On this page
-
Text (2)
-
NOTICES OF BOOKS. - 131
-
FOREIGN MTERATURE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
4.—Tjie National Magazine. January, Febr...
has a quaint , half-comic , half-tragic air which reminds one of Hood , and which will even stand against such a comparison . ' The Court
Historian , ' by the same author , is in a different style , equally clever . But we must cease to turn over pages , where , among articles good ,
bad , and indifferent , there are so many of the former , that it will be shorter to say at once that the moderate sum of tenpence may
be very profitably invested , and a judgment formed hy the reader
for himself .
Notices Of Books. - 131
_NOTICES OF BOOKS . - 131
Foreign Mterature.
FOREIGN MTERATURE .
5 . —Aus America , JErfahrungen , Beisen , und _Studien . Von Julius Frobel . ( Studies , Experiences , and Travels in America . By Julius Frobel . )
Leipsic : Weber . London : Williams and Norgate . In the year—not so much of grace as of hope—1848 , the German
Parliament , on whose meeting so many high but airy castles had been built , was , as our readers are aware , in brief space dispersed
to the four winds of heaven . Mr . Julius Frobel , a distinguished member of that assembly , was blown over to America , a country
which he had long greatly desired to study , on the ground of its being the most eminently practical one in the world , and therefore
the fittest to afford an antidote to the most besetting sin of his fatherland .
Like so many of his countrymen of the present day , he had become weary of what he calls " fruitless idealism "—disgusted
with pen and ink , to the extent of not being able to prevail on himself even to keep a journal—and with a ravenous appetite for " facts , "
even though they should be coarse and stupid facts , so that they were but independent of the system of critics and sophists .
We cannot , nevertheless , help thinking that his first step in the new country savoured a good deal more of the idealist than of the
matter-of-fact man he desired to become ; for while his American friends were exerting themselves to obtain for him a position fitted
to his talents , and in accordance with all his previous habits of life , he thought proper incontinently to convert himself into a
soapboiler , greatly to the disgust of the friends aforesaid . When a few days afterwards he met one of them—a distinguished New York
advocate—and took the opportunity of mentioning the matter , and hoping that his new occupations would not be likely to interfere
with their friendship , the answer was , " No—but you must not forget that when you have become a soapboiler you will be confined to
the society of persons belonging to a similar sphere of life . " " ' Then , ' be said accused I , ' you of Americans ' have stronger social prejudices than we in
Europe " 'It can maybe so , ' he replied . ; ' but we have as much right to our prejudices as le have to theirs
other peop . '
-
-
Citation
-
English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1858, page 131, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041858/page/59/
-