VICTS,"[15] by Auerbach, will not increase that author's
reputation in America. It belongs to the distinctively romantic school
of German fiction. The story is that two convicts, reformed through the
agency of a charitable society, marry and bring up a large family of
children. These suffer pangs of sorrow when they learn of the stain
on their parents' name, but otherwise they do not appear to be
inconvenienced by their unfortunate origin. They marry into stations
very much above them, though in addition to the embarrassing criminal
history of their parents, they suffer what in Germany is the hardly
less disaster, of being the children of a railway signal man! We
suppose the object of this plot, and of much special social sentiment
which is introduced in the story, is to represent the increased
importance which the industrial classes have in Germany, as elsewhere
in the world. Here in America the improvement in the condition of the
working-man does not excite attention except from professed students of
political economy. But in Germany it is contrasted with a previous
state of almost complete vassalage, and the poets there seem to think
it indicates an approaching brotherhood of man. Wealth and worth are to
embrace each other, and the sins of the father are not to descend even
to the first generation of children. We cannot but sympathize with the
Councillor of State (whose granddaughter wants to, and does, marry one
of the convict flagman's sons, an artisan) when he says:

See! see! This then is the latest ideal? Formerly the ideals were
painters, musicians, hussar riding masters, and players. Now love
also is practical. So then an artisan? All the enthusiasm runs to
tunnels and viaducts.

[15] "_The Convicts and their Children._" By BERTHOLD AUERBACH.
Translated by Charles T. Brooks. Leisure Hour Series. New York:
H. Holt & Co.

The book is marred by unnecessary exactitude in translation. Thouing
and theeing make no impression of intimacy and confidence on the
American understanding as they do on the German, and should be omitted.
Nor has the author the strength of his youth, and the beauty of his
fancy no longer atones for the weakness of the story. Nothing in the
whole of the book proper is so good as the following from the preface:

A generation has passed away since I began to present in a
framework of fiction the interior life of my countrymen and
neighbors. If aft