book is, therefore, not a literary history in the strict sense of the term. It gives a comprehensive view of the culture of German Switzerland during the eighteenth century. To Bodmer alone one hundred and seventy-five pages are devoted. In this essay, as well as in that on the historian Müller, a vast amount of information is presented, and many facts collated by the author are now given, we believe, for the first time.

Literaturbilder.-Darstellungen deutscher Literatur aus den Werken der vorzüglichsten Literarhistoriker, etc. Herausgegeben von J. W. SCHAEFER. Leipzig: Friedrich Brandstetter. 8vo. pp. 409.

THERE is no lack of German literary histories. While English letters have not yet found an historian, there are scores of works upon every branch of German literature. Of these, many possess rare merits, and are characterized by a depth, a comprehensive ness of criticism not to be found in the similar productions of any other nation. Whoever has once been guided by the master-minds of Germany will bear witness that the guidance cannot be replaced by that of any other class of writers. Nowhere can such universality, such freedom from national prejudice, be found,—and this united to a love of truth, earnestness of labor, and perseverance of research that may be looked for in vain elsewhere.

The difficulty for the student of German literary history lies, then, in the selection. A new work, the "Literaturbilder" of J. W. Schaefer, will greatly tend to facilitate the choice. This is a representation of the chief points of the literature of Germany by means of well-chosen selections from the principal historians of letters. The

editor introduces these by an essay upon the "Epochs of German Literature." Then follow, with due regard to chronological order, extracts from the works of Vilmar, Gervinus, Wackernagel, Schlosser, Julian Schmidt, and others. These extracts are of such length as to give a fair idea of the writers, and so arranged as to form a connected history. Thus, under the third division, comprising the eighteenth century until Herder and Goethe, we find the following articles following each other: "State of Literature in the Eighteenth Century"; "Johann Christian Gottsched," by F. C. Schlosser; “Gottsched's Attempts at Dramatic Reform," by R. Prutz; "Hagedorn and Haller," by J. W. Schaefer; "Bodmer and Breitinger," by A. Koberstein; "The Leipsic Association of Poets and the Bremen Contributions," by Chr. F. Weisse; "German Literature in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century," by Goethe; "Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener," by H. Gelzer; "Gellert's Fables," by H. Prutz. Those who do not possess the comprehensive works of Gervinus, Cholerius, Wackernagel, etc., may thus in one volume find enough to be able to form a fair opinion of the nature of their labors.

The "Literaturbilder," though perhaps lacking in unity, is one of the most attractive of literary histories. A few important names are missed, as that of Menzel, from whom nothing is quoted. The omission seems the more unwarrantable, as this writer, whatever we may think of his views, still enjoys the highest consideration among a numerous class of German readers. The contributions of the editor himself form no inconsiderable part of the volume. Those quoted from his "Life of Goethe" deserve special mention. The work does not extend beyond the first years of the present century, and closes with Jean Paul.

The Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. Illustrated from Drawings by F. O.C. Darley and John Gilbert. Martin Chuzzlewit. In Four Volumes. New York. Sheldon & Co. 16mo. pp. 322, 299, 292, 322. $3.00. The Earl's Heirs. A Tale of Domestic Life. By the Author of "East Lynne," etc. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. paper. pp. 200. 50 cts.

The Spirit of Military Institutions; or, Essential Principles of the Art of War. By Marshal Marmont, Duke of Ragusa. Translated from the Latest Edition, revised and corrected by the Author; with Illustrative Notes by Henry Coppée, Professor of English Literature in the University of Pennsylvania, late an Officer of Artillery in the Service of the United States. Philadelphia. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. 272. $1.00.

Maxims, Advice, and Instructions on the Art of War; or, A Practical Military Guide for the Use of Soldiers of all Arms and of all Countries. Translated from the French by Captain Lendy, Director of the Practical Military College, late of the French Staff, etc. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 18mo. pp. 212. 75 cts. Rhymed Tactics. By "Gov." New York. D. Van Nostrand. 18mo. paper. pp. 144. 25 cts.

Official Army Register, for 1862. From the Copy issued by the Adjutant-General U. S. Army. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. 50 cts. paper. pp. 108.

Water: Its History, Characteristics, Hygienic and Therapeutic Uses. By Samuel W. Francis, A. M., M. D., Physician to the Northern Dispensary, New York. New York. S. S. & W. Wood. 8vo. paper. pp. 47. 25 cts. An Exposition of Modern Spiritualism, showing its Tendency to a Total Annihilation of Christianity. With other Miscellaneous Remarks and Criticisms, in Support of the Fundamental Principles of the Christian Religion. By Samuel Post. New York. Printed by James Egbert. 8vo. paper. pp. 86. 25 cts. Sybelle, and other Poems. By L. New York. G. W. Carleton. 12mo. pp. 192. 50

cts.

Aids to Faith: A Series of Theological Essays. By Several Writers. Being a Reply to Essays and Reviews." Edited by William Thomson, D. D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. New York. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 538. $1.50.

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Cadet Life at West Point. By an Officer of the United States Army. With a Descriptive Sketch of West Point, by Benson J. Lossing. Boston. T. O. H. P. Burnham. 12mo. pp xviii., 367. $1.00.

Can Wrong be Right? By Mrs. S. C. Hall. Boston. T. O. H. P. Burnham. 8vo. paper. pp. 143. 38 cts.

The Old Lieutenant and his Son. By Norman Macleod. Boston. T. O. H. P. Burnham. 8vo. paper. pp. 130. 30 cts.

Eighth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of New York. Transmitted to the Legislature January 8, 1862. Albany. C. Van Benthuysen, Printer. 8vo. pp. 133.

Nolan's System for Training Cavalry Horses. By Kenner Garrard, Captain Fifth Cavalry, U. S. A. With Twenty-Four Lithographed Illustrations. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 12mo. pp. 114. $1.50.

The Koran; commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed. Translated into English immediately from the Original Arabic. By George Sale, Gent. To which is prefixed The Life of Mohammed; or, The History of that Doctrine which was begun, carried on, and finally established by him in Arabia, and which has subjugated a Larger Portion of the Globe than the Religion of Jesus has set at Liberty. Boston. T. O. H. P. Burnham. 12mo. pp. 472. $1.00.

A Strange Story. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. With Engravings on Steel by F. O. Freeman, after Drawings by J. N. Hyde, from Designs by Gardner A. Fuller. Boston. Gardner A. Fuller. 12mo. pp. 387. paper, 25 cts. lin, $1.00.

mus

I WISH to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister, and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a HolyLander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I

mean.

Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return, - prepar

ed to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again, — if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.

To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order, not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker,

not the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.

We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practised this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least, if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence, which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half an hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may make to belong to this select class. No doubt they were elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when even they were foresters and outlaws.

"When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.

"It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,

That I was last here;
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere."

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least and it is commonly more than that- sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them, -as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon, I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for, - I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, ay, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over against one's self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the street,

scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an airing, and so the evil cure itself.

How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the slumberers.

No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow in-door occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.

But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours, - as the swinging of dumbbells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumbbells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveller asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."

Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character,— will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the

finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough, that the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the 'tan and callus of experience.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the woods. "They planted groves and walks of Platanes," where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmned when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my body is, I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of