finally prospered, Europe would have been plunged into its ancient night of barbarism and tyranny: on the side of the Protestants were arrayed the princes of Navarre and Condé. The family of Valois, and the princes of Lorraine and Guise represented the League. Elizabeth of England, and Philip of Spain, were the allies of the respective parties. Finally the League was broken, the cause of civil and religious liberty was saved, and he who, under Providence, effected the deliverance of Europe, was Henry the Fourth.

The Devil's Elixir; from the German of Hoffman. 2 vols. 12mo. London. Cadell.

THE rage for German horrors is again on the ascendant, after an obscuration of a quarter of a century. But the popular monster "shows his front" under another aspect. It formerly assailed us under the shape of tragedy and tale, both extravagant, and yet both adapted to catch the popular eye by their vigour, their novelty, and that wild and livid mixture of splendour and gloom that belongs to the turbulent imaginations of the north.

Monk Lewis was the great author, transcriber, and translator of the school among us;

"A decent priest where frenzy was the God,"

but the folly or the inspiration had its day, or rather its night; and the rising of a richer and brighter hour of English poetry and romance extinguished the sullen blaze of the German muse in England.

Yet it would be idle to deny that in the works of some of the abler Germans there are evidences of power deserving of deep and permanent admiration; that, mingled with much palpable puerility, there is occasionally remarkable force and grandeur; and that, defying and outraging nature, as they do in almost every instance of their touching upon common life, they follow with strange and solemn fidelity those wilder states of human feeling into which the unhappy few are urged by violent passion, overwhelming despair, or preternatural terror.

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This German invasion has now approached us in the shape music. Der Freyschütz now carries every thing before it through all the theatres of England; and Rossini with his deli

cate and ætherial style has been vanquished and pent up by this stern sorcery, as Ariel was by Sycorax.

When the Freyschütz shall have gone its course, we should not be surprized to see the story of "The Devil's Elixir" taking its place, and chaining down the ears of the multitude with ferocious harmony.

To have the experiment tried in its full strength, it is to be regretted that the author did not live to see the revival of his country's muse among us, and set his own drama to music; a task to which he was probably perfectly competent; for with that extraordinary universality, which is the fruit only of German diligence, Hoffman was not merely a jurist and judge in the courts of his native country, Prussia, and a novelist of, as we shall perceive, very peculiar and original power, but a scientific musician and composer. He unfortunately died about four years since, with all his ambition in full glow, in the most vigorous season of life, and in the midst of projects and prospects of literary and public distinction.

"In that yeare, the Deville was alsoe seene walking publiclie in the streetes of Berline."

Such is the motto of these volumes. The author has not thought proper to state the precise hour at which Berlin had the honor to possess so remarkable a promenader, and we perfectly coincide with him in the opinion that no extreme accuracy was requisite; for, if we are to judge from effects, his satanic majesty has not confined his visits either to any one time, nor exclusively to any one city; but has, during a considerable period, extended his peregrinations over the whole of Germany; where, though his presence may not have been so sensible as the motto would imply, he has been singularly present to the optics of the literati. There is a strange anomaly in the brains of a German man of letters; in his lucubrations on matter-of-fact topics, he is among the plainest, dryest, and dullest of the earth-born; yet, the moment he touches fiction, he seems to desert the beaten track; and, instead of invoking celestial aid, addresses his supplication to the nether realms, and sips inspiration from Styx instead of Helicon. The prince of darkness appears to be an indispensable personage in his works of imagination, which (like devil'd biscuits to a set of tippling gourmets) are swallowed with greater avidity the more strongly they are impregnated with the condimentum infernale. We do not make these observations in dispraise of the work now before us; for, "to give the devil his due," it is written

with much power, and conveys, beneath its wild and fantastic garb, an important moral. The manner in which it is translated reflects high credit on the individual by whom that task has been performed. He manifestly possesses a thorough acquaintance with the German language, and has, consequently, transfused the spirit, as well as the substance, of his author's pages into his own, so happily as to impart to them the freshness and vigour of an original production. In the translator's preface we find the following information.

"It is fair to observe that the author's design, in the present instance, was by no means to make a regular novel or romance, but to present his readers with a grotesque and half-ironical, half-serious sketch, in the manner of the celebrated Callot, an artist well known (since the year 1620) in France and Germany, though his best works have always been rare in this country. There are but few persons who have not, at some time or other, seen specimens of his diableries, or, at least, heard them described: and, as the translator formerly said, with regard to his fragments from various German tragedies, that they would be best appreciated by those who were well acquainted with our old English dramatists, so he may now confidently add that the bizarreries of The Devil's Elixir' will be best understood by any one who happens to possess, in his portfolio, a good selection from the 1380 engravings said to have been left by Jacques Callot, who died, aged only 43, in 1636."

However much the possession of the diableries in question might conduce to the more perfect enjoyment of the tissue of romantic adventures related in these volumes, we deem the perusal of them capable of affording much pleasure without such aid; in support of which opinion we shall lay before our readers a brief outline of the story, interspersed with some specimens of the style in which it is narrated. The hero of the tale commences with the following description of the scenes of his childhood.

My life, from my fourth to my sixteenth year, was spent at a lonely farm-house on the banks of the river Saale, near the Cistertian monastery of Kreuzberg. The house, though not large, had once been the residence of a baronial family that was now extinct, and of whose representatives strange stories were narrated. Of course, therefore, their castle was gloomy: of course also said to be haunted, and its immediate environs were in keeping with the character of the principal mansion.

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Being an only child, I was left much alone, and it is therefore not to be wondered at that, even at this early age, I should have exemplified an undue developement of the faculty of imagination, and

betrayed singularities of thought and conduct, with proportionate de fects in the more useful qualities of prudence and judgment. It is requisite to observe, however, that I was not born in this neighbourhood, but at the convent of the Holy Lime-tree, in Prussia, of which place, even at this day, I seem to retain the most accurate reminiscence. That I should be able to describe scenes and events which happened in my earliest infancy needs not be considered inexplicable, as I have heard so much of them from the narratives of others, that an impression was, of course, very powerfully made on my imagination, or rather the impressions once made have never been suffered to decay, like cyphers carved on a tree, which some fond lover fails not, at frequent intervals, to revisit and renovate. Of my father's rank or station in the world I know little or nothing. From all that I have heard he must have been a person of considerable experience and knowledge of life; yet, by various anecdotes, which have only of late become intelligible, it appears that my parents, from the enjoy ment of affluence and prosperity, had sunk, all at once, into a state of the bitterest poverty and comparative degradation. I learn, moreover, that my father, having been once enticed by the stratagems of the arch enemy into the commission of a mortal sin, wished, when in his latter years, the grace of God had brought him to repentance, to expiate his guilt by a penitential pilgrimage from Italy to the convent of the Holy Lime-tree in the distant and cold climate of Prussia. On their laborious journey thither, his faithful partner in affliction perceived for the first time, after several years of a married life, that she was about to become a mother, and, notwithstanding his extreme poverty, my father was, by this occurrence, greatly rejoiced, as it tended to the fulfilment of a mysterious vision, in which the blessed St Bernard had appeared and promised him forgiveness and consolation through the birth of a son.

"In the convent of the Lime-tree my father was attacked by severe illness, and as, notwithstanding his debility, he would, on no account, forego any of the prescribed devotional exercises, his disease rapidly gained ground, till, at last, in mysterious conformity to the words of St. Bernard, he died, consoled and absolved, almost at the same mo ment in which I came into the world.

"With my first consciousness of existence dawned on my perceptions the beautiful imagery of the cloister and celebrated church of the Lime-tree. Even at this moment methinks the dark oak wood yet rustles around me; I breathe once more the fragrance of the luxuriant grass and variegated flowers which were my cradle. No noxious insect, no poisonous reptile is found within the limits of that sanctuary. Scarce even the buzzing of a fly, or the chirping of a grasshopper interrupts the solemn stillness, diversified only by the pious songs of the monks, who walk about, in long solemn processions, accompanied by pilgrims of all nations, waving their censers of consecrated perfume.

"Even now I seem yet vividly to behold, in the middle of the

church, the stem of the Lime-tree, cased in silver, that far-famed tree on which supernatural visitants had placed the miraculous and wonderworking image of the Virgin, while, from the walls and lofty dome, the well-known features of the saints and angels were once more smiling upon me.

"In like manner it appears to me also as if I had once beheld, in the same place, the mysterious figure of a tall, grave and austerelooking man, of whom I was given to understand that he could be no other but the far-famed Italian painter, who had, in times long past, been here professionally employed. No one understood his language, nor was his real history known to any one of the monks. This much only is certain, that he had, in a space of time incredibly short, filled the church with its richest ornaments, and then, as soon as his work was finished, immediately disappeared, no one could tell how, or whither.

"Not less vividly could I paint the portrait of a venerable pilgrim, who carried me about in his arms, and assisted me in my childish plays of searching for all sorts of variegated moss and pebbles in the forest. Yet, though the apparition of the painter was certainly real, that of the pilgrim, were it not for its influence on my after life, would seem to me but a dream." Vol. I. p. 1.

He here relates that, one day, this personage brought with him a boy of uncommon beauty, and about our hero's equal in years, who passed a short time in infantine amusements with him, and the termination of whose visit is thus described.

"The old pilgrim soon afterwards prepared for departure. For this one day,' said he to my mother, I have been permitted to bring you this miraculous child, in order that, by sympathy, he might kindle the flames of divine love in your son's heart; but I must now take him from you, nor shall you ever behold either of us, in this world, again. Your son will prove, by nature, admirably endowed with many valuable gifts; nor will the lessons which have now been impressed on his mind be ever wholly effaced. Though the passions of his sinful father should boil and ferment in his veins, yet, by proper education, their influence might be repressed, and he might even raise himself to be a valiant champion of our holy faith. Let him therefore be a monk!' With these words he disappeared, and my mother could never sufficiently express how deep was the impression that his warning had left upon her mind. She resolved, however, by no means to place any restraint on my natural inclinations, but quietly to acquiesce in whatever destination Providence and the limited education she was able to bestow might seem to point out for me." Vol. I. p. 8.

The narrative then proceeds :

“The interval between this period and the time when my mother,