lowacki, Kropinski.
Hofmann, and F. Wenzyk, whose "Glinski" is considered as the best
Polish production of this kind. The most popular comedies in recent
times are by count Fredro, who is called the Polish Moliere. The
Polish stage is still richer in melo-dramas, especially rural pictures
in a dramatic form; of which Niemcewicz's piece, "John Kochanowski,"
is a fine specimen.

As it respects novels, tales in prose, and similar productions, the
literature of Poland has been much less overwhelmed with this species
of writing, in which mediocrity is so easy and perfection so rare,
than that of their neighbours the Russians. We think this can easily
be accounted for. They possess few, for the same reason that the
English are so rich in them. Domestic life, the true basis of the
modern novel, has no charms in Poland. The whole tendency of the
nation is towards public life, splendour, military fame; theirs are
not the modest virtues of private retirement, but the heroic deeds of
public renown. The beauty, the spirit, the influence of their women,
is generally acknowledged; but that female reserve and delicacy which
draws the thread of an English novel through three volumes, would be
looked for in vain in Poland. Niemcewicz, however, published in 1827
an historical novel, "John of Trenczyn," which is considered as a
happy imitation of Scott. Others were written by count Skarbeck. Among
the novels, which present a psychological development of character,
and a description of fashionable life, "The Intimations of the Heart"
is regarded as the principal work. It was written by the princess of
Wirtemberg, daughter of Adam and Isabella Czartoryski. Another
esteemed female writer is Clementina Hofmann, formerly Tanska.

The Poles, although from a feeling of pride and patriotism naturally
disposed to overrate the productions of their own literature, are far
from being deficient in critical judgment or in exalted ideas on the
theory of the beautiful. The count Stanislaus Potocki and Ossolinski,
L. Osinski, Golanski, and others, maintain a high rank in this
department.

Philosophy, as an abstract science, independently of its immediate
application to subjects of real life, has never found more than a few
votaries among the Poles. In the beginning of the seventeenth century,
Aristotle was translated into Polish by Petryci. For nearly two
hundred years, the teachers of philosophy in the Polish universities
stopped at Aristotle; and a