* * * * * Recent German poetry offers little for remark. TELLKAMPF has published a poem in hexameters in the style of Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea, founded upon an incident in the battle of Leipsic, called _Irmengard_. It has passed into a second edition. EMIL LEONHARD, a poet not unknown, has written a poem upon Bürger, whose wild life had already furnished Müller subject for a romance and Mosenthal for a drama, and which is too unpleasant to be made attractive even by the poetic talent of Leonhard. We note, however an interesting work, entitled _Prussia's Mirror of Honor_, a collection of Prussian national songs, from the earliest period to the year 1840. They have much allusion to old Fritz, and are interesting as an indication of the popular feeling, which is always expressed in such songs, toward that national hero. * * * * * An interesting contribution to contemporary history is I. VENEDY'S _Schleswig-Holstein in 1850_. A diary. * * * * * HERMAN FRITSCHE, of Leipsig, has recently published a work by one SOHNLAND SCHUBAUER, entitled _Consecrated souvenirs of the virtues of our earliest ancestors: Collected with the aid of a Philologist_. This book we are told contains (though we should never have inferred it from the title), a collection and explanation of old German proper names, both masculine and feminine. The author in his preface gives it as his opinion that since the introduction of Christianity "a dreadful thousand-year-long night has brooded over Germany, and that the best method of dissipating this darkness, would be to revive the old German proper names!" "The poet discovers the sanctity of these primitive German names in the holy star-night, and he will, the higher these rise to the ideal, find in them a full accord with holy nature." His principal sources are the verbal assertions of Dr. ALEX. VOLLMER: for example in page 1st, where he questions whether "ANNO" signifies a year, and decides that it is originally German, from _an_, _un_ and _unst_; to which add a G, whence results _Gunst_, meaning good fortune, success, or favor!--a bit of ingenuity which reminds us of several scraps of Horne Tooke's comic philology, as well as the glove-maker's motto, _Kunst macht Gunst_--skill makes (or wins) success. Dr. Vollmer is an amiable and hard-working scholar of immense erudition, and possessed of a boundless enthusiasm on the subject of early German and Gothic dialects. We regret that his learning should be lent to the support of such singular vagaries. * * * * *