A very intelligent young priest, by name Joseph Lutz, has recently published by Laupp of Tübingen, a Handbook of Catholic Pulpit Eloquence. This work will be found highly interesting to those desirous of investigating the history and theories of modern eloquence. We were already aware that in New-England smoking and whistling are regarded as vices, but first learned from the prospectus of this work that, according to Theremin, eloquence is a virtue!
A collection of the popular songs of Southern Russia is now being published at Moscow by Mr. Maksimowitsch, who for twenty years has been in the Ukraine, engaged in taking down and preserving these interesting products of the early life of his people in that region. This is not the first contribution of the kind that he has made to Russian literature; in 1827 he published the Songs of Little Russia, consisting of one hundred and thirty pieces for male and female voices; in 1834 the Popular Songs of the Ukraine, consisting of one hundred and thirteen songs for men; and in the same year the Voices of Ukraine Song, twenty-five pieces with music. The present work is called by way of distinction Collectaneum of Ukraine Popular Songs; it is to be in six parts, containing about two thousand national poems. Each part is to be accompanied with explanatory notes, and the last volume will contain an essay on Russian popular poetry in general, as well as on that of the Ukraine in particular. One volume has already appeared; it is in two divisions: the first of Ukraine Dumy, the second of cradle songs and lullabys. The Dumy are a particular sort of poems peculiar to the Ukraine. They are in a most irregular measure, varying from four to twelve syllables, with the cadence varying in each line. The only requirement is that they should rhyme, and frequently several successive lines are made to do so. These poems are the production of the Vandurists, or bards of the country, who are even yet found on the southern shore of the Dnieper. These singers, usually blind old men, chant their Dumy and their songs to the people, accompanying themselves with both hands on the many-stringed vandura. The Dumy flourished most in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are some existing composed by Mazeppa after the battle of Pultowa, and one or two other poets have left a Dumy of the eighteenth, but they are not equal to those of more primitive times. Since then there have been no new compositions in the way of popular songs and ballads, but the older works have been repeated with variations and to new melodies. The most frequent subjects of these ballads were, of course, historic personages and warlike deeds; but often they sung of domestic matters and feelings, winding up with a moral for the benefit of the young. In this volume of Mr. Maksimowitsch, are twenty Dumy; their subjects are such as these: Fight of the Cossack with the Tartar, the Three Brothers, On the Victory of Gorgsun (1648). He reckons the number in existence at thirty. Of these he publishes, four have not before been known.
A new edition of Hogarth's Works is in process of republication at Göttingen in a diminished size. There are to be twelve parts at fifty cents each; the third part has been published.
Of Dr. Andree's great work on America, whose commencement we noticed some months since, the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth parts have just reached us. The German savan continues to justify the high encomiums we passed upon the earlier portions of his work. He has used with the utmost industry and conscientiousness all the best sources of information on every subject he treats. Gallatin, Morton and Squier he frequently quotes as authorities. These four parts are devoted to the conclusion of the essay on the origin and history of the American race. In this he calls attention to the fact that all the developments of American civilization took place on high plain lands and not in the rich vallies of the great rivers—a fact by the way which confirms Mr. Carey's theory of the first settlement and culture of land, though to this Dr. Andree does not refer. He then treats of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the Bermudas and the United States. The leading facts in the geography, history, the sources of population, the political constitution, the geological structure, soil, climate, industry, resources, and prospects of these countries are given with admirable succinctness, thoroughness and justice. As a book of ordinary reference, none could be more convenient or reliable. The most difficult questions are considered with a genuine German cosmopolitan impartiality of judgment. The predominant influence in the formation of the American democratic institutions Dr. Andree considers to be English, or more strictly speaking Teutonic. Other races and nations have contributed to the mass of the people, but only the Teutonic has laid the foundation and built the structure of the state. It is a great blessing in the history of the continent that the French did not succeed in their plans of colonization, for they would everywhere have founded not democratic but feudal institutions. The slavery question he treats more in the interest of the south than in the spirit of the abolitionists, whose course he condemns with considerable plainness of expression. On the mode of finally solving this question, he offers no speculations, but contents himself with showing the great difficulties attending colonization and emancipation upon the soil. The former he thinks impossible, the latter can only produce war between the two races, in which the latter must be exterminated. This mode of viewing this subject we can testify is frequent among well-educated Germans. The statistics relating to the United States, Dr. Andree has collected in a most lucid manner; we do not know where they are better or more conveniently arranged. Products, imports, exports, debt of federal and state governments, taxation, shipping, railroads, canals, schools, are all given; nothing escapes the vigilance of this most exemplary ethnographer. His style is no less clear and vivid in these four parts than in those preceding. The remainder will follow regularly. The work may be found at Westermann's, corner of Broadway and Reade street, by whose house in Brunswick, Germany, it is published.
M. Alexander Duval has a long article in the Journal des Débats entitled, Studies upon German Love, taking his text from Bettina von Arnim's famous correspondence with Goethe, and from the Book of Love, in which the same sentimentalist has recorded her relations with the unfortunate Günderode. M. Duval finds that in his intercourse with Bettina, Goethe played a part which was honorable neither to his mind nor his heart. In the Book of Love, says M. Duval, there is a little of every thing—of physics, of metaphysics, of poetry, of natural history, of biographical anecdotes, the history of the first kiss, of the second kiss, and of the third kiss received by Mlle. Bettina, mixed up with apostrophes to the stars, to the ocean, to the mountains, and above all, to the moon, which she loves so much that she never leaves it in peace. In fact, she has such a passion for whatever is lunatic, that the moon above is not sufficient, and she invents another, an interior and metaphysical moon, which enlightens the world of our thoughts. About this she writes to Goethe: "When thou art about to go to sleep, confide thyself to the inward moon, sleep in the light of the moon of thy own nature." French literature was never disgraced by a girl's making a god of its most illustrious representative, and his allowing the silly incense to be burned for years upon his altars; but the evil is getting into France as well. Rousseau did not dare to publish his confessions, but Lamartine has had the courage, and has served up to the public his own letters and the portraits of his mistresses. Madame Sand's Memoirs are also advertised; another step that way and Germany need no longer envy the country of Montesquieu and Voltaire, of good sense and action.