The Little Princess. From the German of E. Marlitt. Translated
by Blanche E. Slade. (Remington and Co.)—Without feeling that The Little Princess possesses any extraordinary merit, we must most sincerely condole with her author on the singularly clumsy dress in which she has been presented to the English public. A great many people seem to think that the merest smattering of a foreign language entitles them to translate books out of it, but at least such people generally have a fair knowledge of their own tongue. Miss Slade apparently has not, and the result is much more carious than agree- able. The story she has tried to translate is one which, with certain variations of time and place, has been told over and over again. There is a young girl brought up in the country, a gentleman of middle-age who falls in love with her at first-eight, an absent- minded father ; various persons who draw the girl into difficulties, from which her elderly lover rescues her, and a faithful old servant to whom she flies, in order to be brought back by the said lover. But this particular heroine is so very wild and childish, that she evidently ought to have been seven, instead of seventeen ; and it passes even the most indulgent novel-reader's powers to believe that Mr. Claudius's "large, blue, fiery eyes" could have seen anything at- tractive in her. In fact, "it is incredulous," as one of the characters pertinently remarks ; and after that we are not surprised to read that "she contemptibly pushed aside some fine, embroidered sheets," and did a great many other odd things. There is one word, apparently a favourite with Miss Slade, her authority for which we should like to know,—it is "screeched." "The bolt scronched as it was pushed ;" "the gravel screeched." She ought also to explain what she means by "the game of La Grasse," which does not quite suggest the same idea as "the game of La Grace ;" why she chooses to say "Frankish," instead of "French ;" and why, when Mr. Claudine has just shown some acquaintance with horses, he should be said to have "a knowledge of cavalier manners."
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