Tutti Frutti. By Prince Puckler Muskau. 1 vol. 12mo. New York.

Of this little volume, which, by the way, we have seen honored by most flaming eulogies in some of our periodical contemporaries, we can scarcely command ourselves so far as to speak with temper. It is as miserable a specimen of flippancy, ignoranre, and self-conceit, as ever emanated from the brain of hereditary dulness. The author is one of that rapidly increasing class, which, not content with that pretty little éclat that may properly be acquired by their effusions in the albums of the precieuse ridicules of the haute monde, must needs issue forth into the wide sphere of public notoriety, and shine, God save the mark !, as political economists, critics, or philosophers. This prince was the author, some time ago, of a work on the manners, customs, and institutions, of England,, a work dictated by a similar spirit to that displayed in the remarks of a
lady of no agreeable celebrity, on our own country ; and which became, to a certain degree, popular on the European continent, for the self-same reason which secured some slight fame to Mrs. Trollope; namely, the fear and jealousy entertained by the readers towards the subject of defamation. This work, though containing some palpable hits, some evident truths, and some just remarks, was nevertheless as a whole, vain, false, and flippant. The facts were in part correctly stated, the deductions drawn therefrom equally ill-natured and illogical. So also of Mrs. Trollope. The English nobility could not discover or appreciate the self-esteemed talents of the German prince! The Americans were not to be gulled by a vulgar, low, Englishwoman, aping the faults and follies of her betters. Therefore Prince Puckler satirized the English, and Mrs. Trollope abused the Americans. In both instances, we are happy to say, the slanderers have subsequently given the lie to their own falsely acquired reputation, by the issue of books, so silly as to prove the incapacity of the writers, to do well what is perhaps the most difficult of all labors, namely, to form on slight acquaintance correct estimates of national character and peculiarities. Mrs. Trollope wrote The Abbess, and Prince Puckler has sent forth Tutti Frutti. As its name would imply, this volume is a medley; but not, as it would imply, a medley of the sweet and ripe effusions of a well matured understanding. It is a medley of conceited impertinences, by way of general observations ; stale and puerile truisms, to fill the place of philosophical dicta; and absurd improbabilities, intended to represent personal adventures, but whether real or romantic, we are unable even to guess. There is a bear story decidedly superior in absurdity to any of the snake stories which have been going the rounds of our dailies with so much success, wherein we learn, among other things, that the Moldavian peasants talk good French, as well as sundry other equally singular facts, warranted neither by truth, nature, probability, or analogy. If this German sage be a man of average understanding, which we greatly doubt, he must have been laboring under some awful paroxysm of vanity, when he decided on committing such nonsense as this,, for in that case he must have known it to be nonsense, , to the public, presuming, we imagine, that his title would screen him from the rod of indignant criticism ; and so, we doubt not, it does in his own loved land of legitimacy; but so shall it not here, even if it be ours alone to raise our voices against the childish and sometimes mischievous follies, which are endured and even lauded when proceeding from titled stupidity, while they would be condemned to the lowest abyss if perpetrated by any individual, not qualified to be ignorant or a fool with impunity, by the simple fact of being acquainted with the name of his progenitors in the third or fourth degree.

From: The American monthly magazine. Vol. IV, 1835.