If any doubt could exist as to the value of the _Germania_ of Tacitus,
as an invaluable contribution to the history of all the Teutonic races,
a glance at the Appendix to Klemm's _Germanische Altherthumskunde_, in
which that author has enumerated not only the best editions and
translations of the _Germania_, but also the most important
dissertations to which it has given rise, would at once dispel it. The
scholar and the antiquary of this country may therefore be congratulated
on the fact of Dr. Latham having prepared an edition of it, which has
been issued under the title of _The Germania of Tacitus, with
Ethnological Dissertations and Notes_. Although "the work," to use Dr.
Latham's own words, "is rather a commentary upon the geographical part
of the _Germania_, than on the _Germania_ itself--the purely descriptive
part relating to the customs of the early Germans being passed over
almost _sicco pede_,"--yet our readers will have no difficulty in
estimating its importance, when we inform them that the Ethnological
Dissertations and Notes which accompany the text may be said to embody
the views, (ofttimes indeed dissented from by Dr. Latham,) of Grimm and
Zeuss, and the learning with which those distinguished men have
illustrated the subject. Indeed, Dr. Latham, who sets an example of
openly acknowledging his obligations to other scholars which we should
be glad to see more generally followed, expressly states, that whether
the work before us took its present form, or that of a translation with
an elaborate commentary of Zeuss's learned and indispensable work, _Die
Deutschen und die Nachbarstaemme_, was a mere question of convenience.
If the story that we have heard be true, namely, that one of the most
learned and active members of the episcopal bench did, at a late
clerical meeting, hold up a copy of Whitaker's _Clergyman's Diary and
Ecclesiastical Directory_, and pronounce it to be a little book so full
of useful and invaluable information as to be indispensable to every
clergyman, it is clear that the work is beyond all criticism.
_The Family Almanack and Educational Register for 1852_, contains--in
addition to full particulars of nearly a thousand public schools,
colleges, and universities, and a list (containing upwards of a
thousand) of the principal private schools in the kingdom,--a vast
amount of miscellaneous information (including for the first time the
Statutes of the Irish University) and statistical tables, and so forms a
volume which no person interested in the great question of education can
at all do without.
While on the subject of education, we may acknowledge the receipt of
several educational works, which we can only notice with great brevity.
M. Merlet's _Dictionary of French Difficulties_ (which, but that the
subject is almost too grave for such a jest, we should have suggested
might very appropriately have been dedicated to the President) bears on
its title the stamp of its merit in the words "_third edition_."
M. Falch Lebahn's _Self Instructor in German_; _Practice in German_; and
_German in One Volume_ (4th ed.), are very able attempts to facilitate
the study of that most useful language.
The last work, containing as it does La Motte Fouque's beautiful tale of
_Undine_, with explanatory notes on all the difficult words and phrases,
and its vocabulary of 4500 words synonymous in German and English,
cannot be found otherwise than most useful.