8 1 4 Reviews of Books clusively to American works, and even here we note the omission of such general accounts as Eickhoff's In der netten Heiinat. The pseudo-novel application of the term " Volkerwanderung " in the Foreword is too na'ive to require comment. Moreover, it is no longer in place to speak of the Germans in America as an undiscovered or newly discovered people. The style of the book is rugged and at times obscure, as the following passage will show (p. 15) : " Men with none of that preparation of heart which our forefathers quaintly called ' experimental religion ' were or- dained and ministered to congregations, famished for plain teaching of duty, scholastic treatises, or furious polemics against the sins of sectarian- ism, the dangers of good works, and the wickedness of prayer-meetings. " After this passage, such offences against style as "nor did it content the longings of many" (p. 13) ; " Of which Penn, like the able man that he was, took advantage," appear slight. It is regrettable that the most hasty and superficial treatments of the history of these Germans, such as S. G. Fisher's 77;,? Making of Pennsylvania and that of Miss Bittinger, should have come without critical revision from Pennsylvania itself and from Philadelphia, where the great original sources are so rich and numerous. As offsetting the works above mentioned we have a really good ac- count of the Pennsylvania Germans in Kuhn's The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pen/isylvatiia. This is the first scholarly treatment of the general subject yet published in the English language. The author, himself to the manner born, has actually taken the trouble, not only to look up and "consult" the literature on the subject, but has, unlike his predecessors, assimilated the material of his sources and given it inde- pendent treatment. The general outline of the book overlaps at some points that of Miss Bittinger's. The chapters treat successively : The His- toric Background, Settlement of the German Counties of Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania-German Farmer in the Eighteenth Century, Language and Literature, The Religious Life, In Peace and in War, and as an appendix, Pennsylvania-German Family Names. Attempts have been made by others to trace the causes which led to the early migration of the Germans to Pennsylvania, attempts based largely upon the older books of Hausser, Geschichte der Rheinischen Pfalz, and Loher, Geschichte and Zustiinde ; whereas Kuhns, like everyone fully ac- quainted with the subject, knows of the existence of such important books as Freytag's Bilder aus der deiitschen Vergangenheit, Riehl's charming books, especially Die Pfaelzer, and Cultnrstudien. He institutes upon the basis of these and other still more recent authorities such as Dand- liker, Geschichte der Schweiz (1893-1895), Hofler, Volksmedizin und Aberglaube in Oberbayerns Gegenwart and Vergangenheit (new ed. 1893), and E. H. Meyer, Deutsche Volkskunde (i8g8), a comparison of the Pennsylvania Germans with their European successors. These sources have been cited in such a way as to enable the reader to follow out the subject on his own account. And we cannot commend too highly to our American publishers as well as bookmakers, the German footnote
