that it is a record of sin and of expiation,--not of sin in its
outward act, but in its essence. There is nothing sensational here,
nothing lurid,--no bigamy, no savage murders; this book is a soul
history, and a great crime--no less a one than the ruin of a family
through a falsely directed love--is seen in the distance,--obscurely,
as in the death of Mary Stuart in the last scene of Schiller's play.
Amid the development of sin in a pure but passionate soul, and amid its
expiation, there are brought upon the stage characters of Roman
grandeur, not attractive, indeed, because stiff and hard, but truly
noble and quickening.

"To the Christian reader the book appeals with special force, for being
absolutely Christless, and yet dealing with the deepest needs of a
sinning soul, it presents an argument stronger than any which we have
ever seen for a Saviour who shall expiate sin, and leave the offender
free to go on and labor and enter into the joy of life, without
condemning himself to an expiation which shall end only with his death.
Thus the book, which is a special plea in behalf of an absolutely
Christless philosophy, leads directly and irresistibly to the cross of
Christ. No religion is worth much, according to Auerbach, but for the
poetry it guards and expresses. Yet, while this is the tone of the
book, the writer of this article confesses that he rises from 'On the
Heights' with a clearer sense of the need of Christianity to solve the
deepest mysteries of woe and sin and suffering than he has had before,
and that all who are able to see anything in this book but a charming
and yet saddening story, will find themselves like-minded."--_Extract
from a review by a Clergyman in the Hartford Evening Post._

"The author's last work, 'On the Heights,' has been pronounced the
finest German novel since Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister.'"

"Auerbach is thought by many to be the first writer of fiction
living."--_New York Evening Post._

"Among the living European novelists, Auerbach holds a pre-eminent
rank."--_New York Tribune._

"The leading German novelist of these days."--_New Haven Palladium._

"The genius of the master is stamped on the production of his
pen."--_Providence Post._

"'On the Heights' is the most remarkable novel that has come to us from
the home of Goethe during the present century."--_Northern Monthly_,
_May_, 1868.

"One of the few great works of the age."--JOHN G. SAXE, _in Albany
Argus_.