"The great charm, however, which attaches us to his side, consists in the moral manifestations of his nature, which run through the book: his clear understanding, and simple natural manner, render him highly interesting. We are agreeably affected by the sight of a right-minded and kind-hearted man, who describes with charming frankness the conflict between will and accomplishment!" (What does the Patriarch mean?) "We represent him to ourselves as of dignified and prepossessing exterior. He knows how instantly to place himself on an equality with high and low, and to be welcome to all;--that he excites the attention of women is natural enough--he attracts and is attracted; but his experience of the world enables him to terminate any little _affaires du cœur_ without violence or indecorum." We shall presently enable the reader to judge for himself as to some points of this eulogy. Meantime, we turn the leaf, and find a second flourish from--the translator of these wonderful letters. "A rumour," says this cautious and disinterested critic, "has ascribed them to Prince Puckler-Muskau, a subject of Prussia, who is known to have travelled in England and Ireland about the period at which they were written. He has even been mentioned as the author in the Berlin newspapers: as, however, he has not thought fit to accept the authorship, we have no right to fix it upon him, though the voice of Germany has perhaps sufficiently established his claim to it. At all events, the Letters contain allusions to his rank which fully justify us in ascribing them to a German Prince." After Goethe and the translator, or, in German phrase, oversetter, comes the editor!--who, in the midst of some would-be-pathetic cant, drops two bits of information, both entirely false; namely, that "the letters, with very few and unimportant exceptions, were written at the moment;" and, secondly, that "the author is dead!" The editor adds that there actually exist four volumes of this correspondence, but from "various circumstances, which cannot be explained, it has been found necessary to publish the two last volumes first;"--the pair, as yet unprinted, containing his highness's opinions and illustrations of London society, as these, now before us, exhibit the "manners and customs" of the provinces, and of Ireland.