he almost loses his
wits at it. Hereupon he goes to see the young lady with whom he is in
love, and finds her dying. This quite upsets him, and he goes crazy,
and, in this condition, becomes a beggar in the London streets. At the
beginning, he is very lean, and is so well suited to this trade, that he
is even made a member of the beggars' guild. But ill luck still pursues
him; he becomes excessively fat, and gains a belly of most aldermanic
proportions. Here a lord takes him up as an object at once of study and
philanthropy, but not with sufficient interest in him to provide for his
support. Alms he gets none; next, he is turned out of the guild, and, at
last, is taken to a hospital, where he loses his flesh, and regains his
reason. Finally, after passing through a variety of other strange
experiences, he dies in tranquillity, wept by the same lord, and by the
lady he had himself supposed to be dead; but who, instead of this, had
become a nun in France. _Schnock_, a picture of life in the Netherlands,
is by Frederich Hebbel, a man of some distinction, as a dramatic writer,
as we have noticed elsewhere. The general idea of this book is borrowed
from Jean Paul's _Journey of the Chaplain Schmelzle_. The hero is a man
of weak and timid character, married to a woman of unsparing energy and
resolution. The style and execution of the work are clumsy, exaggerated
and abominable. _Handel und Wandel_ (Doings and Viewings), by
Hacklaender, is worthy of all praise, as a faithful and vivid picture of
German rural and domestic life. The characters are all human, the action
simple and direct, and the tone healthy and agreeable. Hacklaender is an
exception to the mass of modern German novelists, of whom, taking them
together, as may be judged from the brief remarks above, no great good
can be said.

_Ein Dunkles Loss_ (A Dark Destiny), by L. Bechstein, is a socialist
book, which, in the form of a novel, discusses questions relating to
art, not without genuine insight and original power of thought.

* * * * *

THE COUNTESS HAHN-HAHN, the bravest and decidedly the cleverest of the
women who have written books of Oriental travel, and whose
"latitudinarian" novels constitute a remarkable portion of the recent
romantic literature of Germany, we perceive has entered a convent. The
_Ladies' Companion_ exclaims hereof:--

"When will the wild and the restless learn self-distrust
from the histories o