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And it ends with this:

"The yellow-haired laddie, Gerard Gerardson, belongs not to Fiction, but to History. She has recorded his birth in other terms than mine. Over the tailor's house in the Brede Kirk Street she has inscribed, Hæc est parva domus natus qua Magnus Erasmus'; and she has written half a dozen lines of him. But there is something left for her yet to do. She has no more comprehended Magnum Erasmum than any other pygmy comprehends a giant, or partisan a judge. First scholar and divine of his epoch, he was also the heaven-born dramatist of his century. Some of the best scenes in this new book are from his mediæval pen, and illumine the pages where they come, for the words of a genius so high as his are not born to die; their immediate work upon mankind fulfilled, they may seem to lie torpid; but, at each fresh shower of intelligence Time pours upon their students, they prove their immortal race; they revive, they spring from the dust of great libraries; they bud, they flower, they fruit, they seed, from generation to generation, and from age to age."

"JEPHTHAH'S Daughters' " is the somewhat fanciful title which M. Achard has chosen for his latest issue of studies in human character. The three tales of this volume have for their heroines selfsacrificing virgins, who are ready, in obeying duty and parental will, to give up their own affections, and devote themselves to a life of wretchedness. The stories are told with all that grace of style and fineness of delineation in which Achard has few superiors among living French novelists. Bertha, in the first tale, whose familiar name is "L'Eau qui Dort," is a singular union of impulsive and capricious will with deep feeling and lofty disinterestedness. To gratify the imagined wish of her indulgent father, she conceals her own passion, drives away her lover, marries an uncongenial husband, and suffers the additional pain of seeing the misery of her lover married to a foolish and unworthy wife. Salomé, in the second tale, is the daughter of an old Huguenot, of the straitest sort, a woodman in the Black Forest. She loves a young Catholic gentleman, every way worthy of her, but will not marry him on account of her father's antipathy to the Catholic faith, and his vow never to live on the soil with a son-in-law of that hated Church. The parties are wedded at last, when the lives of both his children, saved by Catholic help, have softened the stern Calvinist into consent, but only then by his emigration to America, that his vow may not be broken. Martha, in the third tale, called familiarly "Miss Tempète," gives up her affection for the sake of her gentle and sensitive elder sister, who would die if her love should be disappointed. The chance, very common in real life as well as in romances, of two sisters in love with the same man, is here very skilfully used. All the stories, in fact, are good, and free from any of the immoral situations and allusions which we expect in French novels. The characters stand out in relief, and are few enough for picturesque effect, while they are numerous enough for the impression of real life. The only instance of carelessness which we have noticed in the book is the statement that

* Les Filles de Jephté. Par AMÉDÉE ACHARD. Paris: Hachette. 1861. 12mo. pp. 361.

Rodolph, the hero of the second story, had in his wanderings gone to Baalbec to study "Inscriptions." It is architecture which one studies in that ruined city, but not "Inscriptions." The volume, as a whole, we can heartily commend, as interesting and excellent in its tone.

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A NATION that on a sudden emergency raises its military force in six months from some ten thousand to more than half a million, and its naval force from twenty-five guns to more than a hundred times that number, may be on the way to be a great military power; but it is likely to be embarrassed for a while by the very numbers it has equipped, and a good deal at the mercy of many who know very little of the science and art of war. For a while, during the past season, the conspicuous books on shop-counters, or placarded at booksellers' doors, were almost all military; and thousands of unskilled but intelligent volunteers were put on the royal road to that branch of learning. We trust it is an omen for good, that at the head of the force so hastily mustered is a man who has shown himself as keeneyed an observer and critic in military things as he has been diligent in study, faithful in business, and brave in the field. Except for mere garrison and frontier service, our military force was all to create; and an organism so fearful and wonderful as a modern army should be trusted in the making to no every-day hand. The circumstances under which General McClellan's Report on "The Armies of Euгоре" was made to our government are known to everybody; and we have only to notice the great fulness of information, clear brevity of statement, abundant illustration, and the handsome, compact, convenient style of getting-up, as we read it in the edition recently published by authority, by J. B. Lippincott & Co.

THE late librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the literary seclusion caused by permanent illness, contributed to Fraser's Magazine and the Spectator a series of critical papers, part of which have been collected into a handsome volume,† and issued with marked favor in England and America. Mr. Brimley had evidently a high idea of the office of a critic, spared no pains to qualify himself for the work, writes excellent English, and speaks on all topics with perfect independence, and yet with exceeding kindness. Readers will differ as to the severe judgments he sometimes passes upon popular writers, but they cannot differ as to the breadth of thought, purity of purpose, vigor of expression, and freshness of feeling which have entitled these remark

The Armies of Europe; comprising Descriptions in Detail of the Military Systems of England, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sardinia, adapting their Advantages to all Arms of the United States Service; and embodying the Report of Observations in Europe during the Crimean War, as Military Commissioner from the United States Government, in 1855-56. By GEO. B. MCCLELLAN. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 8vo. pp. 499. Illustrated.

t Essays. By GEORGE BRIMLEY, Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge. New York: Rudd and Carleton. 12mo. pp. 409.

able articles to this more permanent dress. The papers here collected are entitled Tennyson's Poems, Wordsworth's Poems, Poetry and Crit icism, The Angel in the House, Carlyle's Sterling, Esmond, My Novel, Bleak House, Westward Ho, Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianæ, and Comte's Positive Philosophy. Any one of these essays is so superior in taste, insight, originality, and artistic finish to those review articles which generally disappoint all one's expectations, as to leave an intense feeling of regret that the genial and gifted writer should have been removed from his valuable labors just as his powers were reaching their maturity. His decease took place in May, 1857.

EMANUEL GEIBEL, if not one of the greatest, is confessedly one of the most popular, of living German poets. His Gedichte have already run through forty-two, and we believe more, editions. In his own land, his name has become as a household word. In this country and in England he is little, if at all generally, known. Yet there is the true poetic fire in him, -something to warm and stimulate us,something to make us think better of ourselves, a fervor and a grace

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to fascinate us, a religious thoughtfulness to deepen us. It is not our purpose now to criticise him, only, in a certain fulness of conviction as to his worth, to say our word about him to those among us who will overstep the boundaries of speech, to welcome through other tongues the new hope and the fresh thought; yet not for pleasure only, or at all, except as that waits ever upon the higher culture and the clearer vision. Touching his life and work we gather the following facts. He was born at Lübeck, on the 18th of October, 1815; first taught at the gymnasium of his native city, he went in 1835 to Bonn to study philology and theology; but soon confining himself to philological and æsthetical studies, he went to Berlin in 1836, where he found a genial welcome to the cultivated society of Chamisso and Gaudy and Kugler. At the recommendation of Savigny, he obtained in 1838 an appointment as tutor in the family of Prince Katakazi, the Russian Ambassador at Athens. The leisure which this situation afforded he employed in learned investigations and in poetical studies, and also in a tour of the greater part of the Archipelago in company with his celebrated countryman, Ernst Curtius, whose works on Greece have thrown new light on some of the obscurest points of its early history.

Returning to Lübeck, in 1840 he made his first appearance as a writer, in a work, undertaken in conjunction with Curtius, entitled "Classical Studies," containing translations from the Greek poets; and shortly after, in 1840, also appeared his first printed poems, which were so favorably received, that on New Year's day, in 1843, the king of Prussia bestowed upon him a yearly pension of three hundred thalers (about $225). Thus helped out of want, he devotes himself to literature. Turning to the study of that of Italy and Spain, he published in 1843 his "Spanish Popular Songs and Romances," completed in

* Gedichte von EMANUEL GEIBEL. Zweiundvierzigste Auflage. Berlin: Verlag von Alexander Duncker, Königl. Hof buchhändler. 1857.

1852 by his "Spanish Song-Book." In these years he lived in various places in Germany;--with Freiligrath at St. Goar on the Rhine, at Stuttgart, Hanover, in Silesia, at Berlin and Lübeck, till in 1852 he was made a Professor of Esthetics in the University at Munich. In 1846 he published a little epic entitled "King Sigurd's Bridal Journey." In 1848 appeared his "Juniuslieden," which reached its eleventh edition in 1857. In 1844 he attempted a drama, called "King Roderick," and has since busied himself with greater dramatic compositions, an example of which, called "Siegfried's Death," was published in 1851. His masterly "Twelve Sonnets" are among his best achievements. In 1856 appeared his "Neue Gedichte." These are the external facts.

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The Gedichte, of which alone we speak, are divided into four books; the first, "Lübeck and Bonn, 1834-35"; the second, Berlin, 1836-37"; the third, "Athens, 1838-40"; the fourth "Escheberg, St. Goar, 1842 - 43," with sundry Intermezzos. The division is of use if one seeks to follow the development of the poet's mind under the influence of the changing years and varying scenery; but we lay no stress upon it. Geibel is not of the highest order of poets. The master mind which shall mould a nation's literature, and give a stimulus to men over all the earth for centuries, appears only now and then. The age wants its poets, as it wants its journalists, to reflect its thought, its hope, its striving, to utter, as it were, its prayer, to record its Vow. They are born of the age, and die with it. How many of the writers and thinkers, statesmen and orators, men of letters and men of science, are more than that? Out of this ocean of surging humanity there rises now and then the great beacon-light, God-given, to show us where we are; but there rises, too, the humbler brother, to sing away the anxious hours. Geibel is remarkable rather for harmony of words than depth of thought. The flow of his verse is full of melody. The sound alone might content one. Yet there is an earnest feeling in it, and a truth of nature, and a fancy so simple and beautiful always, that one does not wonder it has captivated the heart of the people. There is a repose in him which reminds you of Uhland,—that gracious name, which to pronounce is to recite a poem, - and there is a certain gentleness and liveliness, a sweet earnestness, which has long made him a favorite with women. There is a moral purity, also, which is as a fresh flower in the desert of European materialism. The sorrow and the pain of life are sorrow and pain still with him, - he will not disguise them, nor seek to make the explanation of them into an apothegm. He utters for us our grief, and the confession relieves us of a burden;

"Denn nur von innen kommt der Segen."

He speaks our joy, and our hearts are glad in his words. He is rather our confessor than our teacher. Instruction you may find everywhere, but sympathy is a rare wild-flower on the alpine heights of life. It is not an easy thing to determine how much of a poet's wisdom is the result of his own experience, or of that wider vision which takes in all human experience, which is the attribute of genius. The women said

of Dante, when they saw him go by in the streets of Florence: "See, there is Dante, who has been in hell." Like that divinest of poets, Geibel sounds no awful depths of consciousness; rather moving smoothly over the surfaces of life, he breathes into our ear his cheerful, often stirring, lyric words: "The heart has its Easter, too,..... and what thou lovest forever is thine forever."

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MR. WHITE has made a very agreeable book, as might have been expected, out of the Report of the Committee appointed last spring to decide on the prize for a "National Hymn." The prize, naturally enough, elicited nothing that is likely to stamp itself on the memory and fancy of the people. Instead of any of these ambitious or crude attempts, a simple Methodist melody, with almost no words at all, and called "John Brown's Body," or, rather profanely, the "Hallelujah Chorus," has grown to be the hymn of this campaign, and stirs the soul of our loyal battalions as "Ça ira" and the "Marseillaise" stirred the blood of Revolutionary France. Many of the specimens which Mr. White drolly gives as bona fide competitors for the prize, are evidently dull attempts to hoax the Committee; and the evident anticipation of the prize by the authors of them was no doubt a well-meant, but excessively stupid joke. Oddly enough, the public seems to have taken them as genuine efforts. One excellent, solid anthem is given, that by Mr. Hopkins; and one noble, patriotic hymn, that by Mr. Willis, only too rich in fancy and delicate in melody for the rough uses of such a composition. These are all the real additions we have found to our stock of national melodies. The dissertation on popular songs, and on the lack of such in the English race, is very interesting and curious. So, too, the history of the two great national hymns par excellence, that of loyalist England and republican France. "God save the King" is pretty clearly shown to have been a Jacobite song, and the authentic sovereign prayed for to have been "James," not "George." The argument from the line, "Send him victorious," and the quaint distich,

"Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks,"

is worth reading as an ingenious comment, worthy of the excellent annotator of Shakespeare. The keen but good-humored references to English taste, and temper give a piquancy to parts of this essay, which we should hardly have expected from their subject.

ABOUT a year and a half ago, our attention was attracted to the very remarkable and interesting experiences detailed in the little volume whose title we give below. The "missing link" in the efforts hitherto to Christianize the poor of large cities has been the Christian ministration and sympathies of their own class. We know nothing in

*National Hymns: How they are written and how they are not written. A Lyric and National Study for the Times. By RICHARD GRANT WHITE. New York: Rudd and Carleton. 8vo. pp. 152.

†The Missing Link; or, Bible Women in the Homes of the London Poor. By L. N. R. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers. 12mo. pp. 302.

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