It is not our intention, at the present writing, to enter into any discussion concerning the characteristics or the value of the novels of Charles Dickens:  we have neither time nor space for it.  Besides, to few of our readers do these books need introduction or recommendation from us.  They have long been accepted by the world as worthy to rank among those works of genius which harmonize alike with the thoughtful mind of the cultivated and the simple feelings of the unlearned,—­which discover in every class and condition of men some truth or beauty for all humanity.  They are, in the full sense of the word, household books, as indispensable as Shakspeare or Milton, Scott or Irving.

We may fairly say of the various editions of Dickens’s writings, that their “name is Legion.”  None of them all, however, is better adapted to common libraries than the new edition now publishing in New York.  It will be comprised in fifty volumes, to be published in instalments at intervals of six or eight weeks.  The mechanical execution is most commendable in every respect:  clear, pleasantly tinted paper; typography in the best style of the Riverside Press; binding novel and tasteful.  A vignette, designed either by Darley or Gilbert, and engraved upon steel, is prefixed to each volume.  We have to congratulate the publishers that they have so successfully fulfilled the promises of their prospectus, and the public that an edition at once elegant and inexpensive is now provided.

FOREIGN LITERATURE.

Die Schweizerische Literatur des achzehnten Jahrhunderts.  Von T.C.  MOeRIKOFER.  Leipzig:  Verlag von S. Hirzel. 8vo. pp. 536.

In the early part of the Middle Ages Switzerland contributed comparatively little to the literary glory of Germany.  Beyond Conrad of Wuerzburg, who is claimed as a native of Basel, no Swiss name can be found among the poets of the Hohenstaufen period.  In a later age it is rather the practical than the romantic character of the Swiss that is manifested in their productions.  The Reformation brought them in closer contact with German culture.  There was need of this; for in no country was the gap wider between the language of the people and that of the learned.  Scholars like Zwinglius and Bullinger were almost helpless, when they sought to express themselves in German.  Little appeal could, therefore, be made to the masses in their own tongue by such writers.  During the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the vernacular was even more neglected than before.  It was not until the beginning of the eighteenth that Latin and French ceased to be the only languages deemed worthy of use in literary composition.  In 1715 Johannes Muralt wrote his “Eidgnoeszischen Lustgarten,” and later several other works, mostly scientific, in German.  Political causes came in to help the reaction, and from that time the Protestant portion of the Helvetic Confederation may be said to have had a literature of its own.