of the everlasting brush, have made him magnetic for all harsh and unwelcome influences, and the snuffing of a candle has its martyrology of horrors for his excitable sense.

"Lenette, under the influence of opposing forces,-his exhortations and her own inclinations, endeavoured to steer her course, the woman's diagonal, and devised the religious interim, that is, the plan of leaving off brushing and scouring as long as he sat at his writing; but, if he chanced to step for two minutes to the piano, to the window, or across the threshold, she immediately caught up again the cleaning implements and polishing machines of the room.

"Siebenkäs soon became aware of this wretched alternation, this relieving of the guard between his pen and her broom; and the knowledge that she was lying in wait and watching for his every move, troubled him and his ideas terribly.

"At first he exhibited very great patience, as great as a husband ever possesses, that is to say, a short one; but, after reflecting for some time in silence, that both he and the public were mutual sufferers by this room-cleaning, and that an entire posterity was dependent on a broom, which could work quite as conveniently in the afternoon, if he only insisted on the execution of the laws, all the anger that he had smothered suddenly burst forth; he became quite mad, that is to say, madder than he was before; and, rushing up to her, exclaimed, 'What the devil, again! I have found you out; you are always on the watch for me to get up; rather kill me at once, in mercy: hunger and vexation will destroy me, as it is, before Easter! By heaven! I can't comprehend it! She sees so clearly that my book is our store-closet, from which many a supply of bread is to be dispensed, and yet she holds my hand the whole morning, so that I can do nothing. I have already been sitting ever so long upon the nest, and all I have hatched is the sheet E, wherein I have described the ascent of Justice into Heaven-Lenette! ah, Lenette !'

"Whatever I do,' said she, is sure to be wrong: then pray let me sweep the room properly, like other women.' She asked him, innocently, how it happened that he was not disturbed by the squeaking inharmonious progress of the book binder's boy; he was all day long (these are my words, not hers,) playing voluntaries and Alexander's Feasts on the child's-fiddle; and why he had been able to endure the late chimney sweeping?

"Being unable to explain, in a few hurried words, the immense difference that existed between them, he preferred getting angry again, and said, So I am to make you long speeches here gratis, while I am losing yonder one dollar after another!'

"Heavens! thunder-and-'ounds! the civil code and the Roman pandects forbid a coppersmith even to enter a street where a professor is at work; and shall my wife be harder than an old lawgiver-yea; even become the coppersmith herself? She, Lenette? I will positively consult the Schulrath on the subject.'

"This threat was of considerable effect. The produce of the Trinity dollar actually arrived before the Schulrath; an instance of polite attention which no one would have expected from so learned and accomplished a gentleman. My readers will, doubtless, be as much pleased as if they were Lenette's husband, to hear that all this afternoon she was an angel. The work of her hands made as little noise as the work of her fingers, or sewing; she even put off doing several things that were not absolutely necessary, and accompanied a sister gossip, who had brought a divine head-dress to be altered, all the way down stairs, not so much for the sake of politeness as of discussing over again, below stairs, a few more times, the most important points already agreed upon between them; and this, with delicate consideration, of the Advocate's hearing. This touched the old noise-hunter, and took him by his weak and tender side, his heart. For a long time he tried to find some way of thanking her, until, at last, he discovered a

new one.

out

"Listen, child,' said he, as he took her hand, with inexpressible kindness, would it not be acting like a reasonable creature if I were to decide on writing my satires in the evening; that is, if the husband were to create, when the wife was not washing? Just fancy, in anticipation, what a life of nectar and ambrosia it would be! We should sit opposite each other, lighted by the same candle; and while you were pricking with the point of your needle, I should be pricking with the point of my satire. The artisans in the house would have left off hammering, and be drinking their beer; cap-bringers would not come to gossip at so late an hour; and, besides, as the evenings will naturally be getting longer, my time for composing will, in consequence, also be lengthened. What think you of this? or rather, what do you say to such a new plan of life? And you must take into especial consideration that we are in cash just now, and that the Trinity dollar comes à propos to recoin us all.'

“Oh, most charming!' answered she; and then in the morning I can do every thing as beseems a good housewife.'

"Yes,' he added, in the morning I can proceed quietly with my writing, and resume in the evening what I left off in the morning.'

"The evening of nectar and ambrosia really arrived, and was without its parallel in all the evenings that had preceded it. A young married couple at one table, with one candle, seated opposite each other in harmless and quiet occupation, may indeed be said to know what happiness is. He was full of conceits and kisses, she full of smiles; and when she handled the frying-pan no sound fell upon his ear louder than that made by the plying of her needle.

"When people,' said he, in great delight, ' earn double wages by one candle, they need not, as far as I can see, confine themselves to a miserable dip, as thin as a worm, by which one can see nothing but the stupid candle itself. To-morrow we will set up a mouldcandle.'

"As I assume some merit to myself in this history for selecting and communicating only events of general interest and importance, I shall

VOL. VI.-NO. I.

E

merely mention that in the evening the mould candle appeared, and kindled a feeble strife; for the Advocate took occasion, on its appearance, to bring forward again his new theory of lighting candles. He held the somewhat schismatic belief, that every candle, but particularly thick ones, ought to be lighted at the thick end, instead of the thin end, and that it was for this very purpose there were always two wicks projecting from every candle.

In favour of this law of burning,' he added, I need only direct the attention of every sensible woman to the self-evident fact, that as a candle burns down it always grows thicker at the lower extremity, just as consuming debauchees are swollen out below by fat and dropsy. Now if a candle is lighted at the top, the thin end we have below, a useless overflowing lump of tallow, a stump and stalk in the candlestick; while, on the contrary, by lighting the thick end first, how beautifully and symmetrically the melted fat of the thicker half wraps itself by degrees round the thinner one, feeding it, as it were, and giving it proportion !'

"Lenette opposed to his reasons a forcible argument,-Shaftesbury's touchstone of truth, ridicule :- Verily,' said she, 'every one who chanced to come in of an evening and saw my candle stuck topsyturvy in the candlestick, would burst out laughing, and the wife would have to bear all the blame.'

"To close this candle-strife, therefore, an agreement was drawn up between them, wherein it was mutually established that he should light his candle at the bottom, she hers at the top; and with regard to the common candle, which was in itself thick at the top, he consented to endure the interim, viz.: the false lighting.

"But the devil, who always blest and crossed himself at such things, managed to shuffle the cards in such a way that the Advocate, this very evening, chanced to stumble upon the touching anecdote of the younger Pliny's wife, who held the lamp for her husband whilst he was writing.

"Now it came into the Advocate's head that it would be a glorious thing, and save him from many interruptions, if Lenette would always snuff the candle for him during his joyful composition of the Selection from the above-mentioned Devil's Papers.'

"Most gladly,' answered she; and for the first fifteen or twenty minutes every thing went on brilliantly. But soon afterwards he beckoned with his chin sideways towards the candle, as if with his fore-fingers to remind her to snuff it again; for the same purpose he quietly touched the snuffers with the tip of his pen; afterwards he pushed the candlestick slightly towards her, and said gently, The light!' But the affair soon became more serious, inasmuch as he began to attend to the obscuration of his paper, and was more impeded than assisted in his progress by the very snuffers from which, in Lenette's hand, he had promised himself as much advantage as Hercules received from Crabs' claws in his battle with the Hydra.

"The miserable meagre twin thoughts, the snuffer and the snuff,

danced impudently, hand in hand, up and down every letter of his most biting satires, and exhibited themselves before him. Lenette !' he soon repeated, 'prithee amputate the stupid black stump, for the benefit of both!'

"Have I forgotten it?'

said she, and hastily snuffed the candle."

With this extract we must finish: once under the fascinations of Paul, and the moment of escape is not a matter predicable by any clairvoyant living. You must tear yourself away bodily, and by main force. We think, moreover, that the transcendentalism of the second volume, in which is exhibited the manner of making a man dead-alive, for high psychological purposes, may be safely abandoned to the digestive faculties of more dura ilia than belong to the majority of Review-readers, without help or introduction on our part. Likewise the scene with Leibgeber (a very amusing, but most marvellously mystical personage, alleged to be the embodiment of all the most unaccountable oddities of the Fichtean philosophy, which Paul had earnestly studied, and mastered so far as to write what proved he had some sort of understanding for the system-the Clavis Fichtiana)—these, and other topics in the second volume of the book before us, we pass, for want of time and space to enter upon them in right earnest. We repudiate the ungentle office of sitting cross-legged over the nativities of any man's bantlings, and of Jean Paul's (save the mark!) we would not take knife in hand to cut the throat -but rather to sever the cord, and speed the new comer on its journey of life. Upon a future occasion some incidents in the life of Jean Paul may seduce us into an attempt at something like a brief sketch of his career, and the more minute features of his relationship with Herder and his wife, and the other great Spirits of his day. Also a Catalogue raisonné of the score of Werterized Ladies (one of whom, at eighteen, threw herself into the Rhine for him, anno ætatis suæ fifty!) who tumbled into the most unutterable love for this idol of all the women who approached him, with other points of his history, may offer additional topics of interest. Meanwhile, to our conclusion. Mr. Noel has wisely, we think, fashioned his book of that loveable size, the small octavo, in which our neighbours of France delight to remodel, at the present day, the best books in their language. With the "Voyage" of Xavier le Maistre, the "Picciola" of Saintine, and the rest of the Undying Ones, "Siebenkäs" comes forth, rehabilimented in a sort of "regulation cut," of exterior appropriate as it is piquant. One sees that our Redacteur is a man in

whom the "harmonies of fitness all do meet; " with a special calling for the kind of work he has taken in hand, and so accurately and elegantly accomplished: for let it not be overlooked, that he has rescued Jean Paul from the imputation of incomprehensibleness and obscurity, (qualities that never truly belonged to him,) and exhibited to the world the way in which an immortal writer in one tongue should be transfused into another, by cultivating the translator's powers, and studying, right long and earnestly, all the graces of a simple style, to practise them with the classic polish of a Goldsmith, and the facile energy of a Defoe. By some it will be considered, and not without cause, that a deficiency is apparent in the want of what no translation of Paul should be without-a few notes for the benefit of the English reader, in illustration of the meaning of the functions in life of the various characters; in all future translations from this author's works we will

hope to see this desideratum cared for, that nothing may be wanting to the perfect naturalisation amongst us, of the wondrous aλos-Kоoμoç-man, Jean Paul der Einzige.