bulky for convenient use. A "handy book" has been wanted, which should avoid redundant details, and give in small compass all that it is important to know. Such a work is this " Abriss." Into its 240 small pages is compressed the substance of a score of thick octavos. Nothing of moment in the development of the literature is omitted, and all the important names, both in earlier and later times, are to be found in their proper place. An admirable plan has been most conscientiously and carefully executed.

The book is strictly a history of "literature." Except in the earlier ages, where all writings had more or less of a theological character, it takes no notice of merely scientific or theological writers. It deals with poets, novelists, dramatists, essayists, literary critics, satirists; with historians and philosophers only on their literary side. Luther's TableTalk, but not his Theses, brings him into this volume. Hardly one of the noted theologians of the present century is even mentioned.

Professor Evans adopts a threefold division of German literary history, making the first period extend from the earliest time to the end of the twelfth century; the second, from the end of the twelfth to the second half of the seventeenth century; and the third, from that time to our own day. These chief periods are in turn divided into subordinate periods, which again are arranged by threes. Good reasons, not of a mystical kind, are given for this threefold division. The three subordinate periods of the first division are characterized respectively as the German Gothic, the period of migrations; the old High-German, covering more than five centuries, from the sixth to the eleventh; and finally the twelfth century, which had a literature of its own. who have imagined that German literature is comparatively a modern growth, and that before Klopstock and Lessing there was no special literary activity, will be surprised to see how much can be found even in the earlier centuries.

Those

The three subordinate periods of the second division are, first, the thirteenth century, the time of the "Middle High-German"; second, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and third, the time of the New High-German in the sixteenth and far into the seventeenth century. The German literature of this period is quite as rich as the literature of the same period of France and England. The simple outline of it which Professor Evans gives fills nearly half his volume, and contains many of his best critical notices. This was the period of the Nibelungenlied, of the Minnesänger and Meistersänger, of the popular preachers, of the Mystics and of the Reformers. An unexpected company of famous men show themselves in these ages of chivalry, representing the popular feeling of the time far more truly than the aristocratic singers and

play-writers of the French and Spanish courts. The sketch of this period, rapid as it necessarily is, is yet quite as interesting as the arcount of the better known period of the later German literature. The indebtedness of modern German writers to the writers of this period is made evident.

The second half of the volume is devoted to an account of the third general division, in which there are also three subordinate periods. The richness of the literature of this time, of course, makes it impossible to dwell at length upon any single name. Often a writer of distinction must be barely mentioned, or dismissed with a single line or a single sentence. Even Goethe and Schiller can only have their half-dozen pages in a survey of so large a field. Professor Evans succeeds, however, by a few masterly touches, in giving what is most characteristic of each of the great writers. He has also rescued some authors from undeserved neglect, notably Karl Immermann, whom he ranks with the very foremost of poets for beauty of style and elevation of thought. It is impossible, he says, to overestimate the indebtedness of the German poetry of to-day to this remarkable writer. "In epic poetry he stands above Schiller; as a philosophic poet he surpasses Goethe, although he lacks the idealistic pathos of the first, and the lyric softness of the second. He wrote ballads very sweetly, which unfortunately are not much known, since no complete edition of his works has yet been published. As a dramatic writer likewise he was very fruitful. He came into literature so young, that the pieces of his youth showed a dazzling color borrowed from romance; but the study of Goethe and Schiller brought him off soon from this false tendency."

To one feature of the book some may take exception. It is a continuous narrative, and is not broken up into separate chapters. The author has preferred to economize space, and to mark the transitions from one period to another, and from one subject to another, by indications upon the margin of the page, an elaborate and carefully arranged table of contents, and a very full index, making it easy to find the place of any writer or the treatment of any theme. For a college text-book this method is perhaps preferable, though it is not so pleasant to the eye. The volume, however, is a great deal more than a college text-book. It is a valuable manual for any student of German, even if he have in his library the larger works from which this is digested. To those who have no access to larger works it will be invaluable. As one of the very few books written by American scholars in the German language, it is a curiosity. We have reason to believe that it is only an avant-courier of a full critical history of German literature in the English tongue, which is one of our chief literary needs. No man in the country

is more competent to prepare such a work than Professor Evans. It will be creditable to American scholarship if one of our countrymen can do for the literature of Germany what Gervinus and Taine have done for the literature of England.

9.- Publications of the Prince Society.

The Andros Tracts. Boston: Prince Society. Vols. I. and II. 4to. pp. liv., 215; xxiv., 346.

THE Revolution of 1689 delivered New England from a tyranny much more oppressive than that from which she was rescued ninety years later, in the reign of King George the Third. Her municipal and legislative institutions, almost coeval with the settlements, had been abolished. Laws were made, taxes levied, courts of justice constituted, judicial, executive, and military officers appointed, by functionaries of the king of England. The swarm of blood-suckers whom Governor Andros collected about him from England and New York, — Randolph, West, Palmer, Graham, Foxcroft, Sherlock, sold justice, or injustice, at excessive rates. The treacherous Dudley lent to the roguery the support of his great talents and intimate local knowledge. Land-titles as old as the Colony were pronounced void, and the holders were ousted, or required to protect themselves by buying new patents of the Governor. Opposition in the towns was punished by heavy fines imposed on the agitators, or by harsher measures, as in the case of the minister of Plymouth, brought to Boston while suffering from a fit of the gout, and kept standing before his questioners till it seemed as if he would die. The miseries of the local administration were not all that troubled the people. Not unreasonably, they feared that King James would establish Popery in England; and if in England, why not in Massachusetts Bay?

Who were the plotters, and what the consultations, in Boston in the winter of 1688 and 1689, will never be fully known. As early as September, Charles Morton (formerly teacher, in England, of Defoe) preached in Charlestown such a sermon as would have brought him to trial for treason, had not the prosecuting officer been of the opinion that "there were not honest men in Middlesex to make a jury to serve their turn." In November the Prince of Orange landed in England, but he might as well have landed in the moon for any intelligence the Bostonians could have had of his movements for months afterwards, as voyages were then made. On the 4th of April came news from the West Indies of his being on English ground. What the issue of the adventure would be, was of course all uncertain; for, weeks later, the Prince was VOL. CIX. NO. 225.

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still in the west, with a fine army in front of him, across his way to London. But Boston could not wait. On the 19th of April (a day made thrice memorable in Massachusetts annals, by the first battle of American Independence, eighty-six years later, and by the firing, in Baltimore, on Massachusetts troops, eighty-six years later yet), Andros surrendered to the townspeople the hold on Fort Hill, to which he had withdrawn with his Regulars, and from that day to this he and his king cease to belong to New England history.

Though in the circumstances there could not fail to be great unanimity among the ill-used and insulted people, yet the talking and writing and acting were not entirely on one side. There was spirit also on the other, to support a party animosity which ran extremely high. At that time as well as at other times, there were office-holders and office-seekers who knew how to argue that what put money into their pockets was for the public good and honor. The Governor had about him a set of omnivorous adventurers from abroad, who had no interest in Massachusetts but to pluck her. Joseph Dudley was not the only recreant native, nor was he the only one among the Governor's satellites possessed of eminent capacity. The stranger Randolph was cunning and indefatigable; Palmer was a well-read English lawyer; the Scot Graham did no discredit to his nation's character for craft; and others acted their parts in the matter not lazily nor unskilfully. Boston was already a place of some wealth, acquired by commercial enterprise, and there had collected in it a knot of money-making adventurers from England, who were warm for Church and King, and against liberty and psalm-singing. The liturgy of the Church of England had been read in Boston on Sundays and holidays for three years; and though the congregation was not large, it was composed of material which the Governor might securely trust in. There was plenty of writing and printing on both sides; and accordingly there are few interesting passages of history better elucidated, except as to those preparatory consultations in respect to which history never gets satisfactory light, unless from the private letters of the actors, when by good fortune these have been preserved to after-times. Of course, in important respects the best authorities for historical composition are writings of a time immediately subsequent to the events recorded. But there is one important qualification of this remark. Contemporaries can have no correct conception of the perspective of an historical picture. The relative importance of events is not disclosed to them. One would not think of looking into a newspaper of June 18, 1775, for an expression of the thoughts appropriate to the action of the day before on Bunker Hill. But, further, different classes of contemporaneous writings have to be discriminated from one another

in respect to their value as authentic records. The newspaper paragraphs must, for the most part, be written and printed not only before the bearing of facts can be estimated, but before facts can be positively ascertained; and in times of party excitement allowance must be made, or rather distrust must be practised, for the disingenuousness which is likely to pervert the utterances of that reckless monster, the ephemeral press. Memoirs printed with the name of the writer may be used with more confidence, — both as being prepared with superior deliberation and wariness, and as affording, through knowledge of the writer's character, a clew to the knowledge of the passions, prejudices, positions, relations, which may have biased or blinded him. An historian delights in getting possession of private letters of the actors in great events, and of their confidants. But it is at his peril if he trusts them implicitly. Actors in great events are liable to have some motive for misleading their correspondents, and the misrepresentations which they are tempted to make are the safer for being made in confidence. even what they write the most honestly to a friend, they will not write with the same caution, or with the same wholesome sense of responsibleness, as if it were to be submitted to unfriendly or impartial criticism.

And

There was no newspaper in British America till thirteen years after 1689. There survive not many private letters, probably none from which the sense has not already been extracted for elucidation of the transactions of the period. The pamphlet publications of that day were numerous, but the copies of them still extant are so rare that they are scarcely to be found except in a few public libraries.* The plan of Mr. Whitmore has a capital unity and completeness. In two beautiful volumes he has reprinted the pamphlets and official papers of the period between the deposition of Andros and the granting of the provincial charter of Massachusetts, adding a few pieces, hitherto unpublished, from the archives of Massachusetts and from other sources, and illustrating the whole with a series of learned notes, extremely curious and useful. The collection conveys a very complete idea of the politics, the troubles, and the wrangles of the time. We think Mr. Whitmore judges the principal character too favorably. That King William employed him after his imbroglio in New England, and that he administered Virginia without discredit, is no offset to his indecent misdeeds among the Puritan colonists. He had a despotic and insolent nature,

*Mr. Whitmore thinks (p. 190) that the copy from which he prints the "Account of the Late Revolutions in New England, by A. B.," may be unique. We have however seen, and made extracts from, another copy, - - we believe in the British Museum.