The Manuscripts of Peter Schlemil, naturally awakens attention, but proves to be an extravaganza of Louis Bechstein, humorous and intelligent withal. But the humor is not intelligible, and the intelligence is not humorous, says a sharp reviewer.
Prof. O. L. B. Wolff, well known to every amateur German scholar in this country and England, as the publisher of the celebrated Poetischer und Prosaischer Hausschatz, or Poetic and Prosaic Home Treasury, has edited and published by Otto Wigand of Leipsic, that singular romance of Caspar von Grimmelshausen, first printed in 1669, which is, as a picture of German social life during the period of the thirty years' war, extremely interesting. We need, however, hardly caution our lady readers against its perusal. Its title is as follows: Der abenteuerliche Simplicius Simplicissimus. The adventurous Simplicius Simplicissimus. That is the true, copious, and very remarkable biography of an odd, wonderful and singular man, Sternfels Von Fuchsheim, how he passed his youth in Spessart, of his varied and remarkable destinies in the thirty years' war, and of the numerous sufferings, sorrows and dangers which he experienced, with his ultimate good fortune.
A German critic, who of course belongs to the conservative party, writing under date of June 16, says of Miss Helen Weber, the inventor of the hybrid costume which Punch satirizes as an American absurdity, that "except in a certain disregard of public decencies there is nothing by which to distinguish her from the mass of vulgar women of the middling classes; she is about thirty-five years of age, and appears to be willing to do or say any thing that may be required for the attraction of observation; from her writings, throw out what is stolen or compiled, and there is nothing left to evince even a mediocrity of talent." This is less favorable than an account we published in an early number of the International (vol. i. 463), but it may be quite as just.
When Professor Zahn sojourned in Naples, he took an active part in the excavations of Pompeii—studies which eventually led to the publication of his meritorious work on this subject. At the same time he faithfully reported the progress of these operations to old Goethe. The poet's replies to these communications on the ancient paintings of Pompeii, its theatres, and other buildings, were replete with those sparks of genius he exhibited on every occasion. This rather voluminous correspondence, long laid up at Naples, has been lately discovered, and will be published by Professor Zahn.
Geschichte der Deutschen Stadte und des Deutschen Burgerthums (History of the Cities of Germany, and of German Citizenship), by F. W. Barthold, is the first of a series of painstaking and exhausting books of German historical materiel, in course of publication by Weizel, of Leipsic. The style of treatment resembles that adopted in The Pictorial History of England, which will make the work easy of reference.