This romance, the first work of Jean Paul's which won the attention of his countrymen, is called "Hesperus," apparently for no reason more definite than that the heroine, like a fair evening-star, beams over the fortunes of the other personages, and becomes at length the morning-star of one. The supplementary title of "Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days" is a quaint subdivision of the volumes into as many chapters, each of which is a "Dog-Post-Day," because it purports to be dispatched in a bottle round a dog's neck to an island within the whimsical geography which the author loved to construct, and in which he pretended to dwell. Truly, the ordinary _terra-firma_ was of little consequence for home-keeping purposes to Jean Paul, as the reader will doubtless confess before he has proceeded far through the maze of Extra Leaves, Intercalary Days, Extra Lines, Extra Shoots, and Extorted Anti-critique. And the divisions which are busied with the story, instead of carrying it forward, stray with it in all directions, like a genuine summer vagabond to whom direct travel is a crime against the season. Many charming things are gathered by the way; but if the reader is in haste to arrive, or thinks it would not be amiss at least to put up somewhere, his patience will be severely tried. We do not recommend the volumes for railway-reading, nor to clergymen for the entertainment of sewing-bees, nor to the devourer of novels, in whose life the fiction that must be read at one sitting forms an epoch. It is a good _vade-mecum_ for a voyage round either Cape; its digressive character suits the listless mood of the sea-goer, and he can drop, we will not say the thread, but the entanglement, in whatever watch he pleases.