ONE of the commonest incidents in life for a New-Yorker, is to find himself occasionally at the foot of Marketfield street, in the midst of a crowd of mail bags, trunks, porters, and poultry, making his way to a friend about to sail in a packet for Europe. There is certainly nothing very remarkable in the thing itself. Packets sail almost every day; friends depart and come back again with exemplary punctuality. Broadway, with its thronging thousands, scarcely misses a single footprint; one's every-day affairs fill up the gap of absence, and there is little time or necessity for moralizing. Yet we have always found something characteristic about these departures, and no two of these exactly alike in the incident, much less in the sentiment. A slight circumstance colors the little event. Any formal act which breaks up the accustomed routine of life, comes upon us painfully; it throws us upon hope and conjecture; we fancy all sorts of possibilities; and the older we grow, with a greater experience of evil, we shrink the more from such occasions. To many people, a wedding is as painful as a funeral, out of this sense of uncertainty. Apparently, it is the happiest thing in the world; joy, laughter, and congratulation, abound on all sides, but within are doubt and dismay. The implied necessity of being happy, destroys the happiness itself. We can wish a man good day, or grasp his hand, or perform any familiar act of kindness with zest and unction; but set us upon anything out of the track, to bid him God-speed on a journey, or wish him joy in a marriage, and the good faith of the thing is immediately paralyzed; we stand trembling on the brink of a vast unknown future, and seem to be commemorating some deed which invites the sure coming evil powers of the world, hastening disappointment and unerring fate. We have faith in our daily life, to which we are accustomed; we have none in what lies outside of it, the unknown. Happy man, who jogs on through the vale of life in undisturbed serenity, content with the well-known foot-path, the familiar meadow, without even penetrating the wilds, or crossing the oceans beyond; for whom the sun rises and sets on the spot where his eyes first beheld the miracle in childhood; who sits under the wide-spreading tree when old, he planted when young; who knows no cares sleep cannot remedy, or the smile of friends assuage. For the most part, set occasions of formality are to be eschewed. The world thinks differently, and admires every opportunity for display. It prides itself on its mere formalists. It sets apart the man who makes the most bows as the truest gentleman, the preacher with the stiffest cravat and worst punctilious surplice for the highest divine. A physician's prescriptions are valued according to his mysteriousness; and an author who keeps up all the forms of reputation, the coat, the dinner, the puff, the biography and engraved portrait, has ten times the pay, and a hundred times the glory, of the poor and proud scribe who sits at home and writes all the books. Posterity judges otherwise; but what is posterity to the man who knows not where he shall get his dinner? The respect for formality is, after all, but a cheap, indolent way of getting through life comfortably, supporting our own weaknesses by honoring the weaknesses of others, following the shadow like the distressed German, and thinking it more substantial than the substance, because, strange paradox, we find it the more tangible of the two. Truth, shy maiden, sits in her well and seldom comes forth to sparkle in the sunshine; when she does appear among men, it is as the capricious, beautiful Undine, courted and sought, but misunderstood, soon abandoned for the baser earth-born, and quickly vanishing from the embrace of mortals. But we are trespassing even upon the liberal indulgence allowed to essayists in wandering from our text, who, in their most errant flights, like the balloonists, must be careful not to let go entirely of the string which is to bring them to the earth again. The chief thought which occurred to us in our last excursion in the bay, as we glanced up from the petty steamer to the mighty vessel lifting its anchor to drop it again in the old world, was the diminution of interest with which literary men, every year, look outward to the shores of England as her great authors of the century, one by one, fall into their graves. The living man hallows the soil. It is something, as Washington Irving said of the sexton at Stratford, to see even the ashes of Shakspeare, but how much more would it have been to approach the land of which he was the living breath, which existed in him and became poor and beggarly, and was handed over to commoner men when he died! It is so now, that the great men of the first half of the nineteenth century are vanishing away. The present is robbed to enrich the past. A few years ago, and Byron, Scott, Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Macintosh, Hazlitt, Keats, Shelley, Sydney Smith, Arnold, Hemans, and Landon, made up the mighty fame of London. They are gone. Their books are with us, and their memory, and they belong to our past. A new hall is opened for us on the threshold of that deep vista through which we pass by their statues to the great images of the olden time— Shakspeare mid-way, Dante a little farther on, and the vast Homer in the farthest perspective. England is no longer to our imagination the great England she was when men like those who have passed away breathed her air and partook of her fruits. What is the Cathedral pulpit at St. Paul's to us without the echoing creak of Sydney Smith, the reverend "joker of jokes?" What isAbbotsford without Scott?—what, alas! will Ambleside be without Wordsworth? To an American who has grown up in daily familiarity with these men, in intimacy with their thoughts and feelings, their departure makes England emphatically a land of strangers. This is not the regret of lion-huntersthose most miserable and selfish of egotists (it is not necessary to see a great author to revere him, to share in his existence); but it is the pain we feel when a part of our existence is invaded. A portion of our mental and moral nature seems plucked away when a Byron or Scott dies. It is a real wo, which a mesmerist might attribute to the loss of vital power in the world by which all are sustained, the man of genius being the great mesmerizer. What invisible currents there may be passing to and fro in the world, we know not, which connect man with man; but we cannot look upon the magnet, tending, by its mysterious law, to the north, and say that no such communication exists. If the one, the spiritual, is a great problem-the other, the material, is a greater. O. THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HEINRICH ZSCHÖKKE.* We know of no German writer in the same walk of art, whose works better deserve translation into our own language, than the works of Zschökke. Indeed, we may infer from the frequency with which we see his name in our Monthly Magazines, that we are not alone in this opinion. Hardly a day passes, that we do not see in one periodical or another, a selection from the almost inexhaustible source which Zschökke supplies. In his own country, after having passed though innumerable editions, he has become a classic; he is placed in the first rank of the writers of tales, at the same time that he has achieved great celebrity as a historian and a patriot. But before remarking further upon the genius of Zschökke, we shall avail ourselves of the brief notice of him by Mr. Godwin, to introduce him to the acquaintance of our readers, reserving a more extended and elaborate criticism for the translation of a most delightful book, his "Autobiography," already announced by the publishers of the Library. "He was born," according to Mr. Godwin, "in Magdeburg, in Prussia, somewhere about the year 1774-the same year that a comet famous among the astronomers appeared. His fatherhad acquired a considerable fortune by sell ing cloth to the Prussian army during the Seven Years' War; and his mother died while he was yet a child. The loss of the latter parent seems to have produced a profound impression on his mind, and early inclined him to religious meditation and inquiry. Crusoe, he continued through all the Voyages and Travels he could lay his hand upon, but he ended-strange as it is a most correct and accomplished classical scholar. At the time that his school-books were dreadful annoyances, he was drinking from the richest springs of literature in his own and foreign tongues. "There was another reason why Zschökke did not advance as rapidly as others in his regular studies, which was, that he had already begun to think, and his mind and heart and soul were absorbed in pondering the great questions of this mysterious existence of ours. At first he thought that he had solved the whole difficulty by supposing that the vast universe was a great eightday clock, in which nothing was alive except God and himself-little Heinrich Zschökke-all the rest being wound up and set a-going on the most skilful mechanical principles. But he soon found that this kind of a universe would not do; indeed, it did not satisfy his own childish mind. Day and night his imagination was filled with the most extraordinary fancies in regard to these matters, and he shut himself in the deepest solitude to consider them; and they were banished only by the calls which the necessities of life made upon him for active exertion. "His first step in life was to go, during the year 1788, to Mecklenburg Schwerin, where he knew of an old friend that was an actor, and whom he proposed to join. Learning, however, that his services would not be needed at the theatre, even in the capacity of candle-snuffer, he found himself in the world, poor, forlorn and miserable enough "He had little relish for the so-called instructions given at school, and indeed such was his apparent stupidity that the in fact, too miserable, he says, to master sent him away before his term think of anything more agreeable than had expired, to save the reputation of the shooting of himself through the his academy. Yet the lad, with all his head. But it happened that a person, stupidity, was a most delightful reader, who had heard him talking with his and it was afterwards discovered, not by actor friend, was much struck with his his teacher, that he had carried with observations, and sought him out to ask him from the school a larger amount, him to become a private tutor in his perhaps, of deep and varied learning family. This request he accepted, and than any of his companions. It is true for a while he enjoyed unbounded freehe began with such works as Robinson dom and kindly social intercourse. Tales from the German of Heinrich Zschökke, by Parke Godwin. No. XV. of the Libarary of Choice Reading, by Wiley & Putnam. VOL. XVII. NO. LXXXV. 3 "Still his hankering after the theatre continued, and he subsequently obtained a place as correspondent and poet of the theatre of Prenzlau. He accompanied the actors in their various country excursions, and seems to have entered into their wild and boisterous pranks among the country people with great heartiness. He amended tragedies, patched up farces, and rewrote bloody melo-dramas, to the great delight of his merry friends, and his own emolument. Yet what was more important, he contrived to prepare himself for entering one of the higher universities, which he succeeded in doing, and afterwards obtained the highest rank as a student. He there also wrote a drama called Abellind, which speedily became a popular favorite in all the play-houses of Germany, and acquired no little reputation. 66 During the whole of his collegiate course, Zschökke was deeply troubled with religious doubts and difficulties, but he became a disciple of the philosophy of Kant, and thereby strengthened his convictions of Christianity sufficiently to enable him to take his degrees as a clergyman, and to preach very acceptably to his old friends at Magdeburg. "In 1795 Zschökke visited Switzerland, a country which he had long sighed after-and, becoming interested, immediately on his arrival, in the absorbing political dispute of the people, he selected it as a place of residence. He was chosen head-master of the Seminary of Reichnau, which at once placed him in a position to follow his cherished studies and do good to mankind. His political sympathies were entirely on the side of popular freedom, and in his autobiography he relates, with great modesty, the almost incredible labors he performed in improving the condition of the lower people, in animating the hearts of the patriots, in writing for the moral and religious instruction of all classes, while he was at the same time patiently instructing a numerous family of youth. His public services were of the most disinterested and useful kind, impelled by a vehement enthusiasm for the advancement of his fellow-men, yet controlled by remarkable sagacity and calmness of judgment. Among the poorer sort of people he was almost worshipped as a benefactor-all the while that the more learned and idle classes were instructed by grave histories, or moved alternately to laughter or tears by the most winning and graceful fictions. "Zschökke's literary labors comprised the Schwitzer Bote,' a periodical undertaken to diffuse useful knowledge among the agricultural population in regard to their particular branch of industry; a History of the Princes and People of Bavaria,' undertaken at the instance of the celebrated historian Joannes Von Muller; a 'History of Switzerland;' the Miscellany,' a periodical work on physical science, addressed to the Swiss people; some eight or ten novels, and about fifty tales, and a book of religious devotion, called Hours of Meditation,' which was published at intervals, in twelve volumes, and has already gone through twenty-seven editions. Some of his tales have reached the fortieth regular edition. "Zschökke, it has been remarked, was greatly troubled with religious misgivings. He tried to read and reason them down; he found a temporary support in the philosophy of Kant; but it was all in vain. Only after he had engaged earnestly in patriotic exertion; only after he gave himself to deeds of active benevolence-did these distressing feelings leave him, and the gospel of Christ reveal itself to his mind as in truth Divine. He passed from the dark and tempestuous abyss on which he had floated, up into the serene heaven of a living Faith, not through the narrow gateway of a wretched Logic, but along the broad and beautiful road of actual Work. When he ceased to wrestle with the grim spectres of the imagination, and addressed himself with true manly earnestness to the great business of life, he found peace. Traces of his feelings in his various spiritual moods will be found throughout his fictions. "In 1805 our author was married, and still lives at a simple and beautiful country place near Aarau, surrounded by a large family, and universally esteemed wherever he is known. In the seventyfourth year of his age, after an intensely exciting but useful life, he awaits with calmness the summons to the eternal world. "Zschökke's literary works have been generally undertaken with no view to either wealth or fame, having been mostly suggested from time to time by the incidents of his daily experience. His romances, particularly, are the results of moments of recreation when he would relieve his mind from severer tasks. Yet I scarcely know a writer who has been more successful in this walk of art. Of the forty or fifty tales of his which I have read, no two are alike—so great is his variety-yet all are marked by an easy grace of manner, purity of language, and rapid and interesting incidents. The merely humorous among them, irresistibly droll as many of them are, can hardly offend any taste, while they often illustrate important truths. But the more serious will be found to be pervaded by a profound religious philosophy-combining the broadest liberality with the finest sympathies and the noblest aspirations. "It remains only to say, in regard to the present work, that the person whose name is on the title-page is rather the editor than the translator. Several of the tales to be embraced in the series have been kindly furnished him by friends, whose name or initials will be attached to their respective translations; and in the case of one or two others, which he has found in magazines or newspapers already very well rendered, he has satisfied himself with merely comparing them faithfully with the originals, and correcting or re-writing such parts as seemed to require it. Should the public demand warrant the expense, several parts of the size of this will be published, so as to comprise a complete collection of the best tales of the author; otherwise, the series will only be extended to two parts. And as the tales embrace Historical, Satirical, Mystic, Humorous and Moral subjects, the editor will give as great a variety as possible in each number." This outline will enable us to see that he is evidently no ordinary man. We could have wished that the space allotted to Mr. Godwin could have allowed him to have dwelt upon the patriotic services which Zschökke has rendered to the Swiss. His labors in the cause of the people have been indefatigable, and deserve honorable mention, in all languages, and to all people. And we could also have wished that a fuller account of the peculiar nature of his tales had been given us, so that we might have judged of the rich treat that is in store for us, should the present publishers conclude to furnish us with a complete collection. We should commit a great mistake if we were to suppose that the tales are like many of those which appear in either the English or American periodicals. They are altogether of a different and a higher order. Zschökke has always written with a purpose, and that an elevated purpose. Yet it must not be understood that his writings are mere moral essays in the shape of narratives,-a species of writing in which, generally, it is difficult to say whether the story or the moral is the dullerfor he has the peculiar art of so blending his purpose with his plot, that they mutually give interest to each other. He is a profound thinker, as well as a susceptible poet, and his tales are the embodiments of his philosophy, set off with the graces of poetry. The reader for mere amusement, and the reader for instruction, are equally pleased with them; the one by the absorbing interest of the incidents, or the playfulness of his descriptions, and the other by his perfect mastery of style, his liberality of sentiment, and his keen far-reaching insight into the mysteries of life. Mr. Godwin has remarked upon the infinite variety of Zschökke, and we can assure our friends, that in this respect he does not exaggerate the merits of his author. If they will only take up the table of contents to any full collection of his lighter works, they will see that his subjects, while all-important, are very greatly diversified. In "Alamontade" for instance, and here let us say, that we are rejoiced to learn that Mr. Godwin is preparing a translation of this and other of the longer tales of Zschökke,—we have the loftiest speculations on the religious feelings of the soul, woven into one of the most thrilling personal narratives. In "Eros or concerning Love," we find beautiful dissertations on all the varieties of this most beautiful passion, written in the dignified yet genial manner of the Symposium of Plato. The "Moravian Family" is designed to reconcile us to what in Europe is a persecuted form of faith, by showing us how much there is good in it, by means of a simple and playful story. "Jonathan Frock," does the same thing for us in regard to the Jews: while in the "Settlement of Maryland" we are shown that the Roman Catholic belief is not inconsistent with the noblest charity and fervent benevolence. Then we have the "Somnambulist," one of the most exquisite productions of modern genius, |