IV. The Houses of Refuge, or institutions for Juvenile Delinquents. V. The application of the American system of Prison Discipline to Europe, and especially to Germany. The Appendix to this second volume contains 67 extensive and very detailed statistical tables, with observations; and 13 lithographed plates, ground-plans and sections of various American Prisons. In the fourth Chapter the author says: The Houses of Refuge in America, I regret to state, are very far from the degree of perfection to which the Penitentiaries and Bettering Houses for Adults have been brought, and, considering the intimate connexion between their destination and the objects of education, will bear no comparison in particular with those of Germany; and yet these are the very institutions which, if founded and conducted on a proper system, alone hold out a hope of gradually diminishing the number of adult criminals, as Lynds, the founder of the strict system of discipline at Aubourn, has himself owned, in a written communication. The author then takes a general view of the origin of similar institutions in other countries, of which he enumerates eighteen, supported by the state, for demoralized youth; but those which have arisen for the same purpose on the foundation of Christian charity are far more numerous. The oldest of all such institutions was the Philanthropic Society in London, established in September, 1788, by the exertions of Mr. Robert Young. The next was the Refuge for the Destitute, 1806. These were succeeded by similar ones in Paris and Germany, the latter of which are detailed at some length. The result appears to be that about a hundred such institutions have been established for many thousand destitute or criminal children, the greater part of which, the author states, he has personally examined. With respect to the American institutions of this nature, after mentioning some defects, he adds: The last and certainly not the least defect in these American institutions is one which is common to all the schools of that country, and which originates in fear of collision with the sectarian spirit, namely, the extremely scanty religious instruction, which is nearly confined to learning by heart passages from the Bible. In Philadelphia only an attempt has been made, with as much success as the very imperfect substitute permits, to remedy this essential defect by a Sunday School, where instruction is given by teachers from the city, who voluntarily devote themselves to this charitable work. Notwithstanding all these defects, the three great American Houses of Refuge in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, have done incalculable good. LITERARY CONTEMPORARIES AT WEIMAR. Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen. (Literary Circumstances and Contemporaries.) Selected from the posthumous Manuscripts of K. A. Böttiger. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1838. Historisches Taschenbuch. (Historical Pocket-Book.) Edited by Friedrich von Raumer. Vol. 10. Leipzig, 1839. Urania. Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1839. (Urania, an Annual, for the year 1839.) Leipzig. BÖTTIGER. K. A. Böttiger is known in German literature as a man who was in personal or literary intercourse with the most celebrated characters of his time. This is attested, among other evidence, by his posthumous correspondence. It contains more than twenty thousand letters; and it must have been with him as much a necessary of life as his daily bread, for he purchased it dearly from the post at the expense of a large portion of his income. He was extremely active: many works of acknowledged value proceeded from his pen; they relate more especially to the arts and sciences of antiquity, and are written partly in Latin, partly in German. He contributed hundreds of papers to the periodicals of his own and foreign countries; and yet left behind him such a quantity of interesting matter in manuscript, that it was deemed necessary to employ two men of distinguished eminence to prepare it for press. The first of these, Professor Julius Sillig, undertook the editing of the archæological portion for the second volume of the "Ideen zur Kunstmythologie," and of the most important of the minor Latin pieces and poems. The second, Professor K. W. Böttiger, the son of the deceased, undertook the preparation of a biography of him in the "Zeitgenossen, (No. 43,) of the miscellaneous essays, and also of a sketch of celebrated literary occurrences and persons. This latter is given in the first work which heads this article, and partly in the new volume, being the tenth, of the historical "Taschenbuch," also mentioned above, conducted by Raumer, whose historical labours have of late years become generally known in this country.* This "Taschenbuch" contains four papers, each of which is interesting in its way. The first, on the state of society in the towns of Pomerania in the middle of the 15th century; and the second, Spain at the time of its transfer from the house of Habsburg to the house of Bourbon, are intelligible to those only who are well acquainted with the general history of Europe of those days. The third, on Wieland, from Bottiger's posthumous papers, is an extension of what was previously given on the subject in the "Literarische Zustände." The fourth and last furnishes a most interesting communication from a journal kept by Cornelius Ettenius, secretary to the papal nuncio Vorstius, while his master was travelling in 1536-7, through Germany, to announce to the princes and the prelates the ecclesiastical council to be held at Mantua. More insight into the character of persons, and into VOL. I.—NO. I.-MAY, 1839. D K. A. Böttiger was, it is true, a school-man, but with this character he combined qualities which are very rarely found together in any country, and least of all in Germany, and which made him a capital writer of Memoirs. He taught without ever ceasing to learn; he directed several institutions; he examined masters and pupils, without falling into dry pedantry; he entered most profoundly into the study of antiquity, without losing the warm interest that he took in the concerns of the present; and, though he daily lectured, and corresponded, and composed works great and small, he always found time to satisfy so rare a want for a German scholar, that of seeking social amusement and recreation in a circle of both sexes distinguished for intellectual attainments. All this he was enabled to do in his position, because he had the luck to live at Weimar, and afterwards at Dresden, where points of union for literary men and artists of the first eminence had been formed. With all these he was on the most friendly terms; and, that their conversation might in no respect be lost to him, he adopted the excellent custom of committing to paper as soon as he had returned home the substance of his conversations with them, or of what he had heard them say. To this practice we are indebted for the particulars furnished in the books whose titles stand at the head of this article, from which, in conjunction with other publications, we purpose to lay before our readers some particulars concerning the life of Wieland and a few traits of the younger years of Göthe. We shall confine ourselves, however, to such points as serve to illustrate the mode of life and the moral character, but more especially the intellectual turn of those eminent men, in order to facilitate the understanding of their works, by which a new literature was created for Germany, and so rich a light thrown upon the study of the ancient and modern nations. First then of WIELAND. Wieland was born in 1733, at Biberach in Swabia. His father was minister of the place, and lived, with his wife, a woman of superior mind, in easy circumstances. Young Wieland showed at an early age that kindly disposition which he manifested throughout his whole life, but which had once nearly caused him to commit murder. He frequently ran about in the fields around his birth-place, and always carried with him a little bag full of oats, that he might feed the lambs with his own hands. On one of these occasions, he was induced by the loud crying of an infant the state of the ecclesiastical relations of those times, is to be gained from this paper than from many histories of the Reformation. It makes us also more thoroughly acquainted with private life, the state of society, the diversions and amusements, even of the higher classes, in the early part of the 16th century. The authenticity of these particulars is guaranteed by one circumstance, that all the speeches reported in them perfectly coincide with what history has recorded of the speakers. Here he found in the to steal into the cottage of a poor woman. cradle a boy half a year old, squalling lustily, and no one with him. The youngster went to the child, and strove to quiet him; but, finding his efforts unavailing, he began to feed him, as he did the lambs, with oats; he crammed his mouth full, and was rejoiced to find that he gave up crying; but, had not the mother come back just in time to save the poor infant, he must have been suffocated. In his youth, Wieland was twice at death's door, and both times his life was saved by accident. He had once swallowed a fish-bone, and no means could be found for extracting it. His mother sat sobbing beside him in the utmost affliction on account of the danger in which her son was placed. The latter began to discourse like one inspired about the immortality of the soul, in the confident expectation of comforting his fond mother, saying that they should meet again; and he expatiated on the subject in so pathetic a manner that she melted into tears, and with such energy as to dislodge the bone, and there was general rejoicing that he had not himself held his own funeral sermon. On another occasion, being at a bathing-place, he went into the bath, and meanwhile began reading a book in which he was much interested. He had been told that if the water felt too cold, he could admit hot water by turning a cock which was within his reach. In compliance with this intimation, he turned the cock, to admit hot water, but, absorbed by the subject of his book, he forgot to stop it. As the heat increased gradually, he did not perceive it while engaged in reading, so that he was nearly stewed. Luckily, the attendant came in just at the critical moment. He was alarmed when he saw Wieland enveloped in a cloud of steam; he could not bear his finger in the nearly boiling water; and he lost no time in rescuing him from his perilous situation. Wieland received an excellent religious education, and, as he was endowed with a tender heart, his early thoughts were directed to divine things. His first verses, which he composed in his tenth year, have been preserved: they commence thus: Children, such as love to pray, These religious sentiments, however, were stifled in his fourteenth year. Bayle's Dictionary chanced to fall into his hands, and the boldness of the conjectures which he had never before met with made so powerful an impression on his unguarded heart, that from this moment he fell into a scepticism of which he was never cured, but in which he was rather confirmed by a Professor Baumer, who initiated him at the university of Erfurt into all the then current French ideas. This man read Spanish with Fromme Kinder, die gern beten, it Wieland, and never ceased inculcating that Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa were the real representatives of man in general, let him be ever so full of crotchets or fantasies. Though this most venomous of canker-worms so early attacked the root of life, may be asserted to Wieland's honour that his scepticism produced in him neither bitterness, nor malignity, nor even indifference towards religious matters, but a cheerful sincere tolerance, which respected every conviction, when it was cleverly expounded to him, and when it was manifested in acts and deeds. Thus he could admire the holy dying of a Lavater and a Hamann, and yet enter into the ideas of the sublime Herder, and the principles of the epicurean Knebel. In fact, there runs throughout his whole life a singular contrast of practical actions and theoretical performances, which were diametrically opposite to each other, and yet were closely connected by him. As a teacher, he prepared himself with the greatest care; he was an affectionate instructor, and punctually fulfilled all duties, in whatever situation he might be; but the moment he took up the pen, religion, morality, gravity, were forgotten; he was seized with an irresistible humour for satirizing the foibles of his time, and for picturing in the liveliest manner its immoralities, and especially the follies of women, after the fashion of a Crebillon. Hence it was that he, as the instructor of pupils, wrote an epicurean poem "On the Nature of Things," and, as professor of philosophy, the voluptuous Agathon and the licentious Amadis. At the same time, his personal conduct was so amiable, so unassuming, so modest, his conversation so full of thought and so instructive, that in his presence you could think only of the man, not of the author. Hence it was that to him was confided in 1772 the education of the hereditary prince of Weimar. His literary labours divide themselves into original works and translations. In both he displayed extraordinary merit, and opened the career to his successors. Provided with a store of solid acquirements gained by the study of the ancients, and the secret of an exquisite style learned from the French and English writers of his day, he astonished with his works the learned world by the multitude of his allusions to history and philosophy, and at the same time enraptured the extensive circle of his young readers by an ever mirthful humour, by a satire which never offended, and especially by a luminous clearness which he contrived to throw over all his subjects. To us he is sometimes unintelligible on account of his numerous local allusions; and, as we are assured, he is now but little read by his countrymen, because he appears too learned to the great mass, and too licentious to the learned. Of his translations that of Horace is a master-piece the spirit of the ancient poet, one may say, was revived in this German, so closely does Wieland approach to his prototype. His translation of Ciceró is equally excellent. In his |