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1799 died at Leipsig, where he had been director of the academy of arts, was born at Presburg in 1717; and that G. MIND, the Cat-Raphaël, as he is called, who died at Bern in his forty-sixth year, likewise was a native of Hungary.

With regard to industry, the Hungarians distinguish themselves 1. by an understanding generally prevailing among them, leaving to their cattle whatever labour possibly can be performed by animals, in order to make themselves as easy and comfortable as circumstances will allow; 2. by commonly performing all labour with a lavish application of power; the farmer, for instance, yoking four or six heads of cattle to his plough, when two would have been

sufficient.

As for the rest, the Slowack is fond of performing his labour with his feet, hands, and mouth; the Jew with his mouth and feet; the Ruthenian, Wlachian, and Slavonian rarely use one or the other, finding their greatest delight in the sweet far niente.

To the great national kitchen the Magyar contributes bread, meat, and wine, the Ruthenian and Wlachian, salt from the salt-pits of Marmorosh; the Slavonian bacon, for Slavonia furnishes the greater number of fattened pigs; the German, potatoes and vegetables; the Italian, rice; the Slowack, milk, cheese, and butter, table-linen and kitchen utensils, crockery-ware; the Jew supplies the Hungarians with money, and the Gipsy furnishes the national entertainment with music. These few specimens will enable our readers to judge how interesting and instructive this work of Mr. Coaplovics is, and that a translation of it would greatly enrich our ethnographical literature.

Gedanken und Urtheile Clemens XIV über die wichtigsten Gegenstände des Lebens &c. &c. von Schröder, Leipzig, bei Wienbrack, 1829.

Ar a period in which the artifices and intrigues of the Jesuits and other obscurants are carried on so openly, and Rome is striving anew, to regain her lost supremacy and power, a reference to a pope, who was a decided lover of light and who abolished the order of Jesuits, cannot but be grateful to every unbiassed mind. Justice also requires that we should acknowledge what was praiseworthy in some of the popes, since we do not hesitate branding their memory for the manifold mischiefs on record, of which many unholy successors of St. Peter were the authors. Thus this book is both seasonable and honourable to our contemporaries. The editor in selecting the most remarkable sentiments and opinions of this Pope, has, upon the whole, shown great judgment in his choice. A man, as liberal in his sentiments, and as moderate as Clement XIV. was on the papal see, is a rare phenomenon, and worthy of consideration. The few brief extracts we shall make from this work, will enable our readers to judge what they may expect to find in it. Clement, amongst other passages, says, If we desire to check the progress of an evil, we must pursue it to its very source. All penances and absolution are insufficient for the suppression of a single prevailing moral defect; and this ought to be considered by all confessors of reigning princes.... Legends and mystical books ought not to be read at all....The christian religion is like the firmament: the more diligently you search the latter, the more stars you will discover. It is like the ocean: the longer you regard it, the more immeasurable it will appear to you.'... Open the books of our religion, and you will find that its language is no other than that of love, and that it pretends to no power, but that of persuasion. It was not religion, but an erroneous zeal, assuming its shape, that kindled the fire, and brandished the sword, to compel heretics to abjure their faith, and the Jews to turn christians,' &c. &c.

Brauns

Brauns Mittheilungen aus Nord Amerika. 8vo. Braunschweig, 1829. 1 DR. BRAUN, whose earlier intelligence from North America has communicated to his countrymen many very useful observations respecting the United States, to which they continue expatriating themselves, says: This publication is by no means intended to dazzle youthful and unexperienced minds by charming descriptions of the transatlantic countries, and to entice them to emigration, but rather to dissuade from it such as can earn a comfortable subsistence in their native country, and to furnish those who are irrevocably determined to settle there, with practical advice collected on the spot. For this purpose there are detailed in it several cases of unsuccessful German settlers in the United States, of a very melancholy and uninviting nature.' He farther observes: Germans, in particular, are least fit for cultivating a wild forest district, although they are extremely capable of improving settlements that are already in a state of incipient cultivation. Therefore, I dissuade all Germans from settling in the wildernesses of North America, advising them rather, if they be not in possession of as much money as is required to enable them to purchase a property already in a state of cultivation, to wait till they shall have acquired a capital equal to the purchase of such a parcel of land. In parts that are in a state of absolute wilderness, man must assume the colour of the country, and distinguish himself as little as possible from the savage native. Such steps retrograde from a civilized agricultural life into the savage courses of a hunter, and agree with very few Germans, who, in most instances, sink under the pressure of a mode of life, connected with sufferings and exertions totally novel to them. I must, however, observe here, that prudent Anglo-American parents are greatly inclined to marry their daughters to German settlers, and thereby to transplant into their families German industry and economy. In another place the author observes: Many Europeans fancy North America to be an entirely uncultivated wild, inhabited by a population as savage as the country itself, or the seat of complete liberty and equality. Either notion is liable to the most fatal fallacies. The United States of North America contain at present a population of about twelve millions of souls, of whom there are at least two millions of coloured people; consequently one-fifth of the population are living in a state of bondage. Where, then, is liberty and equality? As long as the system of slavery shall continue in North America, the discord among the negroes themselves, the vigilance of their overseers, the fear of the whip, and the dreadful chastisements inflicted upon the refractory will prevent the blacks from plotting the destruction of their masters. Nevertheless, as Mr. Bristed informs us, Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, lately declared in a speech delivered in congress, at Washington, that in Virginia, when at night the alarm-bell was rung, to give notice of the breaking out of fire, all white people were seized with terror, and each mother anxiously pressed her infant in her arms, apprehending a general revolt of the negroes to have taken place. Thus the system of negro-slavery is a permanent, most conspicuous evil. It not only engenders an enormous accumulation of physical sufferings, and of a heavy moral guilt, whilst the negro is languishing in fetters; but, whilst the bodies of the blacks are abused worse than those of brutes, their understanding is darkened and their hearts corrupted; their incapability of ever being manumitted, and of making a proper use of the advantages of freedom is perpetuated and even increased. In the southern parts of the American union the blacks are rarely indulged with the benefit of a regular religious instruction. Their masters, who have acquired their bodies as an article of trade, are disposed to fancy that they also have purchased their souls into the bargain, and will not allow their wretched situation to be rendered less insupportable by the light and the consolations of religion. The free blacks roving about in the northern and middle states of the union, are, for the most part,

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an idle, vicious, and abandoned set, almost totally incapable of being, by moral laws, withheld from lying, stealing, and other grosser crimes. A few years ago a parcel of free negroes at New York amused themselves, in winter, with setting fire to whole rows of houses, in order to get an opportunity for pilfering more freely, during the confusion occasioned by the conflagration. In the winter of 1816-1817, a negro was hanged for the perpetration of this crime. It is really melancholy to behold that in a nation whose laws are founded on the principle of equality, the negroes should still languish in slavery, and, what is worse, be treated with the most haughty contempt. What a lamentable contrast between this land of liberty and the absolute monarchies of Europe do we discover, when we consider the abject condition of this unfortunate class of rational beings! What still more aggravates their lamentable state, is, that the contempt with which these Parias of the new world are treated, would infallibly communicate itself to any one, that should dare to commiserate the distress of the unfortunate wretches. The disgrace which, in consequence of the most deplorable prejudice, is attached to their birth, seizes, like some contagious distemper, the compassionate man, who is not deaf to their complaints. Any person seen in familiar intercourse with a negro, would be dishonoured in the opinion of every respectable American; and if any one should forget himself so far, as to lend his arm to a negro-woman, however respectable, he could appear no more in genteel company, for he would be considered (especially by the ladies) as branded with indelible infamy. The vulgar have given to the negro race the mock denomination of "smoked-beef." How cruelly the negroes are treated in North America by the white population, appears from an occurrence related in a North American newspaper of 1820: "A FREE negro of New York, making a journey to the south, was thrown into prison at Washington, as is the case of every negro coming from distant parts to the south, until it should be ascertained that he was not a run-away slave. When the unfortunate traveller had satisfactorily proved that he was a FREE man, he was sold to defray the costs of his imprisonment and the subsequent investigation." The "National Intelligencer," of September 2, 1826, contains a long article, in which the legality of this proceeding is attempted to be demonstrated.'

C. M. Winterling; Sonette. Nürnberg, 1829.

THESE Sonnets by a poet of whose very name we were ignorant till now, indicate superior talents, and really deserve being recommended to all lovers of poetry. Fourteen of them are very successful, though rather free translations from Petrarch, Shakspeare, Garcilasso de Vega, and other eminent masters. The poet has displayed great skill in the management of his language, never offering the least violence to it, for the sake of rhyme, &c., &c. We subjoin the 105th sonnet, not because we think it the best, but because it celebrates an author highly esteemed in Germany, and honourably known to all lovers of German literature in this country:

On the interment of Jean Paul (Richter).
Yond' blazes high aloft the deep-red flame
Of numerous torches; to the halls of peace,
With tott'ring steps, a gloomy train proceeds.

Know ye, whose honour'd corpse the mourners bear?
Gay humour's hero now descends to earth.
He, whose renown is spread from pole to pole,

Who all-admir'd and deeply lov'd of all,

Now fills the breasts of all with hopeless grief.
Yet why? is he not gone to regions where
He oft was wont to dwell with ecstacy?

There

There now he lives the life he used to sing;

Is basking there, in the eternal glow

Of heaven's brightness; there in bliss he lauds
What here below his noble muse extoll'd,
When the ecstatic glow illum'd his mind.
His dearest wish is granted-he has died.

Napoleon. Stimmen aus Norden und Süden, Gesammelt von Dr. G. Mohnike. Stralsund, bey Löffler, 1829.

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THESE Voices from the north and the south, as the editor calls them, comprehend the following poems: 1. Napoleon in Moscow,' by Nicander; in the Swedish and German languages. 2. The Hero,' by Tegner; Swedish and German. 3. Napoleon's Farewell,' by Lord Byron; in English and German. 4. Napoleon's Monologue,' by Nicander; Swedish and German. 5. The Fifth of May,' by Manzoni; Italian and German. This number might easily have been increased by the addition of several more poems very little inferior, if not equal, in poetical value to the best of this collection. As arranged by the editor, they, in a manner, form a series of a very tragical tenour. The catastrophe of the grand drama, acted by the Son of Fate, as Manzoni calls him, very properly stands at the head of the collection. These poems carry him from the flames of Moscow to the fields of battle, on which he was overcome, thence to Elba, and, finally, to the basaltic rock of St. Helena. The editor might, however, have gone back to a much earlier period, and, in that case, could not have given a more respectable protasis to this awful political drama, than the ode the Dane, Gens Baggesen, addressed in May, 1798, on the top of Mount St. Bernard, to Napoleon; and the poem entitled Napoleon,' addressed by him to Voss, two years after. The ode in question was composed by Baggesen, first in the Danish language, then translated by him into the French, and, four years later, into the German language, which was as familiar to him as his mothertongue. The hope excited by the deeds performed already by Napoleon, who then was on his way to Egypt, emancipated from the oppression of the Directory, under which all France was groaning, and who, soon after, was to carry his victorious arms across that very mountain, on the summit of which this beautiful ode was composed, was the muse that inspired the poet, and his admiration is powerfully expressed in highly harmonious sapphics. Baggesen's poem, inscribed to Voss, is a poetical dream. The poet fancied to have discovered in Napoleon, then first consul, the all-inspiring hero of an epic poem, founded on a subject of modern times. This enthusiastic admiration had perceptibly cooled already, in 1805, and after 1815, it only gave way to pity; an epistle of condolence from the poet to his once adored hero of that period being actually extant, in which he scoffs at the poets who still continued panegyrizing their idol. We must, however, consider that it was the notion he had formed of his hero, that inspired his muse, and although it should not be realized, this ought not to depreciate in our estimation a poem really excellent. The external phenomena are merely the sparks eliciting the poetical genius, which is self-creating, and places the surrounding nature and world in a light different from that which really belongs to them. Hence, all poets panegyrize their hero, and Hector and Achilles, Diomedes and Odysseus, were not exactly the personages they are represented by the immortal Homer; neither were Pindar's triumphant victors the exact prototypes of those incomparable heroes, his glowing imagination has celebrated. Thus the above-mentioned poems of Baggesen lose nothing of their merit, because the poet, at a later period, found himself constrained to change his opinion of the greatness which his fiery imagination had made him admire in Napoleon. After Manzoni's serious and conciliatory words:

Tu

'Tu dalle stanche ceneri

Sperdi ogni ria parola !'

the famous poem Buonaparte,' by the French poet Alphonse Lamartine, excellent as it is, could find no place in the collection before us.

Besides Lamartine, we must here mention a few more French poets to whom Napoleon furnished the subject of lyric and epic poems of acknowledged merit. These are Delavigne, P. J. de Beranger, and the poetical twin-brothers Barthélemy and Méry. Beranger's poem, which deserves being honourably mentioned in this place, very much resembles Manzoni's celebrated ode, and has the same inscription. In this poem the author introduces a French warrior returning from the Indies on board of a Spanish vessel, who, at the sight of St. Helena, bewails the fate of the banished hero; his lamentations are increased on beholding the black banner waving on the shore of the island. To this last class also belong the Couplets sur la Journée de Waterloo,' and the Souvenirs de Peuple,' the latter of which are uncommonly sweet.

The associated poets, Barthélemy and Méry, have very lately panegyrized the hero of their nation in an epic poem on the subject of the Egyptian campaign, the last song of which comprises a spirited epilogue, displaying the whole military and imperial career of Napoleon, from his departure from Egypt, to the last act of the drama of his life, on the rock of St. Helena.

Lord Byron's ode to Napoleon would not have suited this collection; for each line of it breathes hatred, nay profound contempt, of the conqueror.

Two more poems on the same subject, composed by Danish poets, though not in their vernacular, but in the Latin language, at the conclusion of the peace of Luneville, in 1801, are said to possess great poetical merit. These two poets are clergymen; one of them is Mr. Niels Blicher, rector of Randlev; and the other Mr. H. C. Bjerving, rector of Aastrup and Falster.

The Scandinavian peninsula never saw the insatiable conqueror, neither did its inhabitants ever experience the oppression which was the inseparable attendant on his banners. It was, therefore, easier for the Scandinavian poets to view the hero of the day only in the greatness of his enterprises; of the numerous human frailties in his character they were never made sensible; the splendour of his appearance, the magnificence of the grand drama in which he acted, and, for a long while, carried through with wonderful success, could not but fix their attention. It was natural that Napoleon, in the fulness of his glory, should have appeared to them some ideal being, separated from them by an extensive space; he was, and continued to them merely a grand historical phenomenon. We should, however, be greatly mistaken, were we to suppose that they had suffered themselves to be dazzled by the glory of the hero and the splendour of his deeds, and that the mental superiority of the man had made them blind to his defects. Far from it! They also were sensible of the dark side of his character; but they were not biassed by the hatred which the inhabitants of other countries naturally must entertain against the destroyer of their peace and prosperity, nor by that kind affection for him which, particularly in France, was coupled with national vanity. Of the muse of several of them it may justly be said, as Manzoni finely expresses it in the second verse of his ode,

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Their viewing Napoleon as a being of universal consequence to the whole world, and the impression his monstrous aspirings had made on them, prevail in the three Scandinavian poems contained in this collection, and give to them both their genuine poetical and philosophical signification; whilst the manner in which they have expressed their sentiments, will hand them down to

posterity,

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