Felicitas : a Tale of the German Migrations, A.D. 476.
By Felix Dahn. Translated from the German by " M. A. C. E." (Macmillan and Co.)—The time chosen for the scene is that at which the shadowy Empire of the West became extinct, in the person of Romulus Augustulas ; the scene is Claudiam Javavum, now Salzburg. To this town come a host of Alemanni and Bajavari, and take it by storm. The various elements that constituted the life of the time are vigorously and graphically described. There is the Remelt tribune, profligate and corrupt, but a brave soldier; the Greek money-lender ; the priest Joannes, representative of the one power that kept all things from utter decay ; and the slave population, a seething mass of hatred, scarcely kept within limits by all the ap- pliances of a cruel discipline. Then come in the " Barbarians," with their fresh and vigorous life, untainted by the corruptions of a decayed civilisation. The figures of these German chiefs have, it is clear, been carefully studied. The younger hero is a very picturesque person indeed. His vigil in the house of Fulvius and Felicitas, the young husband and wife in whom the interest of the story centres, is powerfitlly described, but it could hardly be read aloud in a family circle. The translator has done her task fairly well, but has sometimes, one would think, been mastered by a certain intricacy of style in the original. Severna advises his younger comrade to marry again. " 'Ha!' laughed the young man, fiercely, 'that a second Emperor may entice away from me a second sponse, as a Bishop the first bride, an Emperor the first wife led astray ?' " The meaning is sufficiently plain, but this is not English.
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