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

COLONIAL LIBRARY. No. XL 11. Sketches of German Life. Translated by Sir A. Gordon, Bart. Part I. A more compact, cheap, portable, and generally excellent serial publication is not issued than this Library of Literature for all classes. Frcm what has already appeared, we may perceive that the prospectus originally issued from Albemarle-street is in a fair way of being realised. In the forty-one numbers which had been produced before the present 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, Barrow, 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 Francis Head, Sir John Malcolm, and the Earl of Ellesmere. Nor have the monthly volumes ht en restricted to works whose merit had been long acknowledged Others have appeared in the Home and Colonial Library. whose powers of thought, and picturesqueness of description w. 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 periodical. 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 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 ?limns 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 contained in his descriptions by the accounts given by lomini in his •"fraites de Grandes 014 rations Militaires ;" by Bignon, in his " Histoire de Franco ;" by Bow tourlin, in his " Campagnes de 1812 et 1813 ;" by Capefigue, by Mstthieu 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 attempted, for the wcrk possesses internal evidence that the neces sity 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 de) s. Nevertheless the Sketches are sparkling enough in their manner, and on topics in which the writer's patriotic prejudices are not concerned, he affords us much interesting information. At one time he tells us how the people of Dusseldorf " tore their hair, and scratched their faces, and called down execrations on the murderers," when the intelligence arrived of the execution of Louis