_Der Reichspostreiter in Ludwigsburg, Novelle auf geschichtlichem
Hintergrunde_. Von Robert Heller. 1858.
A very interesting novel indeed, sketching life at the little court
of the Duke of Wurtemberg at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
and the overthrow of the government of a famous mistress of the Duke,
the Countess Würben. The main points of interest in the story are
historical, and the tissue of fiction interwoven with these is
remarkably well arranged. Herr Heller belongs to the school of
German novelists who, like Hermann Kurz, and others of minor mark,
make a copious and comprehensive use of historical facts in Art.
Their object and aim seem to be rather to illustrate and embody the
historical facts in the flesh and blood of tangible reality, than
merely to amuse by transforming history into a material for poetical
entertainment. With all that, the abovenamed little volume is amply
worth reading.
_Une Eté dans le Sahara_, par Eugene Fromentin. Paris. 1857.
A painter describes here a summer journey through the Desert of
Sahara, as far south from Algiers as El Aghouat, in the year 1853.
There is not much that is new in this book, considering the many
later and far more comprehensive and extensive illustrations of life
in the Great Desert, since published by Bayard Taylor, Barth, and
others; but it is a very interesting picture of this life, as seen
and drawn by a painter. His descriptions contain many landscape and
_genre_ pictures, by means of which a vivid idea of the scenery
and life are conveyed to the imagination of the reader.