of the countess was naturally attracted by this story, and she asked the name of the song. To her astonishment and confusion, she received for answer, Da droben auf dem Berge.' Like a woman of the world, however, she soon recovered her composure. She instantly hurried with her discovery to her faithless knight, overwhelmed him with gentle reproaches, threatened him with a formal impeachment before his own cour d'amour, according to the statutes of which he was distinctly prohibited from offering his homage to more than one lady at a time. Above all, she reproached him in a quarter where Goethe probably felt most sensitive, namely, his want of invention, in making use of the same loveletter twice over. Goethe professed the deepest remorse, promised amendment, and admitted that the lady of his heart was in all things in the right."

We have already said, that this book will not add very much to our information with regard to Goethe. We have yet to wait for a more familiar and domestic picture of the man, from the hand of one who has lived with him at home as well as in public, and observed his domestic habits as well as his brilliant conversational powers in society. This want, however, we trust will speedily be supplied.

ART. XII.-Novum Testamentum Græcum Editionis Receptæ, cum Lectionibus variantibus Codicum MSS., Editionum Aliarum, Versionum et Patrum, necnon Commentario pleniore ex scriptoribus veteribus Hebræis, Græcis, et Latinis, Historiam et Verborum Vim illustrante: operá et studio Joannis Jacobi Wetstenii. Tomus I. continens Quatuor Evangelia. Editio altera, aucta et emendata, curante Joanne Anthonio Lotze. Rotterodami. 1831. Large 4to.

Or all the critical editions of the New Testament, which had been published up to the middle of the last century, the distinguished critic Sir J. D. Michaelis pronounced that of John James Wetstein to be the most important and necessary to those who are engaged in sacred criticism. The Prolegomena were first published in 1730: and the edition itself, which contained those Prolegomena in a corrected form, appeared in 1751-2, at Amsterdam, in two large folio volumes. Wetstein's Greek text is copied from the Elzevir edition of the New Testament; the verses are numbered in the margin: and the various readings, with their authorities, (containing, as it is said, a million of quotations,) are placed beneath the text, together with the commentary. Although Wetstein's labours were criticised with great severity by Michaelis, yet since Bishop Marsh's elaborate vindication of them, they have been appreciated more justly: and no professedly biblical library can be considered as complete, which has not a copy of Wetstein's edition of the Greek Testament. This has long borne a very high price in England, and in Holland (we have been informed) it is so rare as scarcely to be procurable, except at an exorbitant sum. Dr. Lotze has, therefore, conferred an important service on the cultivators of sacred literature, by presenting them with a new and greatly improved edition of Wetstein's work.

Wetstein, it is well known, had a leaning in favour of Socinianism: on which account he has been charged with unfairness in some of his criticisms and readings. While Dr. Lotze admits his predecessor's Socinian bias, he bears a noble testimony to his critical fidelity. In editing

the Prolegomena, (which are all that is comprised in the present fasciculus,) he has scrupulously retained Wetstein's text, with the exception of those passages in which the latter had thrown out unjust observations upon other critics, especially the pious and erudite Bengel, and also with the omission of his literary quarrels with Frey and Iselius: and he has added, from the second volume of the folio edition, Wetstein's critical observations upon various readings, and his rules for judging of their value, together with most of the notes of John Solomon Semler, who republished the Prolegomena at Halle in 1764. Dr. Lotze has further subjoined, in an appendix, Dr. Glocester Ridley's learned Dissertation on the Syriac Versions of the New Testament, in which the errors of Wetstein are corrected, and his deficiencies are supplied.

In editing the ensuing portions of Wetstein's work, Dr. Lotze states that the Greek text of the Elzevir edition, printed in 1624, will be given with the most scrupulous fidelity; and that the utmost attention will be bestowed upon the correction of the errors which had crept into the various readings collected by Wetstein. In this division of his undertaking, the editor has largely availed himself of the subsequent labours of Griesbach, Woide, Alter, Birch, Dermout, Scholz, and others.

The principal defect in Wetstein's collection of various readings was in those furnished by the ancient versions. Of the Latin Vulgate, as he entertained but a mean opinion respecting its critical value, he had neglected to profit to the full extent which he might have done. Dr. Lotze will therefore faithfully exhibit the various readings of this version. Wetstein was also frequently erroneous in the readings which he professed to derive from other versions: nor is this at all surprising, when we consider that for the Oriental Versions-the Syriac alone excepted-he had recourse to the frequently incorrect extracts of others. That he himself collated the Syriac version imperfectly and hastily, is evident from the facts, that he has mistaken the meaning of some passages, while he has altogether passed by others which Dr. Mill had correctly given in the celebrated Oxford edition of 1707. In order to present accurately the readings of the old Syriac version, which was executed at the close of the first or very early in the second century, Dr. Lotze has consulted the critical works of C. B. Michaelis and his son Sir J. D. Michaelis, Storr, Professor White, and other later scholars, whose researches have thrown much light on this branch of sacred literature.

The Commentary of Wetstein (who has admirably elucidated very many passages of the New Testament, while his notes on others are unsatisfactory and have a Socinian bias) will be reprinted entire, but with the correction of his errata.

Such is the plan of Dr. Lotze's important and laborious undertaking. So far as the present portion of it enables us to judge, it is beautifully and correctly printed: and we hope that the learned editor will be remunerated, by the extensive circulation of his work, for the very great expense of time and labour which, he must incur, in order to execute it in a manner that shall give entire satisfaction to biblical scholars.

ART. XIII.-Ueber die Verschwörung gegen Venedig im Jahr 1618. Von Leopold Ranke. Mit Urkunden aus dem Venetianischen Archive. (On the Conspiracy against Venice in 1618. By Leopold Ranke. With Original Documents from the Venetian Archives.) Berlin.

THIS work, to which we can only direct our readers' attention in a word, is a valuable contribution to the history of the Venetian republic, more particularly as overturning the plausible and ingenious, yet, after all, most unfounded theory of the latest, and perhaps best known, though we are very far from thinking the safest or the most authentic, of her historians-we mean Count Daru. The Spanish conspiracy against Venice is interesting to the English reader, more perhaps through its association with the drama of Otway, and the recollection of Pierre and Belvidera, than its intrinsic importance in a historical point of view. But it possesses another source of interest, as illustrating how often, after wavering through a number of ingenious theories, we return after all to the earliest account as the truest and most authentic. That which is given by the Venetian chroniclers, Priuli and Nani, is, in substance as follows: that a conspiracy had been organized between the Duke of Ossuna, Viceroy of Naples, Pedro de Toledo, Governor of Milan, and Bedamar, the ambassador at Venice, all in the service of Spain, the object of which was to massacre the senate, and take possession of and plunder Venice; that for this purpose French soldiers had been engaged, under the command of the Corsair, Jacques Pierre, who had contrived to enlist in the Venetian service; but that the brigantines in which the levies were embarked being dispersed by a storm, the conspiracy had been disclosed by two of the confederates, Juvin and Moulcassin, on which many of the leading conspirators were arrested and executed. Though this was in the main the view taken by the Abbé St. Real in the well-known novel, (for it is no better,) which formed the groundwork of Otway's play, yet his account of the conspiracy was taken directly from the well-known "Sommario della Congiura contro la Citta de Venezia," manuscript-copies of which are to be found in almost all the Italian libraries; a work utterly worthless in point of historical value, the few facts which it contains being mixed up with the most improbable inventions, and the very characters through whose agency the leading events are represented as taking place, being almost entirely imaginary, with the exception of Pierre and Juvin, which last is converted into Giaffie (Jaffier). Strange enough that this romance, the authenticity of which is doubted even by its earliest publisher, and the absurdity of which is demonstrated by Daru, should actually have been adopted even by Venetian historians-such as Sandi, Teutori, Diedo and Tiepolo-as an authentic document; and that, prior at least to the appearance of Daru's work, all our views on the subject (we speak of the British public in particular) should have been derived from St. Real's improved edition of the Venetian Summary!

Another theory was propounded, about 1801, by Chambrier in

VOL. X. NO. XX.

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the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy, in which he denied the exist ence of any conspiracy, and maintained that the true cause of the execution of Pierre and the conspirators was their being engaged in a crusade against the Turks, at a time when the Venetian republic found it particularly necessary to keep on the best terms with their oriental neighbours. This theory, founded on some incidental expressions in the correspondence of the French ambassador at Venice at the time, is totally inadequate to account for many of the most remarkable and best established facts connected with the conspiracy. Accordingly it was entirely abandoned by Daru, who adopted a more ingenious though more daring theory. Instead of the conspiracy being a conspiracy of the Spaniards against Venice, he maintains, founding his view on some passages in the work of Louis Vedel and the Life of the Marshal Lediguières, that it was a conspiracy of Ossuna himself and the republic of Venice against Spain, of which the leading object was to procure for Ossuna the independent sovereignty of Naples. The awkward revelations of Pierre he accounts for by the supposition that Pierre, who is allowed on all hands to have been a person in whom no confidence could be reposed, was himself but imperfectly acquainted with the intentions of Ossuna, and believed that he was engaged in a conspiracy against Venice; his execution and that of the other conspirators he ascribes to the treachery of the Venetian government, who, with the view of averting the suspicions of Spain, after the matter became public, pretended to believe the conspiracy real, and put to death those individuals as its prime agents, although all the while they were the ignorant tools of Ossuna and the Venetian government. This is no doubt a sufficiently original view of matters, which converts the intended victim into a conspirator, and totally changes the aspect of the whole affair. But bold as it is, and ingenious as it appears when perused in the connected narrative of Daru, it will not bear a moment's serious investigation; and accordingly the present work, which is almost entirely founded on the clearest and most irrefragable original documents, entirely demolishes this theory, and restores matters to their old position. Ranke's materials are the correspondence of the Council of Ten with the Senate-communicating from time to time the progress of the investigations against the conspirators; the notes of the Spanish and French ambassadors, with the answers of the Ten; the general report of the Ten on the conspiracy; the opinion of the Consultori in June, as to their punishment; the answer of the Ten; and a report by Spinelli, the Venetian agent, in 1619. From these he shows distinctly that the supposed understanding between the Venetian republic and Ossuna, at the date of the conspiracy, rests on no ground whatever; that on the contrary every step of Ossuna and Bedamar was most anxiously watched by the senate; that they gave the strictest injunctions to Savi, after the execution of Pierre, to take immediate measures for the security of the city; and that the execution of the other conspirators, which Daru represents as subsequent to the departure of Father Brindisi for Spain, and as he thinks led to a disclosure of Ossuna's plans, really preceded it, the first taking place in May, 1618,

while Brindisi did not leave Venice till October. The result of Ranke's investigation is to show, that the account given by Nani, the Venetian chronicler, with the exception of a few discrepancies, (easily accounted for when the character of Pierre, upon whose disclosures the Venetian account mainly rests, is kept in view,) is the true one. His work, we think, cannot fail to be considered as a triumphant refutation of the hasty though ingenious misrepresentations of Daru, of the correctness of whose statements on many points we have long been doubtful, and which we suspect it would not be difficult to expose and refute, if the troubled sea of Venetian politics and history possessed sufficient attractions for the antiquary and the historian to induce them to plunge beneath its surface.

ART. XIV. Przebracki, der Russische Polizei-Spion. Ein Zeitbild, von August Lewald. (Przebracki, the Russian Police-Spy, a picture of the times, by A. Lewald.) Hamburgh. 1832. 12mo.

Of late years the Historic Novel, under the magic influence of the great Northern Enchanter, whose loss not England only, but the whole civilized world is now deploring, has assumed a character of graphic truth that gives it much of the effect of reality; and if the novelist lays his scene amidst political convulsions in a land but little known, we read with a feeling of actually acquiring knowledge. Whether in the present instance this feeling be just or illusory, we cannot pretend to say, never having visited Poland; but it is so strong, that we are irresistibly induced to afford a page or two to Lewald's tiny volume, which, however, he in his preface desires us to consider "not as a novel, but as a continuous series of sketches from the life." Now, inasmuch as all these sketches are parts of a story, this might seem a somewhat arbitrary demand; nevertheless, we are the better disposed and the better able to comply with it, since we must confess that the story is what we least comprehend, and therefore, perhaps, least like in the book. What most interests us is the picture given; always supposing, what we think not unlikely, that we may rely upon the truth of the portraiture of the various connected and unconnected, extravagant and imprudent, conspiracies organizing against the Russians, both within and without Poland, prior to the insurrection of November, 1830, and in which old men and young girls, nobles, police agents, and robbers, are represented as alike engaged.

But we must proceed to give our readers a more distinct idea of the little volume; and for that purpose, after saying a word or two of the nature of the story, as far as we understand it, we shall briefly describe a few of the first sections, or scenes, and translate a part of one of them.

The hero, with the unutterable name, is a Polish ex-schoolmaster, employed by the Russians as a police-spy, who unites a coarse love of pleasure, and a vulgar love of money, with ardent patriotism, and disinterested loyalty to Count S., the nobleman upon whose estate he was born. The story, which introduces us to this more original than fasci