most wonderful emotion; but only so long as they keep within the bounds of nature."* It is no uncommon mistake, as John Sterling has pointed out, to suppose that exaggeration is essential or at least proper to fiction, the truth being rather the reverse; for a principal use and justification of fiction, he contends, is to reduce and harmonise the seeming exaggerations of real life. "Facts are often extravagant and monstrous, because we do not know the whole system which explains and legitimatises them. But none have any business in fiction which are not intelligible parts of the artificial whole that they appear in."+ When Brockden Brown published the first of his preternatural as well as sensation novels, "Wieland," he thus referred in his preface to the mystery whereby hangs the tale: "It is a sufficient vindication of the writer, if history furnishes one parallel fact." But his fellow-countryman, and one of the most judicious if not most vigorous of American critics,— the historian Prescott,-condemns "this vicious recurrence to extravagant and improbable incident”—and maintains that truth cannot always be pleaded in vindication of the author of a fiction, any more than of a libel. As Boileau, in the wake of Horace, had ruled, long before: Jamais au spectateur n'offrez rien d'incroyable; Le vrai peut quelquefois n'être pas vraisemblable.§ An acute critic has lately argued, with much force, that novelists and poets in highly wrought descriptions seldom paint life as it is, though human life is so multiform that no fictitious incident can be devised which has not some counterpart reality. But, as he contends, although they are careful to give every conception the colour of probability, and although they have a right to say that things as strange as those they invent have happened and do happen, their conceptions as a whole are a reflection, not of life, but of their own morbid and ill-regulated imagination, Moralists, urges this moralist, have a right to object to this unnecessary propagation of vicious or ugly thoughts. "It is bad enough to have sin and frivolity about one in the world, but the principles of literary toleration do not require us to stand by and see novelists and poets peopling the world of imagination, out of mere wantonness and caprice, with a multitude of pernicious ideas. Ugly things have, we may suppose, their own uses in nature. It is different in literature. The end of literature is to create what is beautiful and good, not what is hideous and revolting; and the man who begets murderesses and villains wholesale in a threevolume novel is as completely a literary monster as the man who deliberately created a Frankenstein would be a social pest."|| Granting literature to be an art, what is true in the daily papers and Newgate Calendar may be something else in novel or romance. * Essays by the Rev. John Eagles: Letters to Eusebius, p. 33. †Thoughts and Images, § 48 sq. See Prescott's Critical Essays, p. 27, 3rd edit. § L'Art poétique, chant troisième. Essay on Claptrap Morality. THE GERMAN ALMANACKS FOR 1867. THE German Almanacks for this year are, on the whole, better than those for 1866. The articles are not all so dull as those of the preceding year, and there are more freshness and variety among them. The English reader, however, is struck by the absence of tales relative to the late war in Germany. Stories of the Thirty Years' War and the Seven Years' War are abundant, but what relates to the SEVEN DAYS' WAR is touched on but slightly. Why is this? it may be asked. Briefly, we may answer, because these Almanacks, purporting to come out on the following new year, are arranged in the months of June and July in the current year; consequently, as the editors do not pretend to the far-seeing powers of Zadkiel, they cannot expatiate upon events which have not occurred. The success of Prussia took even Prussia itself by surprise, and there has hardly been time for the self-congratulating and laudatory outpourings of its press. The war was by no means popular at first; the Germans did not like the idea of fighting Germans; but after the brilliant successes of the Prussian armies, the people became reconciled to the privations and sorrows they had undergone. Then came the "annexations," which word, when a new edition of Johnson's Dictionary shall be published, should be given, "Robbery on a large scale." The people, generally speaking, did not care for these annexations or robberies. It did not do them any good that the kingdom of Hanover and the ancient Free City of Frankfort were to be taken and incorporated into Prussia. Nor will it do Prussia any good in the long run, though it pleases Count Bismark's vanity at present. He is now reposing on his laurels, and, like a boa-constrictor, digesting the somewhat large meal he has swallowed. What will he swallow next? Time only can reveal that. But when by the mercy of God he is removed from this world, an inscription which was written on the gravestone of a remarkable glutton may be very appropriately placed as an epitaph on his tomb: Reader, tread softly, I entreat you, But revenons à nos moutons. In Steffen's "Volks Kalender" there is a somewhat interesting story, entitled "Castle Ahlden: a Historical Mystery," which, as it is not long, we give in full. In the midst of the heaths of Lüneburg rise the grey walls of a hunting tower; in the utmost solitude this castle is situated, and a stillness profound and gloomy reigns in the castle and for miles around it. Visits are neither received nor are they paid by its inhabitants. By daytime nothing intercepts the painful, death-like repose-nothing but the dull tread and low summons of one guard relieving the other in his monotonous round. But at night, when the moon arises and casts her pale shadows, and the faint glimmer of the vanishing twilight wraps heaven and earth in a dim uncertain mist, then the heavy bolts of the castle doors are drawn rattling back, and an open carriage, with four black horses, rolls forth out into the fenny, deserted heath. What a spectral apparition! In the carriage sits a pale, beautiful lady, with long dark tresses, and diamonds sparkling in her hair. She is all alone in the carriage, and it is her own delicate little hand which guides the heavy reins-away, away across the heath! The night breeze lifts the lady's white veil, and discloses features noble still, but worn by the ravages of deep sorrow. The horses feel the cutting slash of the whip, and they dash off at a furious pace; as swift as an arrow the carriage darts over the smooth plain, and the ground shakes beneath the tread of the powerful horses. Before, by the side, and behind the carriage gallop armed horsemen, with bright swords drawn, and cocked pistols loose in the saddle-holster. A state prisoner enjoys her hour of freedom, the only freedom and the only pleasure which is accorded to her. During the day, she who is, as it were, buried alive dare not quit the chambers allotted to her. In the apartments of the castle she must pine until the day of her death; thus absolute power and cruel fate had decreed. It is a sad story, the history of this prisoner, and with her name is associated the dark secret of a crime which never will be entirely cleared up. At the court of a German prince there lived a princess, "young and beautiful as the early morn." She was the only daughter of her father. But beauty and youth are fatal gifts. At the court of the same prince had been educated a page of an illustrious and ancient family, endowed with all the talents which once were bestowed upon the "favourites of the gods." The princess and the page were inseparable. The boy became a valiant knight, and the princess a bride, but not the bride of her youthful friend. Princes' daughters are not permitted the happy privilege of other women-to bestow their hands of their own free will, and according to their own inclinations. Sophie Dorothea, of Celle, was married to the Elector of Hanover, and Count Philip von Königsmarck retired with his sorrows to one of his castles in Sweden. As if travelling were a means of curing one whose mind was in a state of distraction and misery! The count could not endure to remain any longer in his home; gnawing longing drove him back to Hanover. Few were the hours which blossomed for him here, where, in the immediate neighbourhood of the princess, in the secret peaceful intercourse with his beloved, he ventured to enjoy a happiness pure and unalloyed. Suspicions and treachery were busy; his fate was decided ere he had the slightest idea of what was awaiting him. Upon the evening of the 1st of July, 1694, Count Königsmarck was seen; after that date he disappeared, and never, to the present day, has a single trace of him been found. Countess Platen, the mistress of the reigning Elector, worked his ruin, from a similar feeling of revenge which influenced Potiphar's wife towards "the Hebrew servant," who left his mantle in her hands. A letter was written in the name of the princess, inviting the count to a rendezvous on that very night. One of the princess's maids of honour, Agnes von Knesebeck, threatened with death if she refused to comply, was induced VOL. LXI. H by the countess to write, in the presence of the Elector, the following treacherous words upon a piece of paper: Count, my mistress wishes to see you. She cannot write to you herself because she has burned her hand; she has therefore desired me to inform you that you may go to her this evening by the small stairs, as usual. She seems to be uneasy about your silence. For Heaven's sake soon release from her doubts the most amiable princess in the world!" The count would have been no lover if he had not fallen into the snare laid for him. In a hall of the castle five appointed assassins attacked the unprepared knight. Celebrated as a perfect master in the use of every weapon, Königsmarck drew his sword, and levelled to the ground three of his assailants. He hoped soon to dispose of the two others, when one of them suddenly flung a mantle over his head, and their victim fell beneath the daggers aimed by superior force. At the moment when the wretches were about to carry away the body of the fainting count the hall door was opened, and the princess entered with a taper in her hand. The noise of the struggle in the neighbourhood of her chamber had roused her, and the anxious barking in her own room of a small dog, which Königsmarck had once given her, had attracted her attention. The sight of horror which presented itself to her view made her very blood freeze. With a wailing cry she sank to the ground. Early the following morning the princess had an interview with the Elector and the hereditary prince. With that courage which misfortune gives to great souls, Sophie Dorothea rejected every proposition of reconciliation. "I will not demean myself by trying to convince you that I am innocent. Guilty I am, of course, but only in cowardly obeying my father, and breaking my faith to Count Königsmarck. I loved Königsmarck before the duty to obey you, prince, was laid upon me. I perceive with horror that I have been the cause of his death. It devolves upon me, therefore, to avenge him. Be prepared for anything that vengeance may suggest." On the 28th of December, 1694, her marriage with the Elector was dissolved. As soon as that was arranged, she was conveyed, as a state prisoner, to the castle of Ahlden. With her liberty she lost both her name and her rank, and henceforth she was called merely the Duchess of Ahlden. There have been sundry rumours of the fate of Count Königsmarck since the dark transaction of that July night, though they have been very conflicting. Some say that he was killed by the satellites of the Elector, who were lying in wait for him; or, at any rate, that he was so severely wounded that he soon after expired, when his body was flung into a secret chamber, which was walled up and cemented. Others assert that the wounded man was drowned in an underground vault, and the corpse afterwards buried in an oven. Many again declare that he was strangled or beheaded. But among his contemporaries a very different version was spread, which, it is true, gives a much more romantic colouring, but certainly brings with it authentic proofs, vouched for by Count Moritz of Saxony, a son of the beautiful Aurora von Königsmarck. According to his account, Königsmarck was decidedly severely wounded when suddenly attacked, but he was not mortally wounded. The assassins dragged the fainting man to a cell underground, named the laboratory, there to await further instructions from the Elector. The Elector commanded that the most profound silence should be observed respecting the whole affair; meanwhile, the count was to be taken care of. Notwithstanding both these orders were punctually carried out, still vague rumours became noised abroad that Königsmarck was kept a prisoner in the castle, and his brother-in-law, Count von Löwenhaupt, who hastened from Dresden to Hanover on receiving intelligence of the disappearance of his relative, succeeded, after much trouble, in coming at the truth, through the assistance of a clever huntsman, who, with that object in view, was forced to form an intimacy with the wife of the castellan of the castle. The huntsman seized a favourable moment to steal from the woman the principal keys of the castle, and, in possession of them, Löwenhaupt determined, on the night of the 15th of February, 1695, to carry off the prisoner secretly from the laboratory, of the exact situation of which he had informed himself. He actually did gain the chamber, but only to convince himself that he had come a few hours too late. He found written in charcoal upon one of the walls, in the handwriting of his brother-in-law: Philippe de Königsmarck a rempli sa destinée dans ce lieu le 14 Feb. de l'année 1695." 66 The Princess Sophie Dorothea passed full thirty years of her sad and sorrowful existence in the hunting tower of Ahlden. Miss von Knesebeck, who was privy to the injustice which had been committed, was kept in close confinement at the castle Schwarzenfels; she managed to escape, however, after several years, by the aid of a person employed to repair the roof. Who could have seen into the future! The Duchess of Ahlden, the poor prisoner cut off from the world in the dreary waste of the Lüneburg heath, will live in history to the end of time. This prisoner, deserted by mankind and stripped of all joy, had a grandson, whose fame filled the world. When her marriage was dissolved, she was obliged to leave her daughter, also called Sophie Dorothea, at the court of Hanover. Never in life was the mother permitted to see her daughter again, but this daughter became the Queen of Prussia, and the mother of FREDERICK THE GREAT! The "Volks Kalender," by Trowitzsch, is the one which contains the most articles bearing on the late war with Austria. It gives a letter, purporting to be from the King of Prussia, addressed to the Queen, and two letters from private soldiers. Also a few "Scenes and Anecdotes of the War." The king's letter is as below: "The following letter from his Majesty the King to Queen Augusta, written the day on which the battle of Königgrätz had taken place, we have the greater pleasure in presenting in our yearly almanack, because it contains the most animated description of that bloody battle, and shows the part which our hero-king himself took in it. It runs thus: "Horzitz, the 4th July, 1866. "Fritz Karl left me on the 2nd at three o'clock in the afternoon after a council of war, in which it was determined to grant the men, exhausted by marches and fighting, one or two days' repose. However, about half |