the least hesitation. What rapid perception, what keen appreciation, what humor, what pathos, what power did he exhibit! I was sure that I was in the presence of a great genius. But who could it be?

Theresa sat quietly by, listening with interest to the conversation, and I too sat with open ears, eager to gather all that was said. Questions were frequently put to me by both, which I answered as readily as my knowledge of the language would permit. One thing I discovered during the conversation; that Herr Von Hofrath was a very devout man. His remarks indicated this emphatically. A healthful tone pervaded all he uttered, and I knew his thoughts were pure. How I loved him, the noble-hearted old man!

Dinner over and its appendages, we returned to the sitting-room. The stranger went up to a small table on which several books were lying, and took up one of them. Blank!' he exclaimed, turning to Theresa; what is this waiting for?'

For your imprimatur,' answered the maiden. 'It is to be my album. You come in good time to put down the first line upon the first page.' She took the book as she spoke, opened to the page, and said Proceed.'

The countenance of the stranger assumed a thoughtful aspect. He took a pencil, and without hesitation traced the following lines. I translate them into English at the expense both of beauty and force of expression :

THE ALBUM OF THERESA.

"BEGUN' and 'Ended,' two brief words, contain
The whole of what it is and is to be;

Farther than this all prophecy is vain;

Our eyes are blinded; we cannot foresee
The shadowy future; yet perhaps 't were well
On its uncertain incidents awhile to dwell!'

'Your name! your name!' said Theresa, as the writer handed her back the volume; you must seal what you say.'

The other took the book again, and in fair, distinct characters,

wrote:

Goethe.'

I had no time to express my admiration or astonishment on beholding the rising wonder of all Germany; for the Professor com ing up, exclaimed: Wolfgang, something more Theresa will require of you than a half-dozen lines, scored by way of imprint on the titlepage. Come, be not a niggard of your thoughts."

The poet took the book again, cast an almost mournful smile upon the maiden, and selecting another page, he wrote as follows:

'STRANGE are the thoughts that swell

Full in the breast,

Thoughts that no longer dwell

Calmly at rest.

They rise, they rise, be they mournful or glad,

Like the sum of existence, both joyous and sad;

While the thoughtless laugh, and sport, and are gay;

The sorrowing heart bleeds afresh every day;
Still the whirl goes round and round,

Now 't is the happy laugh, then comes the plaintive sound;
Mingling, mingling joy and sorrow,

To-day 't is joy, 't is wo the morrow;

And time rolls on 'till our brief life has passed,

And the grave closes over ALL at last.'

Wolfgang,' said the Professor, seriously, after reading what the other had written, 'this is well; nay, it is beautiful. But it is very incomplete.'

6

Finish it; I pray you finish it!' said Goëthe, sadly. To please your once loved pupil, finish it!'

The old man, thus invoked, took the album, and leaving a short space, continued as follows:

'SUCH is the history of existence here,
Brief as it is, and incomplete and vain,
Not worth the living for, could we not look
Beyond, and grasp existence infinite.
Without the promise of a life to come,

There's naught indeed to cheer the heart of man,

For all is dark within and gloom without.

E'en the brief sunshine of a happy day

Brings but the thought that when the morrow comes
Clouds will obscure the whole, and damp the joys
Just rising in the bosom. Is it so ?

Is life so cheerless? is it really nought?

Without the promise, yes; but, thanks to GOD!
The promise stands forever firm and sure,

'I am the resurrection and the life,

Believe in me, though dead yet shalt thou live!'
Existence then is not an idle dream,

If 't is probation for the life to come,
For here we 're fitted for another world.
Fitted for weal or wo-how dread the thought!
And now we see why life's so full of change,
Of blended shades of sorrow, joy and wo;
Why we are tried, our bosoms toru, our hearts
Broken and crushed: were there no sorrow here,
Who would aspire to heaven, or seek the joys
That flow perennial from the throne of GOD?
Compared with which earth's glories are but dross.
Bless'd then be life, mysterious life! and bless'd
Be GOD who gave it; who created man

For wisest purposes. Look not beyond,
But humbly seek His favor; learn of HIM,
And if thou wouldst be happy, DO HIS WILL.'

The old man closed the book, and handed it with a solemn air to his young friend. The latter read what had been written with serious attention; then turning toward the Professor, he drew himself up to his full height, and laying his hand impressively upon the arm of the other, he exclaimed with dignity, ' Doctor, do not misinterpret me: I BELIEVE!'

LITERARY NOTICES.

VIEWS AFOOT: OR EUROPE SEEN with KNAPSACK AND STAFF. By J. BAYARD TAYLOR. With a Preface by N. P. WILLIS. New-York and London: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

TRUTHFUL and graphic in description, and teeming with evidences of mind of no merely common order, this book of travels addresses itself not only to our interest and admiration, but to our sympathies, which are elicited in a remarkable degree by the novel taste and aspirations of the young printer. The strong will and the magnetic hope which so certainly insure success; the enthusiasm and energy which buoyed up the firm traveller under the toils and fatigues of long journeys' afoot;' and above all, under the most disheartening of evils, a 'lean purse,' excite our wonder and compel our praise. The character of the man first strikes us. We are constantly attracted by his industrious research and his profound love of the intellectual; his strong interest in the useful sciences, and his spiritual appreciation of the wonderful and the beautiful. We repeat, the writer is the leading object of interest in the book; and this because of the novelty of his character and purpose. As a book of travels the work might not be striking. As a collection of new and multifarious anecdotes, incidents and descriptions, it ranks with the best of its kind. In short, it is a volume to which one turns when the brain is racked and wearied in the contest with the 'higher powers;' when the Zanonis' and the 'Lucretias' are laid upon the shelf; when the appetite for the marvellous is satiated in Typee,' or when, disgusted with the heaps of puerile 'light' works which are piled up around us, our eye falling upon these volumes, the attractive title leads to the more attractive page, and we become pleased, engaged, and―rested.

We

We meet with but one disappointment in glancing at these Views Afoot. lament an oversight which seems incongruous in the character of the author; an oversight which will deprive the great majority of his readers of that information which would have been to him the surest harbinger of fame. We inferred that the traveller afoot' would at least stumble over those lights and shadows of simple life which are the subject of so much fiction, but of which no real portraiture ever has been given. For example, we should have liked to know something true of the French grisette; not a history of caps, flounces and ribbons, nor of love-scenes, assignations, and the like; but of the young-hearted girl of Normandy or Languedoc; her peasant-home, her hopes, her first affections, before she has been seduced away to far-off Paris to be ruined or to die. Again, we should like to have peeped in through the windows of some good, honest German vrouw, and inquired, if we chose, the in

gredients of her sour-krout, or have a hob-a-nob with some of the stout lasses, her daughters. We thought to find in the work natural and simple pictures of natural and simple things; a panoramic view, which would have made us familiar with foreign people, whose lands, governments, institutions and wonders have been described and embellished, and almost demolished by every previous traveller. Yet, notwithstanding these grains of abatement, we must invoke for our young author's good volumes a cordial reception; and we may venture to predict for him a 'name,' even though this book of travels do not win it for him. The subjoined reflections, suggested by hearing the chimes of Mary-le-bone Chapel, will afford the reader some impression of the writer's meditative current of thought. They come to us, we scarcely know how, like the reveries of our own mind on hearing the chimes of Trinity:

THERE is something in their silvery vibration which is far more expressive than the ordinary tones of a bell. The ear becomes weary of a continued toll; the sound of some bells seems to have nothing more in it than the ordinary clang of metal; but these simple notes, following one another so melodiously, fall on the ear, stunned by the ceaseless roar of carriages or the mingled cries of the mob, as gently and gratefully as drops of dew. Whether it be morning, and they ring out louder and deeper through the mist, or midnight, when the vast ocean of being beneath them surges less noisily than its wont, they are alike full of melody and poetry. I have often paused, deep in the night, to hear those clear tones dropping down from the darkness, thrilling with their full, tremulous sweetness the still air of the lighted Strand, and winding away through dark, silent lanes and solitary courts, till the ear of the care-worn watcher is scarcely stirred with their dying vibrations. They seemed like those spirit-voices which at such times speak almost audibly to the heart. How delicious it must be to those who dwell within the limits of their sound, to wake from some happy dream and hear those chimes blending in with their midnight fancies like the musical echo of the promised bliss. I love these eloquent bells, and I think there must be many living out a life of misery and suffering to whom their tones come with an almost human consolation. The nature of the very cockneys, who never go without the horizon of their vibrations, is to my mind invested with one hue of poetry.'

THE VIVIPAROUS QUADRUPEDS OF NORTH-AMERICA. By JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, F. R. S., etc., and the Rev. JOHN BUCHMAN, D. D., etc. New-York: JoHN J. AUDUBON.

THE geographical range selected for the investigations embraced in this work are certainly sufficiently extensive; comprising the British and Russian possessions to the North, the whole of the United States and their territories, California, and that part of Mexico north of the tropic of Cancer. The researches in this vast range are arranged by those divisions the limits of which are fixed by nature, and where new forms mark the effects of a low latitude and warm climate. When it is remembered that a large portion of this extensive tract is now an uncultivated and almost unexplored wild, roamed over by ferocious beasts and warlike tribes of Indians, some idea may be obtained of the danger and difficulty with which the full and authentic matériel of this great work has been obtained. The illustrations are truly superb. They are not only scientifically correct, but interesting to all readers, from the varied occupations, expressions and attitudes given to the different species, together with the appropriate accessories, such as trees, plants, landscapes, etc., with which the figures of the animals are relieved. The reader is made thoroughly acquainted with the habits, geographical distribution, and in short with all that is of interest in the 'life and times' of the animals described, including also the mode of hunting or destroying such as are pursued either to gratify the appetite, to furnish a rich fur or skin, or in order to get rid of dangerous or annoying neighbors. The work, we are truly glad to learn, has been warmly encouraged, as it certainly deserved to be. The letter-press is admirable, and the paper unexceptionable. The twentieth number of the Illustrations of the Quadrupeds is now ready for delivery.

ALDERBROOK: A COLLECTION OF FANNY FORRESTER'S Village Sketches, Poems, etc. By Miss EMILY E. CHUBBUCK. In two volumes. pp. 539. Boston: WILLIAM D. TICKNOR AND COM

PANY.

WITH an evident affection for all the phases and aspects of liberal Nature; with a love of the beautiful inherent in her heart; and with a keen observation of the detail of natural scenery and human character, FANNY FORRESTER could hardly fail to produce a readable and pleasant work. She has certainly done this in the pages before us. Nevertheless we are compelled to add, that she seems to us to exhibit a general tendency toward over-writing, over-describing, over-feeling; so that while there is enough of real feeling, real love of the works and the creatures of GOD, real emotions of pleasure and pain, there are beside, contrasts with these, which seem to indicate that there were times when the demands of a periodical press required the stipulated amount of matériel, whether it were or were not informed with the true and genuine spirit of the writer. But the exceptions to the better portions of the work which we have indicated, while they may impress unfavorably the discriminating reader, will not prevent him from perceiving that he has in the writer a true-hearted woman, of a gifted intellect, and capable of writing in a style of unusual felicity, and whose inculcations are invariably feminine, pure and good. The fair author, with a self-sacrificing devotion to the spread of the religion she professes, is now in a far distant land. May she be as happy as she would render others, is our fervent wish. Although a frequent correspondent of the KNICKERBOCKER, we never had the pleasure to see her. We cannot but hope, however, that the portrait prefixed to the first volume does no justice to the original. It is very stiff and formal, and seems painted for an affected effect. The volumes are well executed in a typographical point of view.

THE SACRED MOUNTAINS. By J. T. HEADLEY, author of 'NAPOLEON and his Marshals.' Illustrated. One volume. pp. 175. New-York: BAKER AND SCRIBNER.

THIS is, in its externals, one of the most strikingly beautiful volumes we have for some months encountered. The printing and paper are of the first order of excellence; and the illustrations, engraved on steel, are of very superior execution. They are eleven in number, and are from the pencils and gravers of the first artists in England. The subjects are, Mount Arrarat, Bethlehem, Mounts Moriah, Sinai, Hor, Pisgah, Carmel, Lebanon, Zion, Tabor, and the Mount of Olives. The design of the author was to render more familiar and life-like some of the scenes of the Bible. In his descriptions, which are often in the florid style for which he has become somewhat remarkable, Mr. HEADLEY affirms, and so far as we have been able to perceive, with correctness, that he has endeavored to shun all those things which might be termed mere creations of the fancy, and has confined himself either to the Bible itself, or to those incidents which must have occurred, taking human nature to be the same in all ages of the world. The dedication of the work is touching and beautiful: To my aged, beloved Father, who has long stood on the Heights of Zion, a Messenger of Peace and Herald of Glad Tidings to Men, and whose feet I know will soon stand on the Mount of GOD, these Sketches are affectionately inscribed.' The Sacred Mountains' will form an admirable religious gift-book at this season of good wishes and kind deeds.