From the glimpses of the plot and numerous extracts we have given, the reader will have small difficulty in forming his own estimate of the faults and merits of “1812.” We have already commented upon both: upon the spirit and power often conspicuous in the dialogue and description, as well as upon the excess of forced coincidences, and upon the occasional long-windedness and super-sentimentality. However the interest may here and there, by reason of prolixity, be found to flag, the book, when once begun, is not likely to be laid aside unfinished. This alone is saying much for a historical romance in four very long volumes. There are not many German writers, in that style, of whose works we would venture the like prediction. And just at present Mr Rellstab need not apprehend fresh rivals. The year 1848 is unfavourable to German literature. The country is far too busy revolutionising to care about belles-lettres. Fictions are ousted by realities, novels by newspapers, trim octavos by uncouth twopenny pamphlets, polemical and satirical, attacking and defending, supporting and tearing to pieces, the numerous schemes afoot for the regeneration of Fatherland. In due time it will be seen whether the literature of the country is to share the general improvement so sanguinely anticipated from the recent changes in a system, under which Germany undeniably has long enjoyed a very large share of tranquillity and happiness. WHAT WOULD REVOLUTIONISING GERMANY BE AT? Many a confirmed wanderer upon Continental highways and byways may have been long since wearied by the conceitedly-vulgar airs in which old Father Rhine has indulged himself in latter years, and heartily tired of his bald vineyards, his melodramatic old ruins, and the make-believe majesty of his so-called mountains. But still there remained a sort of spurious halo about his very name; some kindly reminiscence of the time when, as an enthusiastic youth just escaped from the supposed commonplace of England, one gazed for the first time upon this famed show-stream of the Continent, and wondered, and admired, and poetised in spite of one’s-self, may have cast a charm of early memory upon its overrated allurements; and, of a surety, there must have been brought a comfortable glow of pleasure to the heart of any one, except that nearly-exploded animal, the exclusive exquisite, either male or female, in witnessing the happy gaping faces of the touristic hordes, who paddled up and down the well-known old banks—a feeling of ease, comfort, and even homeishness, in the modern luxuries of the hundred palace-hotels of the Rhenish towns and villages, in the contented aspect of the thriving landlord, welcoming the guests who brought him wealth, and in the ready alertness of the active and obsequious waiters. Well, Germany has taken into its head to follow in the lead which distracted France gave, when it madly beckoned with frantic finger to all the Continent to follow in its wild dance.