The conclusion of the late Johann Von Muller's History of the Swiss Confederation has just appeared from the hands of MM. Vulliemin and Monnard. The work was commenced in 1786; when Von Muller died it was brought down to the year 1489; and it has since been continued by four other authors in succession. Robert Glutz-Blozheim took up the narrative where Von Muller stopped, and continued it to 1516; after his death, John Jacob Hottinger described the progress of the reformation in the German cantons; but on coming to the part which the French cantons took in this great movement, it was decided to employ a native of that part of the Confederation, and the work was accordingly given to Louis Vulliemin, who completed the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He was followed by E. Monnard, Professor in the University of Bonn, who carried it as far as the second peace of Paris, in 1815. Both he and M. Vulliemin had already translated into French the volumes of their German predecessors. Their own volumes are now being translated into German, and the entire performance will soon be printed in both languages.
An interesting contribution to the religious and metaphysical history of Germany in the last generation will be found in the Autobiography of Bretschneider, now being published in parts, by his son-in-law Horst. It is described as a faithful as well as interesting narrative of the life of its deceased author and subject, who must fill a prominent place in the history of that great theological development of which his country has recently been the scene. He was a rationalist, but without aiming at the rejection or annihilation of the Christian supernaturalism. The sense of dependence on God, which was the foundation of Schleiermacher's theory, he regarded as stupid mysticism, and the general tendency of the more recent philosophy as obscure, abstruse, scholastic, and useless. He was a vigorous and unsparing controversialist, and the greater part of his writings are of that character.
Dr. Wurth, the dramatist and theatrical director, has published a play "with choruses, dances, and melodramas (?) entitled The Gipsey Queen of Hungary in the year 1849."
Those of our Philadelphia friends, who are conversant with foreign literature, will do well to patronise Herr Christern, who has recently opened an establishment of French, German, and Italian works at No. 232 Chesnut-st. Mr. Christern has been for several years the superintendant of the extensive bookstore of Kaisar, the eminent bibliographist in Berlin. We are happy thus to recommend Herr Christern as a scholar, well acquainted with something more than the mere titles of his wares.
Among "divers diversities," we note that the passion for Slavonic literature, which has received such an impetus during the last two years, has induced Herr Siegfried Kapper to write, after ancient Servian legends and heroic lyrics, a poem entitled Lazar der Serbencar. A new edition of Clemens Brentano's History of the brave Kasperl and fair Annerl, has also been published at Berlin by the "United Bookselling Establishment," with an illustration. Glassbrenner, the humorist, (who is, however, we believe, not identical with his Rabelæsian pen-brother Brennglaser,) publishes by Simion of Berlin a third edition of his poems, while the more recent numbers of Die Grenzboten, the Monatscrift and the Europa are rich in a variety of articles surpassing in general interest any thing of the kind which we have for a long time witnessed in German periodical literature. It is to be wished that our own literati and miscellaneous intellectual purveyors would make a far more extended use of these German monthlies than they have hitherto done. Except the International, the Tribune is almost the only periodical in the country that makes any considerable use of the German literary journals.