A Hamburg journal says a good and sharp word about the mania of the Germans for hunting up the literary remains of Goethe and Schiller. The volumes of memoirs, correspondence, diaries, and other relics of these great men, would make a library far exceeding in quantity all the volumes they published themselves. Nothing so much proves the absence of great and significant persons in the literature of the present day as this almost convulsive clinging to the immortal deceased, and the endless endeavor to talk and write about them, and publish every thing that can be twisted into a connection with their history or writings. Presently we shall hear of the republication of the school-books they studied, with all the thumb-marks and pot-hooks then scribbled by the future great men. This is said on occasion of Döring's Schiller and Goethe, which the writer thinks might as well have been unwritten.
The number of books on military subjects published in Germany, must astonish the American not accustomed to see at every corner a gendarme, or behold his bayonet protruding occasionally from behind the scene-paintings of a theatre, where he is posted to preserve order. In two numbers of a weekly review, we find notices of no less than fourteen books on strictly military matters. For readers who take an interest in such subjects, we translate the titles of few: The Battles of Frederic the Great; The Armies of the Present Day and their Future Destiny; Military Fireworks in the Royal Prussian Army; The Organization and Formation of the Bavarian Army and the Military Budget; and A Short Abridgment of Naval Artillery. With these works we may also cite De Gustav Simon's new essay On Gunshot Wounds, which is said to contain valuable contributions to this branch of surgery.
The thirtieth volume of The Library of Collected German Literature, contains Der Wälsche Gast (or the Italian Guest), by Thomasin Von Zirelaria: an old German poem of the Middle Ages, now published the first time, with philologic and historical remarks by Dr. Heinrich Ruckert; and by K. A. Hahn we have Die Echten Lieder von den Niebelungen (or The True Songs of the Niebelungen), according to Leckmann's criticisms.
A biography of the late eminent philologist, Karl Lachmann, written by his pupil, Martin Hertz, has recently been published by W. Herz of Leipsic. With the Life itself are given several important posthumous literary relics of the great scholar.
The History of German Literature now publishing at Leipsic by Dr. Henry Kurz, seems to be one of the most perfect and admirable works of the kind ever undertaken. It will contain in all 1600 octavo pages with portraits, fac-similes, monuments, residences of authors, and every sort of pictorial illustration that can increase the value and interest of the work. Copious extracts will be given from the writers spoken of, and from the whole range of German literature. Two parts have already been published; the first goes back to the earliest times and comes down to the middle of the twelfth century, and the second to the middle of the fourteenth. Though printed in elegant style, and adorned with so many fine wood cuts, the parts are sold at about twenty-two cents: twenty-five parts complete the work.