Jimmy Gouge, of Miss., came next and wished to add

"And hope to pledge him many more."

But it would not do. We all cried shame, it being the unpardonable sin to speak any thing but German at an entertainment of this kind. Jimmy counted over on his fingers all the words ending in "or" of which he could think. "Mohr," a Moor, wouldn't do. "Rohr," a tube, he could do nothing with. At last, he thought of a line in the Landesvater, and added

"Wir sind ein very froher Chor."

So the thing went on, making the most perfect salamagundi you can imagine, Shearer, the obscure poet, keeping himself till the last. Old Guy, one of the steadiest of us, was dubbed "papa-gei," (a parrot,) at which we all laughed heartily. Jimmy Gouge was named Milk-James, from the quantities of that fluid in which he indulged. Lay-on-hard was known as the "beggar," from a feat which he performed when near Zittau. He ran after a carriage, holding out his hand for alms and beseeching in the choicest and most scholastic language. The occupant gave him two and a half groschen, which he expended in beer. Von Higgins was known as the "ape," from his frequent efforts to learn to pronounce that syllable in English. I was called "him of the white vest," or "three straws," the first in derision, the second in commemoration of my bed in the inn at Kamnitz. All of us received nick-names, which, among ourselves, will last as long as we live. Our way led us through the central part of the Saxon Switzerland, close under the beetling Hochstein, on the other side of which is the Wolfgang, celebrated as the principal scene in Der Freischutz, along a rippling stream and through a smiling valley, to Schandau, where, from the best hotel, we admired the Elbe, the twin hills Königstein and Lilienstein, and the many picturesque mountains which make the scenery so delightful.

Thus broke up shortly one of those parties, of which thousands traverse Germany every year, and whose adventures no participant ever forgets. I wish I could show you the photograph of us, which is now lying before me. A set of intelligent and jolly faces, exhaling "Gemüthlichkeit," (untranslatable,) to a degree of which only students' faces, in dear old Germany, are capable.

THE NEW NOVELIST.

PROFESSOR MAURICE, of Cambridge, in the opening chapters of his treatise on Social Morality, touches on the history and development of novel writing as a ready indication of the drift of men's thoughts on social relations at different periods. In "the very able and elaborate novels which were produced in the eighteenth century," as in much of cotemporary literature, the interest turned upon the distinctions and contrasts of the various classes of society, the antagonism of their standards of what was right and becoming, and the artificial relations of men. In the era introduced by Jean Jacques Rousseau, the novelist abandons what is artificial and conventional to return to what is natural and universal. "A man's a man for a' that" is the underlying conviction of the writer, to whatever class he belongs, if he is indeed to win the ear of the public, by helping men "to understand the forms of society which are found under different conditions in all classes." Especially has a new interest in the family sprung up. "Historical novels have a certain attraction; but in general the portion of such books which is domestic produces by far the most powerful effect. The strictly domestic story has become characteristic in all Europe. The morality may be of one kind or another; the family may be merely the ground-plot for the display of sensational incident: still these are found to be most startling, and therefore most agreeable to those who wish to be startled, when they are associated with outrages of one kind or another upon family order. Those who do not want such stimulants to their own feelings and fancies, and do not hold it an honest trade to mix them for others, have found in the quietest home-life material for art. All social harmonies and social contradictions (they see) may come forth in the relations of father and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, masters and servants."

If it be true that light literature reflects in this broad way the changing tones and shades of public opinion, it must be true, also, in lesser matters and in the lapse of shorter eras. Straws show the direction of breezes as readily as of gales. The novelist's profession has never been so prolific as during the last twenty-five years; every single human interest, with a few exceptions, has found expression through this ready, forcible, yet irre

sponsible medium. No religious, no political, no philosophic party of our controversial age, but has here caricatured its opponents and been caricatured in turn. In the novel, controversy is easy work all the objectionable and odious features of the rascals and fools who cannot see as you do may be nicely separated from what gives their claim to a common humanity; and then, when he has been pummelled from title-page to "Finis," his logic exploded, his manners travestied, and his morals brought into question, what redress has he? He may write another novel, and thus return the favor; but we and "our set" won't read it, and of course have no need to reply to it. The old delights of writing a scathing review, after which the patriarch Job sighed in that famous passage, "Oh that mine enemy would write a book!" are nothing to the new delights of sending forth into the Republic of Letters a novel of the true critical style-a novel with a purpose "smooth as honey, [to borrow further from Job,] but sharper than drawn swords."

Mr. Charles Dickens owes much of his success to the underlying current of controversial matter in his works. We do not undervalue his wonderful powers of grotesque description, nor his skill in reproducing in his pages the husk and outer shell of the men and women he has met; but we do claim much for the purposes of his novels--purposes which largely reflect the current of men's thoughts in the time in which his books appeared. He is generally a reformer and a disciple of Brougham. The political contests and the law courts are abused in "Pickwick;" the Court of Chancery and coroners' juries in "Bleak House;" imprisonment for debt and the Patent Office in "Little Dorrit;" prison reform and the Doctors' Commons in "David Copperfield." At our distance in time and place, we can hardly realize with what gusto these clever political caricatures were received by the reforming party in England; but a perusal of Martin Chuzzlewit will enable us to understand how some other people liked them. That marvellous picture of American life is just as true in regard to the United States as are Mr. Dickens's pictures of English life in his other novels; that is, all are gross and unscrupulous caricatures of the grotesque order.

"Dickens has become a classic," we are told; and the words are true to the fullest extent, and in its double sense. His best works have won their place in the literature of England; and,

also, (for this, too, is implied in the term classic,) he is a thing of the past. He will never again stir the blood of England and America by the gall of his pen, nor terrify venerable and respectable "barnacles" by his weekly numbers, as Anthony Trollope portrays him in that cleverest of counter-caricatures, "The Warden."

and as work after work comes from his pen, the new public look on in stupid wonder as if Addison were arisen from the dead to continue the Spectator. Grotesque wit, clever caricatures, keen mimicry, are here as of old, but the life is not here. The generation has passed out of living sympathy with the writer, and we only regard him with a faint antiquarian interest. It has been stirred by new thoughts which he has not felt; it is agitated by contending purposes and desires which find no reflection in his breast. Let him read us "Copperfield" and " Paul Dombey," if he will; but as for his "Great Expectations," "Mutual Friend," and "Edwin Drood"-faugh! they are a weariness to the flesh.

The age is no longer merely a politico-reforming nor a socialistic age. Its "sensations" are not of the Henry Brougham sort, and not an idea above Brougham's has Mr. Dickens ever given utterance to. It is especially a theological age. Its Trollopes and Oliphants must tell us of the Church and her influence upon society-upon her own servants at the altar. Colenso, Darwin, Ecce Homo, and essays and reviews have taken the place of Brougham and Macaulay, as the circulating libraries can testify. Even science and politics must bend in this same direction. Never since the close of the Thirty Years' War have the politics of Europe been so largely mixed up with questions of religion. Never since the days of Paracelsus have the contacts and antagonisms of science and theology been so keenly felt. The generation has been permeated by the thought of Carlyle, Hare, Arnold, Ruskin; it has learned in some measure the lesson of earnestness; the subjects of the dinner-table and the reception-room are those that their fathers tabooed as necessarily confined to the church and the convocation. Mr. Dickens knows nothing of all this; cares nothing for it; is not even able to caricature it with his wonted cleverness. The keenest criticism of this generation upon his writings was the expression of the wish that some one

would introduce him to a decent clergyman. We do not charge Mr. Dickens with irreligion; if we did, many passages in his works (in "Little Dorrit" and his "Christmas Stories" especially) would refute the charge; but, in regard to the whole topic, he stands on a level with a generation that is past, and the general tenor of his stories is of a sort to deprive us of that trust in man which helps us to a true trust in God. From the Christian point of view, his "Oliver Twist" is simply abominable.

In contrast to all this, take the novels of " George Eliot," (Mrs. Lewes,) a follower of Comte, the translator of Strauss and Feuerbach. She has no faith in any religion save as a purely human product of the mind and the affections, which properly belongs to an age less advanced than our own age of science. Yet she has written "Tales of Clerical Life;" her "Adam Bede" is a study of Methodism in its beginnings, the Dinah Morris who preaches on the green and marries Adam Bede being a direct ancestor of George Eliot herself. Only from her "Romola" can the English reader obtain a fair estimate of Savonarola, the great Dominican prophet of Florence, and of his influence on the times. Even the worldliness of the farmers and the farmers' wives in the "Mill on the Floss" is to her " a Variation of Protestantism unknown to Bossuet." Few will forget the sturdy little preacher of " Felix Holt," or that passage of a sermon (on the text, "And all the people said 'Amen'") whose composition Mrs. Holt interrupted:

"My brethren, do you think that great shout was raised by Israel by each man's waiting to say 'Amen' till his neighbors had said 'Amen?' Do you think there will ever be a great shout for the right the shout of a nation as of one man, rounded and whole, like the voice of an archangel, that bound together all the listeners of earth and heaven-if every Christian of you peeps round to see what his neighbors in good coats are doing, or else puts his hat up before his face that he may shout and never be heard? But this is what you do: when the servant of God stands up to deliver his message, do you lay your souls beneath the word as you set out your plants beneath the falling rain? No; one of you sends his eyes to all corners; he smothers his soul with small questions, What does Brother Y think?' 'Is this doctrine high enough for Brother Z?' 'Will the church members be pleased ?' And another-"

Here Mrs. Holt interrupted the sermon. Of this scene there is no likeness in all that Charles Dickens has written: it belongs to our generation, not to his.