Leopold Schefer has published lately in Berlin _The Bishop's Wife, a Tale of the Papacy_, in which the great Napoleon of the church, Hildebrand, figures as the hero. The Germans have never succeeded in the historical novel. With vast resources in materiel, they have always a vagueness, a want of definite interest, of picturesque arrangement, and of sustained and disciplined power. Schefer is a scholar, and his didactic purpose is plain enough, and well enough managed. The Teutonic character has always instinctively revolted against the practice of celibacy, a form of ascetism quite natural, and sometimes perhaps inevitable, as a reaction against the unbridled sensualism of the Africans and Asiatics, but quite out of place in climes so temperate and races so moderate, conscientious, and self-respecting as those of Northern Europe. It needed all the genius and determination of Hildebrand himself to enforce the celibacy of the German clergy, and certainly they have never ceased more or less covertly to revolt against it. It is well understood that, at the present time, there is a very general wish among the Catholics of Germany--more especially of South Germany, where they are not jealous of Protestant encroachments--to have marriage allowed to the parochial clergy; and the clergy themselves are foremost in this tendency, though it may not accord with their interest unreservedly to display it. It has, however, betrayed its existence in various ways, especially in anonymous literary productions, in prose and verse. So general is this feeling, and so profound the conviction that something must be done, that in 1848 it was very generally credited that the Pope was prepared to sanction a relaxation of the laws of the church in this respect. For this belief, however, there could have been no just foundation, since Pius IX. is the reputed author of the official reply, made while he was but a priest, to the Brazilian Archbishop Feijo, upon this very subject, in which it was alleged that such a relaxation of discipline would be an abandonment of the "integrity of the church." Yet without something of the kind, it is thought that a very extensive schism in catholic Germany will be inevitable. * * * * * _Der Mensch im Spiegel der Natur_ (Man in the Mirror of Nature), is an excellent little work for popular use, by Mr. E. A. Rossmaessler, published at Leipzic, in two neat volumes, with wood-cuts. It sets forth, in the most attractive form, the elementary facts of science, they being ingeniously interwoven into a narrative of the journeys, friendships, and adventures of the author. The work well deserves a translation into English. * * * * *