His name is probably new to most of our readers; for few of our German scholars ever peep into those ponderous folios in which earlier days delighted, or trace up the stream of German literature higher than Wieland or Klopstock. To such, it would be idle to expatiate on the crabbed beauties which adorn the Nibelungen-lied, the Minnesingers, old Hans Sachs, or Abraham a Sancta Clara. We trust, however, that in the latter they will find enough of oddity, at least, to render some slight acquaintance acceptable. His true name was ULRICH MEGERLE, and he was born in Suabia, (the Ireland of Germany,) in 1642. At the age of twenty, he became a bare-footed monk, of the Augustine order, and in 1669, was invited to Vienna, in the capacity of court preacher, an office he filled till his death, in 1709; preaching and writing the while with untiring zeal and industry. At a future time, we may brush the learned dust off some other volumes of his works: at present, we will take up one of his choicest bits of quaintness, the discourse called '_Mark!_' composed of a series of warnings to the people of Vienna, written soon after the plague, which swept off seventy thousand inhabitants in six months. We have been obliged, of course, to take some few liberties in our version. Where one of his bad German puns proved utterly untranslateable, we have endeavored to fill its place with an English one, equally as bad, and as near the original as possible. It will be seen that here and there he varies the steady progress of his prose, and breaks into a rhyming pace, something between a canter and a hobble; showing that the amphibious measure adopted by the 'wondrous boy that wrote Alroy,' is not altogether original. Without farther preface, we shall proceed to our extracts. Thus, then, discourseth our reverend friend, in his exordium, of the signs that, as usual, preceded the pestilence: 'Signs in the heavens were furnished by the baleful and malevolent aspects of the planets. Signs in air are usually changeful weather, and heavy rains. Clouds, too, are so deemed; but in my poor judgment, the plague was caused, not only by unwholesome _nebulæ_, but by wicked _nebulones_. Signs of water are, abundance of fishes cast on shore, crabs, frogs, and toads; and it is certain, when sharks are found plying round courts of justice, when honesty sidles off like a crab, and when toadies are found in the high places, that God commonly sends a pestilence. Signs of earth, are, when idle, noxious weeds and herbs infest the ground; and of a surety, when such plants as sanguinary, dandy-lions, mushrooms, and painted-ladies, grow plentifully, it is easy to see what is meant thereby!' * * *