sh tastes,
they are selections from the works of the writer above described. These
works being published, as already mentioned, anonymously, and at prices
beyond the means of most German readers, are but partially known and
read even in Germany; and in this country they are entirely unknown,
such portions excepted as have appeared without a name in our recent
numbers. Having there presented our readers with specimens only, and for
the most part of his latest works, we will now proceed to give them some
account of one of his earliest and most important productions--a Mexican
historical romance of striking interest, dated two years subsequently to
the first revolutionary outbreak in Mexico, and exhibiting a degree of
descriptive and dramatic power unparalleled in the whole range of German
fiction.

When, in the year 1776, the British colonies, now known as the United
States of America, made their declaration of independence, the struggle
that ensued was unmarked by any circumstances of particular atrocity or
blood-thirstiness, except perhaps, occasionally, on the part of the
Indian allies of either party. The fight was between men of the same
race, who had been accustomed to look upon each other as countrymen and
brothers, and whose sympathies and feelings were in many respects in
unison; it was fought manfully and fairly, as beseemed civilized men in
the eighteenth century of the Christian era. Whatever wrongs, real or
imaginary, the British Americans had to complain of, they had none that
sufficed, even in their own eyes, to justify reprisals or cruelties
beyond those which the most humanely conducted and least envenomed wars
inevitably entail. But it was under strikingly different circumstances
that the second of the two great republics which, with the exception of
British possessions, now comprise the whole civilized portion of the
North American continent, started into existence. In the former instance
was seen the young and vigorous country which, having attained its
majority, and feeling itself able to dispense with parental
guardianship, asserted its independence, and vindicated it, with a
strong hand, it is true, but yet with a warm heart and a cool judgment.
In the latter case it was the spring of the caged tiger, that for years
had pined in narrow prison beneath the scourge of its keeper, whom it at
last turned upon and rent in its fury.

Subdued by the fierce assault of a handful of desperate adventurers, the