The Foreign Quaterly Review. Vol. XXIX. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842. Excerpt: ... Art. II.--Fragments from German Prose Writers. Translated by Sarah Austin. Illustrated with Notes. London. 1841. Some have experienced, and all can imagine, the pleasure of waking in a new long-desired country, with vague wonder and uncertainty how that foreign life would present itself, and then receiving its first greetings from a fair smiling figure, who presents us with a nosegay of unknown flowers, and looks our welcome to the fields they grew in. Such must be to many English readers the interest and joy imparted by this rich and graceful, as well as truly friendly offering; which is at once a garland of fresh flowers, and a string of lasting pearls. Perhaps no other prose literature but that of Greece could have furnished the materials of a volume at once so wise, so bright, and so varied; and those old Hellenic books, nearer than any modern can be to the age of primeval awe, and combining, as no other, childish liveliness with mature thought, yet want some of the nobler, the very noblest elements of our Christian world, and the clear complete knowledge of nature and history, which in our time we require, and which the Germans, beyond all other people, have realized. In truth, resembling the Greeks far more than do the writers of any other nation as to elevation and fulness, they have for us the incomparable merit that they are the children and teachers of our own time. At all events, whatever may or may not be the value of German literature, it is plain that Mrs. Austin is, of all English persons, the one who has best succeeded in making its worth clear and pleasant to merely English readers. Mr. Carlyle, with his deep spirit and prophetic originality, has been, and will remain we suppose for ever, the great hierophant, disclosing to prepared minds...