Till in the garden-ground of peace But no! the spring I may not see I am an exile, and must flee, Alone in the wide world to roam. -Translation of BASKERVILLE. THE LANSQUENET'S SONG AT THE FAIR. Each with most rapture, his own doth behold; This one his maiden, and that one his gold. Others may strive for possessions of gold, Were I beggar, thou rich and of birth, Want also maketh me equal to you, Wherefore so mournful? Dost deem it amiss, Keep it I will not, 'twould bring me no gain; -Translation of BASKERVILLE. GERMAN NATIONAL WEALTH. Hurra! hurra! hurra! hurra ! We're off unto America! What shall we take to our new land? Heaps of tax and budget rolls; Or when we to the New World come, Hurra! hurra! hurra! hurra! What shall we take to our new land? Or when we to the New World come, Hurra! hurra! hurra! hurra! What shall we take to our new land? Or when to the New World we come, Hurra! hurra! hurra! hurra! What shall we take to our new land? Nine hundred and ninety thousand chests. Hurra! hurra! hurra! hurra! We're off unto America! What shall we take to our new land? All sorts of things from every hand! Receipts for tax, toll, christening, wedding, and funeral ; Passports and wonder-books great and small; Plenty of rules for censors' inspections, And just three million police-directions. -Translation of BASKERVILLE. VOL. XIII.-23 HOFFMANN, ERNST THEODOR WILHELM, a German romanticist, born at Königsberg, Prussia, January 24, 1776; died in Berlin, June 25, 1822. His father was a man of talent, but irregular in his habits; his mother was an invalid. The marriage was unhappy, and in 1782 the parents separated, the elder Hoffmann going to Isterberg as a judge, and his wife returning to her mother's house with their son. The aged grandmother was virtually an invalid, and seldom left her room. A bachelor uncle endeavored to train the boy in his own habits of accuracy and precision. Young Hoffmann was first sent to the German Reformed School of Königsberg, where he neglected his lessons, but applied himself to music and drawing. From school he entered the University of Königsberg, studied law, graduated in 1795, and while waiting for practice, gave lessons in music and painting. He also wrote two novels, Cornaro and Der Geheimnissvolle, for which he was unable to find a publisher. In 1796 he went to Glogau as assistant to an uncle, a lawyer. He now studied law assiduously, passed his second examination in 1798, and became Referendary in the Supreme Court at Berlin. Having passed his final examination qualifying him for the office of judge in the highest courts of Prussia, he was recommended as Councillor in the Supreme Court of Posen. Here he led a dissipated life. At length he exe cuted a number of caricatures, satirizing the society of Posen. These were distributed at a masquerade ball, by a friend disguised as an Italian hawker of pictures. As Hoffmann's cleverness at caricature was well known, his authorship of the drawings was immediately guessed, and the indignation against him was so strong that his appointment as Councillor to the Court of Posen was exchanged for one at Plock, on the Vistula. Thither he went with his young Polish wife, and there he remained for two years, devoting his leisure to the study of music and Italian poetry. In 1804 he was transferred to Warsaw, where he became conductor of the orchestra. After the fall of Warsaw he sent his wife and children to Posen. After his recovery from a severe illness he went to Berlin to obtain some employment. He obtained the post of musical director at the theatre of Bamberg; the theatre became bankrupt, and he was reduced to occasional employment as a musical composer. He now turned to authorship, and published in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung a series afterward collected in 1814 under the title of Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier. With an assured position and a good income, he was henceforth released from anxiety. Die Elixire des Teufels (1816) was followed by Nachtstücke (1817), a collection of tales. In 1819 appeared Die Seltsamen Leiden eines Theaterdirektor's, illustrating the history of the German stage, and Klein Zaches genannt Zinnober, a fantastic tale. Among his later works are Der Arturshof, Der Fermata, Doge und Dogeresse, Meister Martin der Keifner und seine Gesellen, Das Fräulein von Scudéri, and Signor Formica. The best of his longer works, Lebensansichten des Katers Murr, appeared in 1821-22. It was not completed. In addition to his literary work he composed the music to Fouqué's opera of Undine. THE PYRAMID DOCTOR. Celebrated people commonly have many ill things said of them, whether well-founded or not. And no exception was made in the case of that admirable painter, Salvator Rosa, whose living pictures cannot fail to impart a keen and characteristic delight to those who look upon them. At the time that Salvator's fame was ringing through Naples, Rome, and Tuscany—nay, through all Italy-and painters who were desirous of gaining applause were striving to imitate his peculiar and unique style, his envious and malicious rivals were laboring to spread abroad all sorts of evil reports intended to sully with ugly black stains the glorious splendor of his artistic fame. They affirmed that he had at a former period of his life belonged to a company of banditti, and that it was to his experiences during this lawless time that he owed all the wild, fierce, fantastically attired figures which he introduced into his pictures, just as the gloomy fearful wilderness of his landscape-the selve selvagge (savage woods)-to use Dante's expression, were faithful representations of the haunts where they lay hidden. What was worse still, they openly charged him with having been concerned in the atrocious and bloody revolt which had been set on foot by the notorious Masaniello in Naples. They even described the share he had taken in it, down to the minutest details. I do not believe that Salvator had any share in Masaniello's bloody deeds; on the contrary, I think it was the horrors of that fearful time which drove him from Naples to Rome, where he arrived a poor, poverty-stricken fugitive, just at the time that Masaniello fell. Not over well-dressed, and with a scanty purse containing not more than a few bright sequins in his pocket, he crept through the gate just after nightfall. Somehow or other he didn't exactly know how-he wandered |