364 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



who mistake animal spirits for wit, and would fain spring into the lap of the 

 public, with all the asinine activity of the donkey in the fable : we have, 

 likewise, sundry ponderous persons whose good sense and solidity of under- 

 standing are dreadfully undeniable ; who put a solemn veto upon a pun, and 

 resist the innovation of wit to the death of all who may have purchased 

 their solemnities by mistake : but Elia gone " farewell, the tranquil 

 mind " 



" The beautiful is vanished, and returns not." 



Farewell ! thou most delightful of modern essayists ; and peace, happiness, 

 and honour be upon thee ! 



LIBRARY OP ROMANCE. VOL. 2. SCHINDERHANNES, THE ROBBER OF 

 THE RHINE. BY LEITCH RITCHIE. LONDON. SMITH, ELDER, AND Co., 

 1833. 



MR. RITCHIE commenced his hazardous undertaking with spirit, and 

 appears determined to persevere with equal vigour. He has given us a 

 romance at least equal to the first, and we think that if he continues in this 

 manner, the public will have reason to be grateful to him for having emanci- 

 pated them from the tyrannous thraldom of the three-volume tribe. It must 

 be confessed, that the owls who once laboured in their nightly vocation for 

 the Minerva press, did not appear to have imbibed much wisdom from their 

 patroness, but to say the truth, the wise men of the west have not been 

 found much better than their oriental brethren. Instead of the gleaming 

 stiletto, we are now presented with a silver fork; in the dreary corridor of 

 the now obsolete romance, and the extended sentimentality of the modern 

 novel, are equally long passages, both of which lead to nothing. 



Mr. Ritchie has avoided these impertinences, and has written a romance 

 just long enough to keep the interest alive from the commencement to the 

 end ; and with excitement and mystery, drawn from more legitimate, and, 

 in his hands, more available sources than heretofore has been successfully at- 

 tempted. Were we to be very critical, we should, perhaps, say that there is 

 too much incident and continuous action ; and that from never dwelling upon 

 the events as they occur, a feeling of huddling and confusion is created, 

 attributable more, perhaps, to the incapacity of the reader to follow the 

 events themselves, than to any inherent defect in the work itself. 



Upon the whole, considering the length of the work, or rather its short- 

 ness ; and taking into account the fact that with such materials an author ne- 

 cessarily debars himself from shining, or exhibiting himself in parts his work 

 being to be judged of in the mass ; we consider " Schinderhannes" to be not 

 only the best novel Mr. Ritchie has written, but the very best, in that line, that 

 has been produced for years. We wish him every success, not only as a 

 very deserving and clever writer, in which capacity we have just viewed 

 him, but as an instrument to carry on extensive reforms in the world of 

 novels and as a good genius to the long-suffering readers of them. 



A COMPENDIOUS GERMAN GRAMMAR. BY ADOLPHUS BERNAYS. LONDON, 

 TREUTTEL, WURTZ, AND Co. 1833. 



AT a period when the study of German is so extensive as it is at present 

 in this country, the particular merits of such works as those of Professor 

 Bernays's cannot long remain unknown or unappreciated. It is, accord- 

 ingly, a pleasing duty we have to fulfil, in the notice of a second edition of 

 his Grammar. The many alterations and amendments which Mr. Bernays 



