The Sun. — 1847-03-15 (London, England)

LITERATURE.  es see? si.,l Y s ep; r es r ILB f%o. X Shttc;les ,g- 111 Life. Tran.Niatcd by Sir A. Gordon, Bait. Part I. A mere compact, cheap, purtaile, and generally ex- I cellent sEriai publication is nut i-sued than this Library of Literieu e for all climes. From le hat has already I I appeared. we may perceive that the pie spectus originally issued from Albemarle-street is in a fair way of being realised. In the forty-cne numb( rs which kid been produced before the presk nt one had passed through the printing press, we have selections from the writings of many distinguished authors ; among others may be mentioned Washington Irving, Heber, Southey, Borrow, Borrow, Drinkwater, and Darwin. And several of the most accomplished aristocrats have embellished its pages with their abilities : in proof whereof we may enumerate Lady Duff Gordon, Lord Mahon, Sir Freueis Head, Sir Jobu Malcolm, and the Earl ce Ellesmere. Nor have the monthly volumes been restricted to works whose merit had been long acknowhdged Others have appeared in the Home and Colonial Library. whose powers of thought, and picturesqueness of description wi re previously unknown : ex. gr. the inimitable Hermann Melville's Visit to the Marquesas Islands. With scarcely a single exception, we have found the utmost discrimination apparent in the selection of the various compositions comprised in the periodcal. For almost the first time since that periodical was undertaken, we have found a total ' absence of discrimination in the work now lying under consideration, translated from the German original by the facile and accurate pen of Sir A. Gordon. We regret this the more, as it is calculated to warp the minds of those readers who are so far unfamiliar with the more truthful narratives of the events therein recorded, as to i be liable to be the victims of a bold and shameless deception. These "Sketches of German Life" purport to afford glimpses of the war of liberation in Germany. They are, however, glimpses as unreal, but not quite as fraught with a mystic wisdom, as the phantasms and tableau vivans beheld on Christmas Eve in the orgies of the subterranean goblins by Gabriel Grub, of whom most readers wot in the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. " Scenes" they are called " from the war of liberation in Germany." It is needless to ask the translator if he has corrected the statements containedn his descriptions by the accounts given by lomini ."Traites de Grandes 016 rations Militaires ;" by Bignon, in his " Ilistoire de France ;" by Bout tourlin, in his " Campagnes de 1812 et 1813 ;" by Capefigue, by Matthieu Dumas, by Baron Fain, by Lebaume, and a multitude of other historians. It is needless, we repeat it, to ask whether this emendation has ever been at'empted, for the work possesses internal evidence that the neces city of such an emendation has probably never crossed the imagination of Sir A. Gordon. As nothing of the kind is visible in the production before us, so very naturally is it replete with misstatements and misrepresentations enough to render Colonel Mitchell happy for the rest of his valuable days- Nevertheless the Sketches are sparkling enough in their manut r, and on topics in which the writer's patriotic prejudices Lre not concerned, he affords us much interesting inf inflation. At one time be tells us how the people of Dusseldorf " tore their hair, and scratched their fecee, and called down execrations on the murderers," when the intelligence arrived, of the execution of Louis