The good parts are really good: they lack the morbidness which undermines so many otherwise clever stories of New England life. Too frequently in these the element of passion is left out, and in its place we have a good deal of more or less entertaining writing about love-making, with the love left out. But in this book this mistake is not made. The love-story is simple enough and obvious enough. It will never make the book a formidable rival to _Jane Eyre_, but so far as it goes it is true to every-day life. What is best in the book is the intelligent observation to which it bears witness: its humor is kindly and unaffected. The story is clumsy and ill-constructed, but it has decided merit, and the faults are only such as could have been best cured by the judicious application of a pair of scissors. Too often it happens that the reader of novels feels that the author's only chance is to be born again, but _Nimport_ inspires the hope that the writer will try again. Briefe aus Philadelphia (1876) an eine Freundin (Letters from Philadelphia to a Friend). Von Catherine Migerka. Wien. As long as a concern--or at least curiosity--to see ourselves as others see us shall move American breasts, so long will such books as the above have interest for us. In the present case it will depend entirely upon the interest we take in what relates to ourselves, for a more vapid yet didactic little volume--or rather pamphlet--than Frau Migerka's letters we have never seen; which we say with a distinct recollection of various books by our own country-folk upon foreign lands. The author is not observant of characteristic details, nor has she the faculty of drawing inferences or coming to general conclusions correctly from what she sees and hears. She has collected some statistics, picked up some facts, noted some prominent features of the national physiognomy, which she has mixed and muddled with apostrophes to Nature, Liberty, the soul of man, the German people, the American people, and poetical reflections a little in the manner of Primula Veris, the literary lady in one of Spielhagen's novels. It is unusual for German women to travel: many of them in easy circumstances and a respectable position live and die without going more than a few miles from home. From Dresden to Pilnitz, from Berlin to Potsdam, from Vienna to Glocknitz, from Munich to the Staremberg See, is by many of the inhabitants considered not an excursion, but a journey. Frau Migerka is a Viennese, and appears to have studied men and manners exclusively in her own country, as her standards and comparisons are drawn thence alone. She came to this country with her husband, who was one of the Austrian commissioners to the International Exposition, and Philadelphia was the only American city which she saw, except fleeting glimpses of New York, Boston and Cleveland. She was exceedingly struck by New York Bay, and indeed the scenery of the country wherever she went elicited real raptures,