced by Alexander Duncker in Berlin is no new series, but an edition with a new title. A new series of those writings will never appear, as I no longer recognize as my own the spirit in which they were written.
Ida, Countess Hahn-Hahn."
David Copperfield has been translated into German, with the peculiarities of speech of the different classes of characters unattempted. Old Pegotty and Ham speak "pure Castilian." It is easy to see how the dramatic character of the book is thus lost. Indeed, Dickens is almost the only very famous English author who is not much translated. The Battle of Life, one of the least valuable and characteristic of his works, is well known upon the Continent, because it was so easy to translate. But what can a descendant of Dante, for instance, ever know of the drolleries of Sam Weller? Fancy a spiritual Frenchman trying to catch the fun of Pickwick!
Mr. Judd's Richard Edney induces a German critic to say of him, "This is a new English poet of the Carlyle and Emerson school, who, inspired by the example of Jean Paul, turn the English language topsy-turvy, and introduce a jargon that makes us satisfied with our own romantic barbarism."
Mrs. S. C. Hall's Sorrows of Women has been also translated into German, and is highly praised.