surprises us by writing such lines as those referred to.

There are several translations from the German, which are remarkably good. The following stanzas from "Heine" are executed with singular fidelity to the original; the translation being as literal as could possibly be desired, when clothed in the garb of English versification :

"As I each morning, past thy dwelling,
Like some unearthly traveller, flit,
It glads my heart, O, lovely maiden!
To see thee at thy casement sit.
Thou seemest, with thy dark-brown eyes,
Me curiously to watch and scan:
'Who art thou, and what aileth thee,
Thou strange, forlorn, unhappy man?'
I am a German Poet, I!

Through German-Land all widely famed;
When men speak of their greatest men,
The name I bear is also named;
And that which aileth me, my girl,

Ails many a German heart untamed; When men speak of their greatest woes, The woe feel is also named.' The more we look into this volume the more we regret there was not some judicious friend at hand to tell Mr. Fane

what ought to have been left out; for, close to something very good, we are constantly finding something very soso. "The Poet's Petition," an effusion which, from its title, will probably be read by every one who opens the book, comes under the latter designation. We cannot conceive what tempted Mr. Fane to publish such a jangling petition when he wrote it. It would have been surely sufficient to enclose the manuscript to the young ladies whose praise he so much desires, and whose censure he so much fears, and not have printed it for the public to laugh at.

We must now dismiss these "Poems," over which we have so rapidly glanced; but ere doing so, we would, in all earnestness, recommend our readers to procure and study the book for themselves. Despite those faults at which we have pointed, and other slight ones in versification, &c., which we have not time to notice, the small volume, of little more than one hundred pages, which we now close, contains, in its forty poems, more beautiful imagery, more delicate feeling, and more vivid descriptive power, than any one we have met for a long time.

MY DEAR EDITOR,-1 arrived here last night, and sit down to let you know that I am quite well. But as your readers of the Northern are probably not very anxious on this head, I suppose I had better tell you how the Germans are. If a man wants to study their character, I must premise, this is not the place to come to. Since I left London, a week or ten days ago, I have heard more of the English than of any other language; and yet I am told by every one of the natives whom I question, that the subjects of Queen Victoria are scarcer this year than they have been for many years back. Anglais is the term by which English, Irish, Scotch, and Americans are known over the French-speaking part of the Continent, and the Rhine country is such in a certain degree. I suppose that the immense number of Londoners

I came yesterday from Bonn, as far as Biberich, by steam-boat, and the railway brought me to this city. Certainly my own countrymen, were not the majority on board, for, at the early table-d'hote, there was but one English gentleman. The English carry the national habit of dining late to such an excess, that they prefer a dinner at four on the leavings of the Germans, who have the good sense to dine at one, to the early dinner at three-fourths the price. Another peculiarity of theirs is, that they don't look at the scenery

surprises us by writing such lines as those referred to.

There are several translations from the German, which are remarkably good. The following stanzas from "Heïne" are executed with singular fidelity to the original; the translation being as literal as could possibly be desired, when clothed in the garb of English versification :

"As I each morning, past thy dwelling,
Like some unearthly traveller, flit,
It glads my heart, O, lovely maiden!
To see thee at thy casement sit.
Thou seemest, with thy dark-brown eyes,
Me curiously to watch and scan:
Who art thou, and what aileth thee,
Thou strange, forlorn, unhappy man?'
I am a German Poet, I!

Through German-Land all widely famed;
When men speak of their greatest men,
The name I bear is also named;
And that which aileth me, my girl,

Ails many a German heart untamed; When men speak of their greatest woes, The woe I feel is also named."

The more we look into this volume the more we regret there was not some judicious friend at hand to tell Mr. Fane

what ought to have been left out; for, close to something very good, we are constantly finding something very soso. "The Poet's Petition," an effusion which, from its title, will probably be read by every one who opens the book, comes under the latter designation. We cannot conceive what tempted Mr. Fane to publish such a jangling petition when he wrote it. It would have been surely sufficient to enclose the manuscript to the young ladies whose praise he so much desires, and whose censure he so much fears, and not have printed it for the public to laugh at.

We must now dismiss these "Poems," over which we have so rapidly glanced; but ere doing so, we would, in all earnestness, recommend our readers to procure and study the book for themselves. Despite those faults at which we have pointed, and other slight ones in versification, &c., which we have not time to notice, the small volume, of little more than one hundred pages, which we now close, contains, in its forty poems, more beautiful imagery, more delicate feeling, and more vivid descriptive power, than any one we have met for a long time.

MY DEAR EDITOR,-1 arrived here last night, and sit down to let you know that I am quite well. But as your readers of the Northern are probably not very anxious on this head, I suppose I had better tell you how the Germans are. If a man wants to study their character, I must premise, this is not the place to come to. Since I left London, a week or ten days ago, I have heard more of the English than of any other language; and yet I am told by every one of the natives whom I question, that the subjects of Queen Victoria are scarcer this year than they have been for many years back. Anglais is the term by which English, Irish, Scotch, and Americans are known over the French-speaking part of the Continent, and the Rhine country is such in a certain degree. I suppose that the immense number of Londoners

I came yesterday from Bonn, as far as Biberich, by steam-boat, and the railway brought me to this city. Certainly my own countrymen, were not the majority on board, for, at the early table-d'hote, there was but one English gentleman. The English carry the national habit of dining late to such an excess, that they prefer a dinner at four on the leavings of the Germans, who have the good sense to dine at one, to the early dinner at three-fourths the price. Another peculiarity of theirs is, that they don't look at the scenery

through which they pass. They pretend to look at it, but the whole time they are reading what the Times calls "the useful and ubiquitous Murray," and every five minutes look up to see if they are at the right place. You heard, no doubt, of Murray. I do not want to depreciate him; but while I admit the immense utility of such a guide-book, with regard to the information it gives about routes, hotels, and objects of interest which ought to be visited, I must say that it has utterly destroyed all originality in travelling, and deprived the English of the possibility of encountering adventures or getting into scrapes. When two English travellers compare notes on their tours, their conversation is nothing but a running commentary on Murray.

The last time I was in this country, there was a steam-boat up and a steamboat down the Rhine every day. Yesterday, I am certain we passed twelve in a space of eleven hours. This prodigious increase of traffic is mainly caused by the increased number of travellers; the steamers which carry goods are a minority of the whole. The tugboats are numerous. We passed one, having in tow five large barges. This cavalcade was going through the bridge of boats at Coblentz, and by the time the last barge was through, the crowds on the bridge, at each edge of the channel, waiting till the boats were moored up alongside, were surprising. All this was very enlivening, and I think half the charm of the scenery of this river lies in the activity and life constantly circulating on its banks and between them.

You cannot expect me to say much on so stale a subject as the scenery of the Rhine. I will say this, that the forty miles of it which alone have any pretensions to beauty or magnificence, improve on acquaintance. But those who go up the river and down again, and no more, have not seen it. No one knows half the beauty of our Lough of Belfast who has not climbed to M'Art's Fort, and walked along the heights above Holywood. By parity of reason, no one, I presume, has really seen the Rhine who has not mounted the cliffs about St. Goar and Oberwesel. One disadvantage, it is true, the views there obtained would labour under-the water of the river is as

brown as potato-washings. From the deck of a vessel, the expanse of it is so foreshortened, that it hardly spoils your prospect; but from an elevation, no colour is half so glorious as the deep blue of the sea, glittering in the sun. The best porter is said to be made of Thames water; if beer were brewed at Cologne, it ought to be famous in the four quarters of the world.

Speaking of Cologne, where I was the night before last, I searched in vain through several print-shops for a picture of the cathedral in its present state. I could have bought dozens of views of it, as completed, which, I think, it never will be. It is true that it is now surrounded with scaffolding, and that some exertions are being made to finish it. But in twenty-seven years-it was in 1825 that the mania for restoration became epidemic-very little progress has been made. I am as ardent an admirer of Gothic architecture as can be found among non-professional men, but my love of the magnificent cannot blind me to the absurdity of throwing away thousands and thousands of pounds on a work with which, to use a somewhat slang expression, the spirit of the present age has no commuion. Let me not be told that the present generation has no taste for art. Its tastes are different from those of the fourteenth century, not inferior to them. The English, the most tasteless of all people, the Germans say, have at the present hour among them the most original and most highlyeducated school of landscape-painters that the world has yet seen; they have created the art, for it may be dignified with that name, of landscape-gardening; and, as a nation, they relish natural scenery to a degree that is often ridiculed, whether or not the exhibition of it is ridiculous. They are, besides, the neatest and most cleanly nation in Europe; and how there can be a love of beauty, for its own sake, in company with an indifference to dirt, I cannot conceive. Had the Cologne people exerted a little of their architectural genius on the construction of pavements and mainsewers, they might then be entitled to build Gothic churches. For my part, I do not like to look at the finest building in the world if I have to hold my nose all the while; and I can assure you that the sense of sight was not the only one by which I recognised Cologne.