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However, the excellent author knows how to expose these dishonest writers, who have added particular insult to general injury; though he cannot prevent the knaves from pilfering the results of his indefatigable labors.

The present work is invaluable as a help to the German who wishes to gain a knowledge of English; or the English scholar who studies German. There is scarce a word or a phrase in the English tongue which is not found in this dictionary. The English-German part contains about 135,000 articles. Obsolete words, which are yet found in writers now extensively read, have been diligently studied, and happily united to their corresponding German terms; technical words, used only in the various arts or sciences, or which belong to military or maritime affairs, are carefully noted and explained. Words which have not yet become classic, but are coming into the permanent literature, through the broad channels of newspapers and other periodicals; provincial words or forms of expression, which, though sometimes not much used in conversation, yet find their way into books; Americanisms, which spring up in abundance in New England, and still more at the South and West-all these have been carefully studied. In each article he gives first the proper or real meaning of the word, and then the derivative signification, the metaphorical sense, and so passes on to the various senses in which it is used: the more remote senses, which differ often a good deal from the primitive meaning, are carefully preserved and indicated by their appropriate German words. We find words in Dr. Flügel's work which we seek in vain in other dictionaries, — such, for example, as feck, an English provincial term for the third stomach of ruminating animals, and wride, another provincial term for a bunch of stalks that grow out of a single grain of corn, but which one is glad to see, as they have no synonyms in the language, and besides, they would puzzle a German, if he should find them in a book. Dr. Flügel has taken great pains to indicate by Walker's method the pronunciation of every word; in this he follows the best guides, and in general seems quite successful. We have been surprised at some criticisms of his pronunciation which have been shown to us. A distinguished English orthoepist, Mr. Smart, maintains heir should be pronounced with the aspirate hare; and thinks Dr. Flügel mistaken in finding a difference between the sound of Pay-er and Pair, where the London authority recognizes none.

The work is the result of the most extensive, careful, and laborious study of the English language, as it is developed in the ancient and modern literature of both continents; it is printed with great neatness and surprising accuracy, indeed, the proof-sheets were read five times by as many different persons; it supplies the want which has long been felt, and entitles its learned and estimable author to the lasting gratitude of the two most widely

extended nations of the western world. Long may he rejoice in his labors, and thus receive the twofold reward he so richly merits -a pecuniary compensation and the honor of producing a work which can introduce the two nations to the literary treasures of the German and English tongue.

LIST OF NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

An Appeal to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, by Rev. J. L. Merrick, twelve years in the service of the Board. Springfield. 1847. 8vo. pp. 126.

An Appeal to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions from the unjust and oppressive measures of the Secretary and Prudential Committee, by Rev. J. D. Baxter, D. D. New Haven. 1848. 8vo. pp. 40. An Oration delivered before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa at Cambridge, August 24th, 1848, by Horace Bushnell. Cambridge. 1848. 8vo. pp. 40. The Least of Two Evils, a Sermon Preached on July 9th, 1848, by John Weiss, Minister of the First Congregational Church in New Bedford. New Bedford. 1848. 12mo. pp. 12.

Communication to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences relative to a late Report on the subject of Ventilation and Chimney-Tops, by Frederick Emerson. Boston. 1848. 8vo. pp. 12.

Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Discourses thereon. Book the First. London. Vol. I. 12mo. pp. vii. and 228.

The Conquerers of the New World and their Bondmen, being a Narrative of the Principal Events which led to Negro Slavery in the West Indies and America. Volume the First, [by the author of the preceding work.] London. 1848. Vol. I. 12mo. pp. xII. and 264. [These are two delightful and instructive works.]

Poems by Dora Greenwell. London. 1848. 1 vol. 16mo. pp. VI. and 192. Madonna Pia, and other Poems, by James Gregor Grant. London. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. XII. and 320, and XIV. and 360. [These two volumes, printed with all the beauty of the English press, are dedicated to Mr. Wordsworth, by an author who seems to be a young man, and an earnest admirer of that poet. The volumes contain a few pieces of considerable merit.]

The System of Nature, or Laws of the Moral and Physical World, by Baron d' Holbach. 2 volumes in one. Boston. 1848. 8vo. pp. x. and 368.

The Son of the Wilderness, a Dramatic Poem, in five acts, by Frederick Halm, [Baron Münch-Bellinghausen,] translated from the German by Charles Edward Austin. New York. 1848. 12mo. pp. VII. and 166.

Verses of a Life Time, by Caroline Gilman, &c., &c. Boston and Cambridge. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. VIII. and 264.

A Discourse delivered before the First Congregational Society of Cincinnati, Sunday, Oct. 8th, 1848, by James H. Perkins. Cincinnati. 1848. pp. 16. The Mysteries of Russia, by Frederick Lacroix, translated from the French, Boston. 1848. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 212.

An Universal History in a Series of Letters, being a complete and impartial narrative of the most remarkable Events of all nations, from the earliest period to the present time, forming a complete History of the World, by G. C. Hebbe, LL. D. Vol. I. Ancient History. New York. 1848. Vol. I. pp. VIII. and 562. 8vo.

Orators of the American Revolution, by E. L. Magoon. 2d Edition. New York. 1848. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. xvI. and 456.

Ancient Sea Margins, as Memorials of Changes in the relative Level of Sea and Land, by Robert Chambers, Esq., F. R. S. E. Edinburgh and London. 1848. 8vo. pp. VI. and 338.

MASSACHUSETTS QUARTERLY REVIEW.

NO. VI. MARCH, 1849.

ART. I. THE GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1848.

THE year eighteen hundred and forty-eight will be henceforth, in the history of Europe, the normal year to which scholars, legislators, and nations will refer, as the date when a new phase in the social and political life of nations began; as the period when a new foundation was laid for rights and obligations forming the basis of public and civil laws; and as an epoch from which the years of the people's emancipation will be reckoned. The number "forty-eight" has already acquired an importance for the student and statesman, as a mark in the history of the transatlantic nations, and more especially of that of Germany. It was in the year 1648 that the memorable Peace of Westphalia was concluded, which put an end to the fatal war that for thirty years had laid waste the whole of Germany, and which established a new system of state-rights and policy among the reigning princes. Although religion had been the pretext under which the rulers had called upon the people to take up arms and shed their blood, yet the stipulations of the treaty of peace showed their true design to have been personal aggrandizement and absolute power, without regarding the people, who together with their lands were disposed of like goods and chattels. In glaring contrast with this, the year 1848 shows the people rising, demanding and obtaining their sovereign independent power, and crowns and sceptres and thrones disposed of as goods and chattels fit only for collections of curiosities and antiquities. Retributive Justice seems to have chosen the very year of the two hundredth anniversary of the triumph of the Princes over the Germanic Union, to vindicate its own immutable laws, and 10

NO. VI.

to show, by a contrast the more strikingly impressive, that wrong committed will be its own avenger.

Of all the revolutions which this last year has seen, that in Germany deserves the greatest consideration, and more than has been generally bestowed upon this nation in a political respect. When quiet, sober Germany suddenly arouses from its political lethargy; when we see a country which has heretofore been known abroad only by its literature and art, but which, for the last two centuries, has hardly been heard of in politics, except in a few of its component parts, as Prussia and Austria, so that persons often ask in wonder whether a Prussian is a German, when we see this nation of forty millions of souls at last rise in its might and awake into a living consciousness of its existence, as one and indivisible, and of its rights as such by nature and nature's law, then the attention of even the most indifferent is arrested. We are led to inquire into the causes that have produced such a phenomenon, which is evidently more than a mere feverish excitement accidentally brought on by some restless spirits, from a desire of notoriety and change. The apparent suddenness of this great commotion of the people may have led some to suppose that it was only a fitful fever, caught by contagion from a neighbouring country; those, however, who have taken an interest in the life of this nation, cannot have been surprised at the popular outbreak, but rather that it did not take place before. As a vessel filled with water, which is chilled through, requires but a slight concussion to change the fluid into one solid mass of ice, so in Germany it required but an impulse from without to make the political atmosphere, long charged with the elements of a violent storm, break out in a tempest which would shake every one of the thirty-eight states to its foundation.

Political revolutions are, no doubt, always to be dreaded, as great temporary social evils, and those who pass through them are regarded as martyrs for future generations. But revolutions must not, on this account, be condemned as monstrosities, conceived and born of evil, as many seem to think, who owe the blessings they now enjoy to the revolutions their forefathers accomplished. A sanctimonious cry of "Law and Order" is raised on all such occasions, by men who regard only existing artificial laws, established, perhaps, by a despotic power in by-gone ages, and entirely disregard or overlook the fact that there is a law immutable and unchangeable as the

stars in heaven, and existing coeval with the universe itself, namely, the Law of Nature. If this law be violated in the physical world, it avenges and restores itself, and often, too, by violent and formidable outbreaks, upheaving all the elements. The law inherent in the moral world follows a like course, and although its voice may for a time be muffled and smothered, it will at last, with tones of thunder, break forth and call out, "Law and Order." To uphold this law and order is true conservatism.

A nation's social and political organization must be in perfect accordance with its peculiar character and that state of development which it has reached in the progressive course of the destiny of man. The forms of a state and its laws must be the natural exponent of the people's spirit and genius and its human development, and they must grow out of these, but cannot and must not be engrafted thereon by an extraneous wilful power. The gradual changes in all organic bodies of nature follow according to inherent laws, and the external forms accommodate themselves to the development of the living principle which is working under them. If we try to check this natural growth, the violation will vindicate itself, and either death or monstrosities will be the consequence. When a nation has outgrown its existing political and social forms, or if the existing suitable and fitting forms are wilfully violated and changed, the living spirit working beneath them will maintain its right and try to restore itself. This effort we call a Revolution, and as such we do not only deem it justifiable, but unavoidable and demanded by the Law of God.

There are some, however, who would condemn the resort to force under any circumstances, and maintain that love and forbearance are the only weapons that should ever be wielded. Undoubtedly they ought to rule and control all hearts, all classes, and all nations; but it is also true, that where these do not prevail, there they ought to be established. The field must be prepared to receive costly seed, that it may strike root and bear fruit. The great founder of the kingdom of peace and love laid down his life for the Law of God, and every one who will be his true follower must be willing to do the same, when the object is to uphold and maintain divine laws. The most scrupulous will allow the justness of self-defence by force, when life and limb are endangered, and should the same privilege be denied when a People's life and existence are at stake?

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