Heinrich von Treitschke: German Classics and Romantics

(Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von Friedrich dem Großen bis zur Märzrevolution, 1927)

Frederick the Great and German poetry

The  Prussian  state  continued  to  give  expression  to  one  side  only  of  our  national  life.  The  deUcacy  and  the  yearning,  the  profundity  and  the  enthusiasm,  of  the  German  nature  could  not  come  to  their  rights  in  this  sober-minded  world.  The  focal  centre  of  German  policy  did  not  become  the  home  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  nation  ;  the  classical  epoch  of  our  poetry  found  its  stage  in  the  petty  states.  This  significant  fact  is  the  key  to  many  of  the  riddles  of  modern  German  history.  To  the  cool  and  undetached  attitude  of  King  Frederick  our  literature  owes  the  most  precious  of  all  its  possessions,  its  incomparable  freedom;  but  this  indiffer-  ence of  the  crown  of  Prussia  during  the  days  that  were  decisive  as  to  the  character  of  modem  German  culture,  is  also  responsible  for  the  fact  that  it  long  remained  difficult  for  the  heroes  of  German  thought  to  understand  the  one  truly  living  state  of  our  people.  After  Frederick's  death  it  was  fully  two  decades  before  Prussia  could  give  a  hospitable  reception  to  the  intellectual  forces  of  the  new  Germany  ;  and  a  considerably  longer  period  must  subsequently  elapse  before  German  science  was  able  to  recognise  that  it  was  of  one  blood  with  the  Prussian  state — ^that  the  state-constructive  force  of  our  people  was  rooted  in  the  same  vigorous  idealism  which  had  inspired  German  research  and  German  art  in  its  bold  ventures.

Frederick's  coldness  towards  German  culture  is  unquestionably  the  most  tragical,  the  most  unnatural  phenomenon  in  the  long  history  of  the  passion  of  new  Germany.  The  first  man  of  the  nation,  the  one  who  had  re-awakened  in  the  Germans  the  courage  to  believe  in  themselves,  regarded  from  the  outlook  of  a  foreigner  the  finest  and  most  characteristic  works  of  his  own  nation  ;  there  is  surely  no  more  expressive,  no  more  shocking  way  of  describing  the  slowness  and  difficulty  with  which  this  people  of  ours  was  able  to  shake  off  the  dire  heritage  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  the  excessive  power  of  foreign  influences.      Frederick  was    not,  as   had   been Henry  IV  of  France,  a  loyal  advocate  of  the  national  merits  and  defects  ;  he  lacked  Henry's  understanding  of  the  national  tempera-  ment in  every  shade  of  its  caprices.  Two  natures  were  at  war  within  him.  On  the  one  hand  he  was  the  philosophical  connois-  seur, who  rejoiced  in  the  strains  of  music,  in  the  sweet  sounds  of  French  verse,  who  regarded  the  fame  of  the  poet  as  the  greatest  happiness  on  earth,  who  in  honest  admiration  exclaimed  to  Voltaire :  "  To  me  the  fortune  of  birth  has  given  an  empty  appearance,  but  to  thee  every  talent  possible,  and  thine  is  the  better  part."  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  the  energetic  North  German,  who  stormed  at  his  Brandenburger  churls  in  the  rough  dialect  of  the  Mark,  to  the  hard  people  an  image  of  warrior-courage,  of  restless  labour,  of  iron  strength.  The  French  enlightenment  of  the  eighteenth  century  suffers  from  the  essential  disease  of  a  profound  untruth,  in  that  it  possesses  neither  the  desire  nor  the  power  to  harmonise  life  with  the  ideal.  People  waxed  enthusiastic  regarding  the  sacred  innocence  of  nature,  whilst  wallowing  with  delight  in  the  most  unnatural  practices  which  had  ever  prevailed  in  the  Euro-  pean world.  They  mocked  the  ridiculous  chances  of  birth,  dreamed  of  primitive  freedom  and  equality,  while  indulging  in  the  most  uncontrolled  contempt  for  mankind  and  in  all  the  sweet  sins  of  the  old  courtly  society,  satisfied  with  the  hope  that  in  some  remote  future  reason  would  assert  its  sway  over  the  ruins  of  the  actual  world  of  their  day.  At  the  Prussian  court  the  talented  and  ill-  conditioned  Prince  Henry  was  a  true  child  of  this  culture :  theoretic-  ally a  contemner  of  that  empty  vapour  which  the  mob  term  fame  and  greatness,  but  in  practice  a  man  of  the  hard  reason  of  state,  unscrupulous,  an  expert  in  all  possible  wiles  and  artifices. 

Frederick,  too,  led  after  his  own  manner  the  double  life  of  the  men  of  the  French  enlightenment.  It  was  his  tragical  destiny  to  think  and  to  speak  in  two  languages,  of  neither  of  which  he  had  perfect  command.  To  the  youth  intoxicated  with  beauty,  the  rude  gibberish  that  was  to  be  heard  in  his  father's  tobacco-parlia-  ment was  as  repugnant  as  were  the  obscure  writings  of  over-refined  pedantry  with  which  he  came  into  contact  in  the  works  of  bigoted  theologians  ;  for  well  or  for  ill  he  had  to  make  use  of  this  uncouth  speech  in  discharging  current  affairs,  now  in  a  rough  dialect,  now  in  a  stiff  legal  style.  For  the  world  of  ideas  fermenting  in  his  head  he  could  find  worthy  expression  only  in  the  tongue  of  cosmopolitan  culture.  He  often  admitted  that  his  rough  and  bizarre  muse  spoke  in  a  barbarous  French,  and  in  the  recognition  of  this  weak-  ness he  was  apt  to  take  too  low  an  estimate  of  the  artistic  value and  linguistic  purity  of  his  own  verses.  One  thing  at  least  among  those  which  make  the  poet,  a  protean  talent,  was  not  lacking  to  him.  His  muse  ranged  over  the  entire  gamut  of  moods.  Now,  in  appropriate  earnestness  it  could  express  the  great  and  the  sublime  ;  now  again,  in  satiric  caprice,  tease  and  worry  its  victims  with  the  malice  of  a  Kobold — or,  to  say  truth,  with  the  mischievous  waggery  of  a  Berlin  gutter-snipe.  Yet  it  was  a  true  feeling  which  taught  him  that  the  wealth  of  his  soul  failed  to  find  such  abundant  and  pure  expression  in  his  verses  as  in  the  tones  of  his  flute  ;  the  most  tuneful  expression,  the  ultimate  profundity  of  sensation,  were  for  the  German  unattainable  in  the  foreign  tongue.

The  philosopher  of  Sans  Souci  never  became  truly  at  home  in  the  foreign  culture  which  he  so  ardently  admired.  In  especial  he  was  separated  from  his  French  associates  by  the  strictness  of  his  moral  view  of  the  world-order.  The  greatness  of  Protestantism  consists  in  its  imperious  demand  for  the  unity  of  thought  and  will,  of  the  religious  and  of  the  moral  life.  Frederick's  moral  culture  struck  its  roots  too  deeply  into  German  Protestant  life  for  him  to  escape  a  sense  of  the  secret  weakness  of  French  philosophy.  Frederick  could  adopt  towards  the  Church  an  attitude  more  dis-  passionate than  was  possible  to  Voltaire,  the  Catholic,  who,  in  his  Henriade,  the  evangel  of  the  new  toleration,  finally  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  all  respectable  men  must  belong  to  the  Roman  Church.  Frederick  never  bent  his  neck  Uke  Voltaire  beneath  religious  forms  which  his  conscience  rejected,  and  could  endure  with  the  serene  indifference  of  the  born  heretic  the  action  of  the  Roman  Curia  in  placing  his  works  on  the  Index.  Whilst  he  some-  times condescends  to  describe  philosophy  as  his  passion,  we  recognise  that  with  him  consideration  of  the  great  problems  of  exist-  ence is  something  of  far  more  importance  than  a  casual  pastime ;  after  the  manner  of  the  ancients  he  seeks  and  finds  in  the  thought-  process  the  repose  of  the  spirit  at  one  with  itself,  the  security  of  the  soul  that  is  Hfted  above  all  the  vicissitudes  of  fate.  After  the  aberrations  of  passionate  youth,  he  early  learned  to  exercise  a  forcible  control  over  the  tendency  towards  artistic  softness  and  sensuality,  which  often  impelled  him  to  grasp  at  the  pleasures  of  the  moment.  However  boldly  and  disrespectfully  doubt  and  mockery  might  course  through  his  mind,  he  ever  held  firmly  to  the  conception  of  the  moral  order  of  the  world  and  to  the  thought  of  duty.  The  solemn  earnestness  of  his  life  utterly  consecrated  to  duty  is  separated  by  the  heaven's  breadth  from  the  loose  and  fragile  morality  of  the  Parisian  enlightenment.     His  writings, couched  in  a  clear  and  precise  style,  which  is  sometimes  trivial  but  never  confused,  are  directed  with  persistent  force  of  will  towards  a  secure  and  determinate  conclusion,  and  in  the  same  way  he  desires  to  regulate  his  life  in  accordance  with  recognised  truth.  As  far  as  is  practicable  in  face  of  the  resistance  of  a  barbaric  world  he  endeavours  to  secure  for  humaneness,  which  he  term.s  the  cardinal  virtue  of  every  thinking  being,  the  dominion  over  state  and  society  ;  and  he  goes  to  meet  death  with  the  quiet  conviction  "  that  he  leaves  the  world  heaped  over  with  his  benefits."

Nevertheless  it  remained  for  ever  impossible  to  him  com-  pletely to  overcome  the  division  of  his  soul.  The  internal  con-  tradiction is  manifest  at  the  first  glance  in  Frederick's  mordant  wit,  which  is  so  nakedly  displayed  because  the  hero,  in  his  proud  truthfulness,  never  dreamed  of  attempting  to  conceal  it.  The  life  of  the  man  of  genius  is  alwa3^s  impenetrable  in  its  obscurity,  and  very  rarely  indeed  is  it  so  difficult  to  understand  as  in  the  wealth  of  this  spirit  thus  cleft  asunder.  The  king  looks  down  with  superior  irony  upon  the  flat  ignorance  of  his  Brandenburg  nobility  ;  he  draws  a  deep  breath  of  relief  when  after  the  tedium  of  this  dull  society  he  can  refresh  himself  in  the  company  of  the  one  man  to  whom  he  looks  with  admiration,  the  master  of  the  tongue  of  the  Gallic  muses  :  yet  at  the  same  moment  he  feels  what  he  owes  to  the  trustworthy  soundness  of  this  rough  race  ;  cannot  find  words  enough  in  which  to  express  his  esteem  for  the  high  spirit,  the  fidelity,  the  honourable  disposition  of  his  nobles;  and  bridles  his  spirit  of  mockerv  when  he  contemplates  the  firm  biblical  faith  of  old  Zieten.  1  he  French  are  his  welcome  guests  for  the  pleasant  hours  of  supper  ;  but  his  respect  is  given  to  the  Germans.  Not  one  of  his  foreign  associates  is  so  near  to  Frederick's  heart  as  the  "  man  of  his  soul,"  Winterfeldt,  v/ho  maintained  his  German  disposition  even  against  his  royal  friend.  Very  frequently  Frederick  expresses  in  his  letters  his  yearning  for  the  new  Athens  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine,  and  bewails  the  envy  of  unfavourable  gods  who  have  condemned  the  son  of  the  Muses  to  rule  over  slaves  in  the  Cimmerian  region  of  winter  ;  and  3^et  he  shares  without  repining,  just  as  did  his  father,  the  sorrows  and  labours  of  this  poor  people,  glad  at  heart  on  account  of  the  new  life  that  was  springing  to  existence  under  the  hard  hands  of  his  peasants,  exclaiming  with  pride :  "  I  prefer  our  simplicity,  and  even  our  poverty,  to  that  accursed  wealth  which  destroys  the  worth  of  our  race."  Woe  to  the  foreign  poets  when  they  take  upon  themselves  to  offer  political  counsel  to  the  king  ;  severely  and  mockingly  he  then  refers  them,  to  the  Umitations  of  their  art. 

However  vividly,  moreover,  the  ideas  of  the  new  France  may  occupy  his  mind,  he  is  a  great  writer  only  when,  in  his  French  words,  he  is  expressing  German  ideas,  when  in  his  political,  mili-  tary, and  historical  writings  he  is  speaking  as  a  German  prince  and  commander.  It  was  not  in  the  school  of  the  foreigner  but  through  his  own  energy  and  through  his  own  incomparable  experi-  ence that  Frederick  became  the  first  publicist  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  one  German  who  approached  the  state  with  creative  critical  faculty,  and  who  spoke  in  the  great  style  of  the  duties  of  the  citizen.  Never  before  in  this  denationalised  race  had  any-  one written  of  love  of  country  with  the  same  warmth  and  profundity  as  the  author  of  the  Letters  of  Philopatros.  The  ageing  Icing  no  longer  considered  it  worth  while  to  descend  from  the  altitude  of  his  French  Parnassus  into  the  lowlands  of  German  art,  or  to  examine  with  his  own  eyes  whether  the  poetic  energy  of  his  people  had  not  at  length  been  awakened.  In  his  essay  upon  German  literature,  composed  six  years  before  his  death,  he  recapitulates  the  ancient  accusations  of  the  ordinary  Parisian  critic  against  the  undisciplined  wildness  of  the  German  tongue,  and  dismisses  with  disdainful  words  the  detestable  platitudes  of  Goetz  von  Ber-  lichingen — which  he  can  hardly  have  read.  And  yet  this  very  essay  bears  eloquent  witness  to  the  passionate  national  pride  of  the  hero.  He  prophesies  for  the  future  of  Germany  an  epoch  of  spiritual  glory,  the  rays  of  whose  sunrise  were  already  illuminating  those  still  blind  to  the  light.  Like  Moses,  he  sees  the  promised  land  from  afar  off,  and  comes  to  the  hopeful  conclusion,  "  It  may  be  that  the  last  comers  will  excel  all  their  predecessors  !  "  So  near  to  his  people,  and  yet  so  remote,  so  greatly  estranged  and  yet  so  closely  akin,  was  the  great  king  of  Germany.

The  grand  epoch  of  the  old  monarchy  went  down  to  its  rest.  Around  the  king  it  became  ever  quieter ;  the  heroes  who  had  fought  his  battles,  the  friends  who  had  laughed  with  him  and  shared  his  enthusiasms,  sank  one  by  one  into  the  grave  ;  he  was  over-  whelmed by  solitude,  the  curse  of  greatness.  He  was  accustomed  to  spare  no  hum^an  feeling  ;  for  himself  in  former  days  all  the  wondrous  dreams  of  his  youth  had  been  trampled  under  foot  by  his  unpitying  father.  In  his  old  age  his  inconsiderate  strength  took  the  form  of  an  unyielding  hardness.  The  serious-minded  old  man  who  in  the  scanty  hours  of  his  leisure  walked  alone  with  his  greyhounds  in  the  picture  gallery  of  Sans  Souci,  or,  heavy-hearted,  in  the  round  temple  of  his  park,  pondered  memories  of  his  dead  sister,  saw  far  below  at  his  feet  a  new  generation  springing  up  of the  petty  children  of  man,  ready  to  fear  him  and  to  obey,  but  not  to  give  him  their  love.  The  excess  of  power  of  this  one  man  lay  as  a  heavy  burden  upon  their  spirits.  When  sometimes  he  still  visited  the  Opera  House,  the  opera  and  the  singers  seemed  to  wilt  before  the  spectators  ;  everyone  looked  towards  the  place  in  the  parterre  where  the  lonely  old  man  with  his  great  severe  eyes  was  sitting.  When  the  news  of  his  death  came,  a  Swabian  peasant,  expressing  the  innermost  thought  of  countless  Germans,  exclaimed :  "  Who  is  now  to  rule  the  world  ?  "  Until  his  last  breath  was  drawn  all  the  energy  of  will  of  the  Prussian  monarchy  continued  to  emanate  from  this  single  man  ;  the  day  of  his  death  was  the  first  rest-day  of  his  life.  His  testament  showed  once  again  to  the  nation  how  different  was  the  political  kingship  of  the  HohenzoUerns  in  its  understanding  of  the  kingly  office  from  the  petty  courts  of  Germany  :  "In  the  moment  of  my  death  my  last  wishes  will  be  for  the  happiness  of  this  state  ;  may  it  be  the  happiest  of  all  states  through  the  mildness  of  its  laws,  the  most  just  of  all  in  its  domestic  administration,  the  most  bravely  defended  of  all  by  an  army  that  lives  only  for  honour  and  fame  for  noble  deeds,  and  may  this  realm  continue  to  flourish  until  the  end  of  time  !  "

A  century  and  a  half  had  passed  away  since,  amid  the  ruins  of  the  old  empire,  Frederick  William  had  sought  the  first  materials  for  the  upbuilding  of  the  new  great  power.  A  hundred  thousand  men  of  Prussia  had  found  a  hero's  death,  a  colossal  labour  had  been  expended  to  establish  in  safety  the  new  German  kingship,  and  as  the  outcome  of  this  frightful  struggle  there  had  at  least  been  secured  for  the  empire  one  abundant  blessing — the  nation  once  more  found  itself  master  on  its  own  soil.  For  the  Germans  in  the  empire,  life  offered  a  consciousness  of  security  which  had  long  been  lacking  ;  it  seemed  to  them  as  if  this  Prussian  had  been  predestined  to  cover  with  his  shield  against  all  foreign  disturbers  the  peaceful  work  of  the  nation  ;  without  this  powerful  sentiment  of  civic  security  our  German  poetry  would  not  have  found  the  joyful  spirit  necessary  for  great  creation.  Public  opinion  began  gradually  to  reconcile  itself  with  the  state  that  had  grown  up  against  the  public  will ;  people  accepted  it  as  a  necessity  of  Ger-  man life  without  troubling  themselves  much  about  its  future.  The  difficult  problem  as  to  how  so  venturesone  a  state-structure  was  to  maintain  itself  without  the  vivifying  force  of  genius,  received  serious  consideration  from  one  contemporary  mind  alone,  that  of  Mirabeau.  The  old  epoch  and  the  new  were  still  greeting  one  another  on  friendly  terms,  when  shortly  before  the  death  of  the king  the  tribune  of  the  approaching  Revolution  passed  an  hour  at  the  table  of  Sans  Souci.  In  the  glowing  terminology  of  his  rhetoric  Mirabeau  has  described  the  greatest  man  upon  whom  he  had  ever  set  eyes.  He  termed  Frederick's  state  a  truly  beautiful  work  of  art,  the  one  state  of  the  day  which  could  seriously  interest  a  talented  head,  but  he  did  not  fail  to  see  that  this  daring  structure  rested  unfortunately  upon  too  slender  a  foundation.  The  Prussians  of  those  days  could  not  understand  such  doubts  ;  the  glory  of  the  Frederician  epoch  seemed  so  miraculous  that  even  this  most  carp-  ingly  critical  of  all  the  peoples  of  Europe  was  blinded  by  its  splen-  dour. For  the  next  generation,  the  fame  of  Frederick  was  a  destructive  influence  ;  people  reposed  upon  that  fame  in  specious  security,  and  forgot  that  it  is  only  by  arduous  labour  that  the  work  of  earlier  arduous  toil  can  be  maintained.  Yet  when  the  days  of  disgrace  and  trial  arrived,  Prussia  was  once  more  to  experience  the  power  of  genius  slowly  working  to  its  issue  and  dif-  fusing blessings  ;  the  memories  of  Rossbach  and  Leuthen  provided  the  ultimate  moral  energy  which  preserved  the  leaky  vessel  of  the  German  monarchy  from  submergence  beneath  the  waters  ;  and  when  the  state  once  again  took  up  arms  in  a  struggle  of  desperation,  a  South  German  poet  saw  the  form  of  the  great  king  descending  from  the  clouds,  and  calling  to  his  people :  ''  Up,  my  Prussians,  assemble  under  my  banners,  and  you  shall  be  greater  even  than  were  your  forefathers  !  "

The New Literature

Meanwhile  the  German  people,  with  a  youthful  energy  and  speed  unique  in  the  slow  history  of  ancient  nations,  had  completed  a  revolution  in  its  spiritual  life  ;  barely  four  generations  after  the  hopeless  barbarism  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  there  dawned  the  finest  days  of  German  art  and  science.  From  the  vigorous  roots  of  religious  freedom  there  sprouted  a  new  secular  free  culture,  just  as  hostile  to  the  ossified  forms  of  German  society  as  was  the  Prus-  sian State  to  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  The  classic  literature  of  all  other  nations  was  the  offspring  of  power  and  of  wealth,  the  ripe  fruit  of  a  developed  national  civilisation ;  the  classical  poetry  of  Germany  served  to  reintroduce  the  German  people  into  the  circle  of  civilised  nations,  to  open  Germany's  way  to  a  purer  civilisation.  Never  before  in  the  whole  course  of  history  has  a  powerful  literature  so  utterly  lacked  favouring  external  conditions.  Here  there  was  no  court  which  cherished  art  as  an  ornament  of  its  crown  ;  there  was no  large  urban  public  which  could  at  once  encourage  the  poet  and  confine  him  within  the  limits  of  a  traditional  artistic  form  ;  there  were  no  vigorous  commerce  and  industry  to  present  to  the  natural  philosopher  fruitful  problems  for  investigation  ;  there  was  no  free  national  life  to  offer  the  historian  the  school  of  experience  :  even  the  lofty  sensibility  which  derives  from  living  amid  great  events  was  first  provided  for  the  Germans  by  the  deeds  of  Frederick  the  Great.  Spontaneously  from  the  heart  of  this  nation  of  idealism  did  its  new  poetry  spring  to  life,  just  as  formerly  had  originated  the  Reformation  from  the  sound  German  conscience.  The  middle  classes  lived  their  lives  almost  entirety  excluded  from  the  conduct  of  the  state,  immured  in  the  tedium,  the  compulsions,  and  the  poverty  of  the  life  of  petty  towns,  and  j'et  in  such  tolerably  secure  economic  conditions  that  the  struggle  for  existence  did  not  as  yet  monopolise  all  vital  activities,  and  the  savage  jostle  for  earnings  and  enjoj/ments  still  remained  unknown  to  their  peaceful  existence.  Among  these  human  beings  in  a  condition  of  almost  incredible  material  well-being,  there  now  awakened  the  passionate  yearning  for  the  true  and  the  beautiful.  The  more  intelligent  among  them  felt  themselves  the  free  children  of  God,  and  soared  above  the  realm  of  petty  realities  into  the  pure  world  of  the  ideal.  The  note  was  given  by  men  of  altogether  exceptional  talent,  and  a  hundred  inspired  voices  joined  in  a  full  chorus.  Each  one  spoke  after  his  own  heart,  confidently  following  the  joyful  message  of  the  youthful  Goethe  :  it  is  an  inner  impulse,  and  therefore  it  is  a  duty  !  Each  one  gave  to  the  full  measure  of  his  powers,  as  if  the  creative  activity  of  the  thinker  and  of  the  poet  was  the  only  thing  in  the  wide  world  worth  doing  for  a  man  of  free  spirit.  They  lived  their  happy  lives,  recking  little  of  the  monetary  reward  of  their  labour,  immersed  in  their  poetry,  their  contemplation,  and  their  research,  rejoicing  in  the  ever-flowing  approbation  of  warm-hearted  friends,  and  rejoicing  even  more  in  the  consciousness  of  their  own  vision  of  the  divine.

Thus  from  the  year  1750  onwards  three  generations  of  Germans,  working  simultaneously  and  successively,  and  often  striving  in  passionate  contests,  created  the  youngest  of  the  great  literatures  of  Europe.  This  literature,  for  long  almost  unnoticed  outside  the  German  borders,  endowed  with  unbounded  receptivity,  took  to  itself  the  enduring  content  of  the  classical  poetry  of  England,  France,  Spain,  and  Italy,  reconstituting  this  with  a  new  creative  spirit,  to  find  fulfilment  ultimately  in  Goethe,  the  most  many-sided  of  all  poets.  The  movement  was  so  perfectly  free,  so  spontaneous an  outcome  of  the  innermost  impulse  of  an  overfilled  heart,  that  of  necessity  it  culminated  finally  in  the  audacious  idealism  of  Fichte,  who  regarded  the  moral  will  as  the  sole  reality,  and  the  whole  outer  world  as  merely  a  creation  of  the  thinking  ego  ;  yet  the  whole  process  was  a  necessary  and  natural  growth.  The  creative  energy  of  the  German  spirit  had  long  been  slumbering  like  a  chrysalis  in  its  delicate  envelope,  but  there  now  happened  what  the  poet  expresses  in  the  words  :  "  The  moment  comes  for  the  imago  to  emerge,  to  spread  its  wings,  and  fly  to  the  heart  of  the  rose."  A  pure-minded  ambition,  seeking  truth  for  the  sake  of  truth,  beauty  for  the  sake,  of  beauty,  now  animated  the  clear  heads  of  the  German  youth.  No  other  of  the  modern  nations  has  ever  devoted  itself  with  the  same  earnestness,  with  the  same  undivided  ardour,  to  the  world  of  ideas  ;  no  other  numbers  among  the  leading  spirits  of  its  classical  literature  so  many  fine  and  humanly  lovable  characters.  Hence,  for  our  people,  whenever  their  star  seems  to  be  undergoing  obscuration,  the  memory  of  the  days  of  Weimar  will  remain  an  inexhaustible  source  of  confidence  and  hope.  To  the  Germans,  art  and  science  became  matters  of  vital  consequence,  and  were  never  here,  as  once  of  old  among  the  Romans,  a  mere  elegant  play-acting,  a  pastime  for  the  idle  hours  of  the  world  of  fashion.  Not  with  us  did  the  courts  develop  our  literature,  but  the  new  culture  arising  from  the  free  activity  of  the  nation  brought  the  courts  under  its  own  subordination,  liberated  them  from  unnatural  foreign  customs,  and  gradually  won  them  to  the  adoption  of  a  gentler  and  more  humane  civilisation.

Moreover,  this  new  culture  was  German  to  the  core.  Whilst  the  political  life  of  the  country  was  subdivided  into  innumerable  currents,  in  the  domain  of  spiritual  work  the  natural  vigour  of  the  national  unity  was  so  overwhelming  that  no  attempt  was  ever  made  at  any  territorial  subdivision.  All  the  heroes  of  our  classical  literature,  with  the  solitary  exception  of  Kant,  were  migratory  men,  and  did  not  find  their  region  of  richest  efficiency  upon  the  soil  of  their  own  home.  All  were  inspired  by  a  consciousness  of  the  unity  and  originality  of  the  German  nature,  and  all  were  ani-  mated by  the  passionate  desire  to  restore  the  peculiar  gifts  of  this  nation  to  their  rightful  place  of  honour  in  the  world;  they  knew,  every  one,  that  the  whole  of  Germany  was  hanging  upon  their  word,  and  they  felt  it  to  be  a  proud  privilege  that  only  the  poet  and  the  thinker  were  competent  to  speak  to  the  nation  and  to  act  on  behalf  of  the  nation.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  for  many  decades  the  new  literature  and  the  new  science  were  the  mightiest  bond  of union  for  this  people  split  into  so  many  fragments,  and  literature  and  science  ultimately  determined  the  victory  of  Protestantism  in  German  life.  It  was  in  Protestant  Germany  that  this  great  intel-  tellectual  movement  had  its  original  home,  and  only  gradually  did  the  Catholic  regions  of  the  empire  submit  to  the  same  impulse.  The  thought -process  of  the  philosophers  gave  rise  to  a  new  moral  view  of  the  world-order,  to  a  new  doctrine  of  humanism  which,  though  free  from  all  dogmatic  rigidity,  was  yet  rooted  in  the  soil  of  Protestantism,  and  which  ultimately  became  a  common  heritage  of  all  thinking  Germans,  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike.  One  to  whom  this  new  humanism  was  unknown  was  no  longer  living  in  the  new  Germany.

The  middle  strata  of  society  among  which  this  new  culture  sprang  to  life  came  to  such  an  extent  to  occupy  the  foreground  of  the  national  life  that  Germany,  more  than  any  other  country,  became  a  land  of  the  middle  class  ;  the  moral  judgment  and  the  artistic  taste  of  the  middle  class  were  the  determinants  of  public  opinion.  Classical  education,  which  had  hitherto  been  the  instru-  ment for  the  expert  training  of  lawyers  and  divines,  now  became  the  basis  of  the  general  popular  culture  ;  upon  the  ruins  of  the  old  aristocracy  of  birth  there  upbuilt  itself  the  new  aristocracy  of  the  educated  people  which  for  a  hundred  years  has  been  the  lead-  ing class  of  our  nation.  In  all  directions  the  literary  movement  exercised  its  awakening  and  fertilising  influence ;  it  ennobled  manners,  restoring  to  woman  her  due  place  as  mistress  in  social  intercourse  ;  it  provided  once  again  for  an  oppressed  and  intimi-  dated generation  the  free  breath  of  life.  Building  upon  the  written  speech  of  Martin  Luther,  it  developed  a  common  tongue  of  inter-  course for  all  branches  of  the  German  stock ;  it  was  only  in  the  final  third  of  the  eighteenth  century  that  the  cultured  classes  began  to  pay  due  respect  to  the  pure  High  German  even  in  daily  life.  Unaffected  by  the  noise  and  the  hurry  of  the  great  world,  German  poetry  was  able  to  maintain  for  an  extraordinarily  long  period  the  blameless  cheerfulness,  the  concentrated  reflectiveness,  and  the  fresh  love  of  being,  characteristic  of  youth.  It  was  this  which  so  greatly  charmed  Madame  de  Stae'l  in  the  brilliant  days  of  Weimar  art ;  she  felt  that  on  the  Ilm,  among  the  most  highly  cultured  of  the  German  people,  she  was  drinking  in  the  forest-love  of  a  primi-  tive human  life,  and  was  taking  breath  once  more  after  the  vapours  and  the  dust  of  her  native  world-city.  And  as  it  is  the  right  of  youth  to  promise  without  restraint,  and  whilst  receiving  crowns  of  glory  to  reach  out  the  hands  once  more  in  pursuit  of  further aims,  the  German  nation,  in  this  period  of  poetic  rejuvenescence,  displayed  an  extraordinarily  many-sided  activity,  unweariedly  propounding  new  problems,  discovering  new  artistic  forms,  and  devoting  its  energies  to  every  possible  science,  with  the  one  excep-  tion of  the  science  of  politics.

It  must  be  admitted  that  side  by  side  with  the  peculiar  merits  characteristic  of  its  origin,  our  new  literature  exhibited  also  peculiar  weaknesses.  Since  the  poet  was  unable  to  create  his  matter  directly  out  of  the  great  passions  of  vigorously  active  public  life,  it  resulted  that  criticism  gained  a  preponderance  that  was  often  dangerous  to  the  naive  artistic  creative  energy,  most  of  the  dramatic  heroes  of  our  classical  art  display  a  morbid  tendency  to  renunciation,  to  a  dread  of  action.  The  unbridled  freedom  of  creation  readily  led  the  poets  to  arbitrary  conceits,  to  elaborate  artifices,  to  ambitious  beginnings  which  never  found  completion ;  and  it  is  not  by  mere  chance  that  the  greatest  of  all  our  poets  is  the  one  who,  among  the  great  poets  of  history,  has  left  the  world  the  largest  number  of  fragments.  Individual  talent  could  display  its  primitive  energies  undisturbed,  and  was  not  all  tuned  to  a  single  measure  by  the  exigencies  of  party  life.  Love  became  stormy,  friendship  effemi-  nate, and  every  sensation  found  expression  to  excess  ;  an  enviably  rich  sense  of  fellowship,  fertile  in  ideas,  produced  a  few  men  of  universal  culture,  such  as  had  not  been  known  in  Europe  since  the  Renaissance.  But  within  the  retired  sphere  of  this  purely  private  life  there  developed,  not  only  what  is  valuable  in  individuality,  but  also  the  defects  characteristic  of  the  free  personality.  "  Love,  to  the  very  marrow,  love,  hate,  and  fear,  tremble,  hope,  and  despair."  This  was  the  watchword  of  the  new  sensationalism  of  the  epoch  of  Sturm  und  Drang;  an  unbridled  self-confidence,  a  faith  in  their  power  to  storm  the  heavens  became  active  in  the  young  generation,  reacting  against  the  lack  of  freedom  characteristic  of  public  affairs.  Incalculable  caprices,  personal  hates  and  personal  envies,  were  given  unrestricted  expression  ;  many  of  the  works  of  this  epoch  are  comprehensible  to-day  to  those  only  who  are  familiar  with  the  letters  and  diaries  of  their  writers.

A  literature  of  such  an  origin  and  such  a  character  could  not  become  popular  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word,  and  could  influence  the  masses  but  slowly  and  indirectly.  Whilst  the  men  of  culture  were  inspiring  themselves  by  the  contemplation  of  the  pure  forms  of  the  antique,  the  sense  of  beauty  among  the  common  people,  although  these  were  now  better  educated  than  formerly,  remained  much  blunter  than  that  of  the  same  class  in  France  and  in  Italy. Once  only  in  this  northern  land  was  there  a  passable  cultivation  of  the  general  sense  of  form  :  in  the  days  of  the  Hohenstaufen,  when  the  palaces  and  the  cathedrals  of  the  late  Romanesque  style  were  constructed,  and  when  the  glorious  songs  of  our  earlier  classical  poetry  were  understood  by  the  peasant  lads  and  maidens  in  every  village  along  the  Rhine  and  the  Main.  Since  those  days,  at  every  stage  in  the  development  of  German  civilisation,  there  has  been  displayed  a  hideous  foundation  of  unrestrained  barbarism.  When  the  beautiful  Renaissance  facade  of  the  Otto  Heinrich  building  in  Heidelberg  was  erected,  the  German  art  of  poetry  was  in  a  profoundly  depressed  condition,  and  the  noble  edifice  was  defaced  by  lamentable  doggerel  verses.  Similarly,  when  the  joyful  days  of  our  second  classical  literature  arrived,  the  fine  arts,  which  flourish  only  in  the  soft  atmosphere  of  general  well-being,  were  hardly  affected  by  the  fresh  current  of  the  new  time,  and  Goethe  wasted  the  beauty  of  his  verses  upon  such  ridiculous  buildings  as  that  Roman  house  at  Weimar  whose  pseudo-antique  forms  are  altogether  repugnant,  and  which  offends  the  cultured  sense  by  its  utter  vanity.  We  cannot,  indeed,  fail  to  be  moved  by  the  con-  templation of  this  heroic  generation  of  idealism,  which,  amid  the  unadorned  poverty  of  the  palaces  of  our  petty  princes,  continued  to  aspire  towards  the  highest  good  of  mankind  :  yet  there  persisted  an  unnatural  severance  between  the  wealth  of  ideas  and  the  poverty  of  life,  between  the  bold  flights  of  the  imagination  of  the  cultured  and  the  utterly  prosaic  daily  activities  of  the  labouring  masses.  The  nobility  of  a  harmoniously  developed  civilisation  such  as  that  which  brought  happiness  to  the  Italians  in  the  days  of  Leonardo  still  remained  denied  to  the  Germans.

All  its  defects  and  errors  notwithstanding,  it  was  this  literary  revolution  which  determined  the  character  of  the  new  German  civilisation.  By  developing  the  fundamental  ideas  of  the  Reforma-  tion into  a  right  of  absolutely  unprejudiced  free  investigation,  it  made  this  country  once  again  the  central  region  of  heresy.  Awakening  the  ideals  of  a  purely  humanistic  culture,  it  awakened  also  the  national  pride  of  country.  However  immature  might  be  the  political  culture  of  the  time,  however  wrong-headed  its  cosmo-  politan dreams,  in  all  the  leaders  of  the  movement  there  was  none  the  less  active  the  noble  ambition  to  prove  to  the  world  that,  as  Herder  says,  "  the  German  name  is  strong,  firm,  and  great  in  its  own  right."  The  national  inspiration  of  the  War  of  Liberation  arose,  not  in  conflict  with  the  ideas  of  humanism,  but  on  a  truly  humanist  foundation.  When  the  cruel  blows  of  destiny  had  again  reminded the  German  genius  of  the  needs  to  come  down  from  the  clouds  to  the  finite  conditions  of  existence,  the  nation  also  attained  by  a  necessary  last  step  to  the  consciousness  that  its  new  spiritual  free-  dom could  endure  only  in  a  respected  and  independent  state ;  the  idealism  that  breathed  from  the  thoughts  of  Kant  and  the  dramas  of  Schiller,  became  transfigured  in  the  heroic  wrath  of  the  year  1813.  It  resulted  that  our  classical  literature,  proceeding  from  an  entirely  different  starting-point,  aspired  towards  the  same  goal  as  the  political  labours  of  the  Prussian  monarchy.  It  is  to  these  two  formative  energies  that  our  people  owes  its  position  among  the  nations  and  the  best  features  of  its  recent  history.  It  is  very  remarkable  how  both  for  a  hundred  years  held  equal  pace  in  their  development,  bearing  witness  to  an  inner  connection,  which  for  this  very  reason  cannot  be  fortuitous,  since  an  immediate  and  obvious  reciprocal  action  is  rarely  traceable.  At  the  very  time  when  the  Great  Elector  was  creating  the  new  temporal  state  of  the  Germans,  there  happened  also  in  the  world  of  literature  the  decisive  libera-  tion of  science  from  the  yoke  of  theology.  When  subsequently,  under  Frederick  William  I,  the  Prussian  state  was  collecting  its  forces  in  a  period  of  quiet  work,  the  intellectual  life  of  the  nation  was  also  in  a  state  of  self-containment,  the  arid  prose  of  the  Wolffian  philosophy  once  more  taught  the  middle  classes  how  to  think  and  to  write  logically.  Finally,  towards  the  year  1750,  contemporaneously  with  the  heroic  deeds  of  King  Frederick,  there  began  the  awakening  of  creative  energy  in  literature,  and  the  first  permanent  works  of  the  new  poesy  made  their  appearance.

To  the  mind  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  moral  world  appeared  a  closed  visible  unity  ;  state  and  church,  art  and  science,  received  the  moral  laws  of  their  being  from  the  hands  of  the  Pope.  It  was  the  aim  of  the  Reformation  to  destroy  this  dominion  of  ecclesias-  tical authority,  and  to  win  alike  for  the  state  and  for  knowledge  the  right  to  an  independent  moral  existence.  Yet  the  success  thus  attained  was  but  a  half -measure.  Just  as  the  theocracy  of  the  Holy  Empire  remained  established,  and  all  the  temporal  states  continued  to  support  the  zealotry  of  the  Churches,  so  also  know-  ledge relapsed  under  the  theological  perversion ;  the  old  queen  of  the  sciences  continued  to  occupy  her  throne,  and  all  the  teachers  at  the  universities  were  compelled  to  avow  some  particular  religious  creed.  Then  began,  first  of  all  in  Germany's  highly  cultivated  neighbour-lands,  the  great  work  of  the  mathematical  century  ;  a  strict  and  clear-headed  research,  working  in  a  free  secular  spirit,  elucidated  the  secrets  of  nature  ;  and  towards  the  end  of  the seventeenth  century,  when  Newton  discovered  the  laws  of  celestial  mechanics,  there  gradually  ensued  a  profound  change  in  our  views  of  the  world-order.  Dogmatic  religious  belief  had  hitherto  been  regarded  as  the  only  trustworthy  guide  in  the  insecure  realm  of  thought,  but  now  knowledge  seemed  to  furnish  greater  security  than  belief.  It  will  always  remain  a  proud  memory  for  our  people  how  boldly  and  freely  the  harassed  generation  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  participated  in  this  mighty  movement,  at  first  in  a  spirit  of  receptive  discipleship  (for  Leibnitz  found  it  necessary  to  say  that  industry  was  the  only  talent  of  the  German  nation),  but  subse-  quently in  a  mood  of  active  independence.  After  a  long  and  fierce  struggle  Puffendorf  expelled  the  theologians  from  the  field  of  political  science  and  founded  for  Germany  a  true  doctrine  of  the  state.  Other  sciences  followed  suit  and  learned  to  stand  upon  their  own  feet ;  the  University  of  Heidelberg  was  the  first  to  abandon  the  principle  of  religious  unity.  In  Leibnitz  there  arose  a  thinker  whose  cautiously  intermediating  spirit  was  inwardly  free  from  the  dominion  of  dogma,  and  who  opened  a  path  of  unprejudiced  research  to  German  philosophy ;  whilst  soon  Thomasius  could  joyfully  exclaim,  "It  is  unrestricted  freedom  which  alone  gives  the  spirit  its  true  life."  By  the  secularisation  of  the  sciences,  the  political  power  of  the  Churches  was  gradually  destroyed  from  within  out-  wards. By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  there  was  little  left  of  the  power  which  the  court-chaplains  and  consistories  had  formerly  possessed  in  the  Protestant  lands  of  the  empire  ;  the  new  officialdom  held  fast  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  state.  At  this  period,  also,  Thomasius  ventured  to  introduce  the  German  tongue  into  academic  instruction,  and  since  all  the  Protestant  universities  followed  his  example,  the  Latin  learning  of  the  Jesuits  was  no  longer  able  to  enter  into  rivalry  with  Protestant  science  ;  everyone  in  Germany  who  desired  a  living  culture  hastened  to  enrol  himself  at  some  Protestant  university.  Although  the  corporate  pride  of  the  professors  and  the  roughness  of  the  academic  youth  were  not  yet  entirely  overcome,  the  first  bridge  had  been  erected  between  science  and  the  life  of  the  nation.

At  the  same  time  there  ensued  for  the  Protestant  Church  a  period  of  new  life,  centred  above  all  in  the  young  University  of  Halle,  and  firmly  attached  to  the  tolerant  ecclesiastical  policy  of  the  Prussian  state.  The  nation  had  been  heartily  sickened  by  the  raging  contests  of  dogma  during  the  epoch  of  the  wars  of  religion.  The  efforts  of  the  Calixtiners  towards  religious  union,  the  "religious  inwardness"  of  the  pietists,  and  the  rationalising  criticism  of Thomasius,  found  themselves  side  by  side  in  a  common  struggle  with  the  tyranny  of  the  theological  belief  in  the  letter  of  the  written  word.  The  moral  content  of  Christianity,  which  had  almost  been  forgotten  amid  the  noisy  struggles  of  the  zealots,  came  once  more  to  its  own,  now  that  Francke  and  Spener  had  exhorted  their  congre-  gations to  live  the  life  of  the  gospels  in  mutual  brotherly  love.  The  effective  sense  of  Christian  piety  was  manifested  in  the  magni-  ficent foundation  of  the  Halle  orphanage  and  in  other  works  of  charity ;  the  doctrine  of  pietism  spoke  to  the  heart,  and  enabled  women  to  feel  themselves  once  more  to  be  living  members  of  the  congregation.  Nor  did  this  revival  of  German  Protestantism  lead,  like  the  efforts  of  the  Dutch  Arminians  and  of  the  English  Latitu-  dinarians,  to  the  formation  of  new  sects ;  it  effected,  rather,  a  genuine  union  of  the  whole  Protestant  name,  permeating  the  Church  once  more  with  the  spirit  of  primitive  Christianity,  and  fulfilling  the  word  "  in  My  Father's  house  are  many  mansions."  After  many  struggles  and  aberrations  it  yet  remained  as  a  permanent  acquire-  ment that  German  Protestantism  became  the  gentlest,  the  freest,  and  the  most  comprehensive  of  all  the  Christian  communities,  and  one  which  was  still  able  to  find  place  within  its  bosom  for  the  boldest  ventures  of  philosophy  ;  it  resulted  also  that  religious  toleration  gradually  made  its  way  into  the  daily  life  of  the  Germans,  and  that  numerous  mixed  marriages,  and  before  long  also  mixed  schools,  gave  a  permanent  seal  to  ecclesiastical  peace.

It  is  only  this  revival  of  German  Protestantism  which  explains  those  most  peculiar  tendencies  of  the  new  German  civilisation  which  remain  incomprehensible  to  most  non-Teutons,  and  even  to  the  English ;  this  alone  has  rendered  it  possible  for  the  German  to  be  at  the  same  time  pious  and  free,  for  his  literature  to  be  Protes-  tant without  the  taint  of  dogma.  The  English  and  French  enlightenment  has  the  sign  written  on  its  forehead  to  show  how  it  was  effected  in  conflict  with  the  tyranny  of  enslaved  Churches  and  with  the  obscure  zealotry  of  an  ignorant  populace  ;  even  the  deism  of  the  British  is  irreligious,  for  the  deists'  god  makes  no  appeal  to  the  conscience,  and  merely  fulfils  the  office  of  the  great  machine-  driver  of  the  world.  The  German  enlightenment,  on  the  other  hand,  was  firmly  rooted  in  Protestantism ;  it  attacked  ecclesiastical  tradition  with  even  sharper  weapons  than  did  the  philosophy  of  the  neighbouring  peoples,  but  the  boldness  of  its  criticism  was  mitigated  by  a  profound  veneration  for  religion.  It  awakened  the  consciences  which  the  Anglo-French  materialism  put  to  sleep ;  it  preserved  the  belief  in  a  personal  God,  and  in  the  ultimate purpose  of  the  perfected  world,  the  human  immortal  soul.  The  fanatical  hatred  of  the  Church  and  the  mechanical  view  of  the  world-  order  which  characterised  the  French  philosophers,  were  regarded  by  the  Germans  as  a  sign  of  enslavement ;  Lessing  turned  with  repulsion  from  the  mockeries  of  Voltaire,  and,  with  the  self-certainty  of  the  young  man  rejoicing  in  the  future,  the  student  Goethe  laughed  at  the  senile  tedium  of  the  Systeme  de  la  Nature.  All  through  the  eighteenth  century  the  Protestant  parsonage  continued  to  exercise  its  ancient  beneficial  influence  upon  German  life,  while  never  ceasing  to  take  an  ardent  part  in  the  creation  of  the  new  literature.  Even  though  our  art  could  not  become  a  possession  of  the  whole  people,  we  have  still  to  thank  the  rejuvenation  of  German  Protes-  tantism for  the  great  blessing  that  the  most  highly  cultivated  moral  views  have  come  to  permeate  the  conscience  of  the  masses,  and  that  ultimately  the  ethics  of  Kant  forced  their  way  into  the  Protestant  pulpits  and  thence  into  the  lowermost  strata  of  the  North  German  people.  The  moral  gulf  between  the  upper  and  the  lower  strata  of  society  was  narrower  in  Germany  than  in  the  lands  of  the  west.

This  first  epoch  of  modern  German  literature  exhibits  also  a  severe  prosaic  tendency.  Men  of  learning  are  the  leaders  of  the  movement ;  art  is  hardly  touched  as  yet  by  the  spirit  of  the  new  age  ;  only  in  Schliiter's  buildings  and  statuary,  and  in  the  com-  positions of  Bach  and  Handel,  do  we  witness  a  great  and  free  manifestation  of  the  heroic  character  of  the  epoch.  Yet  to-day  those  notable  struggles  against  Jesuitism  and  against  coagulated  Lutheranism  seem  to  us  as  pioneer  and  as  radical  as  the  political  deeds  of  the  Great  Elector.  They  laid  the  firm  foundation  for  everything  which  we  to-day  speak  of  as  German  spiritual  free-  dom. From  the  maturer  writings  of  Leibnitz  and  Thomasius,  from  Puffendorf's  work  upon  the  relationship  of  State  and  Church,  there  speaks  already  that  spirit  of  unconditional  toleration  which  in  foreign  lands  neither  Locke  nor  Bayle  could  whole-heartedly  advocate.

In  the  succeeding  generation,  the  creative  energy  was  almost  completely  suspended.  These  were  the  empty  days  in  which  the  crown  prince  Frederick  was  experiencing  the  decisive  impressions  of  his  youth.  The  market  of  learning  was  under  the  dominance  of  a  sterile  polymathy,  and  the  ambitious  works  of  the  day  were  lacking  precisely  in  those  qualities  of  measure,  precision,  and  definiteness  of  expression,  which  were  especially  prized  at  the  Rheinsberg  court  of  the  Muses.  Gottsched's  poetry  slavishly followed  the  rigid  rules  of  French  poetry  without  ever  rising  out  of  the  level  of  bumptious  platitude  to  attain  the  rhetorical  pathos  of  the  romance  world.  Electoral  Saxony  was  the  only  German  land  which  could  boast  of  tasteful  culture  and  of  a  fertile  artistic  activity  ;  but  the  splendid  operas  and  the  fine  baroque  buildings  of  the  Dresden  court  are  no  more  than  the  signs  of  the  fantastic  late  blossoming  of  Gallic  art,  and  by  no  means  indicate  a  progress  in  our  national  life.  Yet  even  now  the  growth  of  the  German  spirit  was  far  from  being  arrested.  The  more  generally  comprehensible  products  of  the  intellectual  work  of  the  highly  talented  previous  generation  became  gradually  current  among  the  people.  The  philosophy  of  Christian  Wolff  effected  a  reconciliation  between  faith  and  knowledge  sufficient  for  the  needs  of  the  epoch,  and  thus  provided  for  the  coming  generation  a  consistent  and  harmonious  view  of  the  universe.  The  average  culture  of  the  middle  classes  found  peace  in  the  belief  that  God  operates  in  accordance  with  natural  laws.  Wolff  deliberately  transcended  the  limits  of  the  learned  world,  awakened  in  wide  circles  a  desire  for  thinking  and  writing,  and  accustomed  men  of  learning  to  contribute  their  quota  to  the  work  of  general  enlightenment.  Simultaneously,  pietism  was  working  its  influence  in  society.  The  rough  tone  of  tyrannical  hardness  disappeared  from  family  life.  In  the  sentimental  assem-  blies of  the  finer  spirits  there  began  the  cult  of  personality.  The  life  of  every  individual  acquired  an  unexpected  new  value  and  content ;  the  Germans  came  to  recognise  once  more  how  rich  is  the  world  of  the  heart,  and  became  capable  of  understanding  profoundly  conceived  works  of  art.

Now  there  appeared  in  the  arena,  as  suddenly  as  the  might  of  the  Frederician  state,  and  exhibiting  the  same  overwhelming  strength,  those  forces  of  German  genius  which  had  been  quietly  maturing  in  the  long  years  of  anticipation.  In  1747  were  pub-  lished the  first  cantos  of  Klopstock's  Messiah.  The  warmth  and  intimacy  of  feeling  which  in  the  prayers  and  diaries  of  the  revivalists  had  found  no  more  than  an  immature  and  often  ludicrous  expres-  sion, now  at  length  attained  to  a  worthy  poetic  form ;  the  jejune  speech  gained  buoyancy,  nobility,  and  boldness  ;  the  entire  world  of  the  sublime  was  reopened  to  the  German  imagination.  With  remarkable  speed  the  nation  understood  that  a  new  epoch  in  its  culture  had  begun.  A  swarm  of  young  men  of  talent  surrounded  the  bard,  in  whose  personality  the  loftiness  of  the  new  art  also  found  a  worthy  representative  ;  and  these  admirers,  in  the  naive  self-appreciation  characteristic  of  all  periods  of  powerful  expansion, placed  the  epic  of  the  German  master  above  that  of  Homer,  and  his  odes  above  those  of  Pindar.  This  artistic  circle  was  in-  toxicated by  a  fantastic  enthusiasm  for  the  fatherland,  and  this  sentiment,  propagated  slowly  but  vigorously,  found  its  way  through  all  strata  of  the  German  middle  class.  Just  as  every  nation,  when  there  comes  a  turning-point  in  its  existence,  is  accustomed  to  find  fresh  sources  of  enthusiasm  in  the  great  memories  of  the  primitive  homeland,  so  now  the  yearnings  of  these  days  turned  back  towards  the  simple  greatness  of  the  Teutonic  primitive  age,  conceiving  that  only  in  the  shadows  of  the  German  oak-forests,  only  in  the  land  of  Arminius  and  the  bards,  were  truth  and  loyalty,  strength  and  ardour  at  home.  What  a  chorus  of  acclamation  arose  from  the  new  Germany  when  the  singer  of  the  Messiah  called  upon  the  new  contestant,  the  young  German  muse,  to  enter  the  field  against  the  poesy  of  England.

Meanwhile  Winckelmann  made  our  people  acquainted  with  ancient  art,  and  rediscovered  the  simple  and  profound  truth  that  art  is  the  representation  of  the  beautiful.  At  the  same  time  he  produced  the  first  work  of  the  new  German  prose  that  was  perfect  in  respect  of  form.  Clear,  weighty,  and  inspired,  sounded  the  words  of  this  priest  of  beauty,  embodying  passion  and  great  thoughts  pressed  together  in  a  measured  and  concise  form ;  it  was  by  "  the  illuminated  brevity  "  of  his  style  that  the  shapeless  prolixity  of  learned  pedantry  was  first  overcome.  His  writings  gave  to  the  young  literature  its  trend  towards  the  classical  ideal.  In  rivalry  and  in  passionate  delight,  art  and  science  sought  to  fulfil  them-  selves with  the  spirit  of  antiquity  ;  and  since  man  values  that  only  which  he  over-values,  it  resulted  that  this  generation,  rejoicing  in  beauty,  intoxicated  with  the  joys  of  first  awakening,  could  see  nothing  in  the  ancient  civilisation  but  pure  humanity,  health,  and  nature.  It  was  only  to  the  Romans  themselves  that  the  world  of  classical  Rome  was  truly  congenial,  but  to  the  genius  of  Greece  the  Germans  were  attracted  by  a  sentiment  of  kinship.  To  the  Germans  first  among  the  modern  nations  did  there  come  a  full  understanding  of  Greek  life,  and  as  the  new  culture  ripened,  the  poet  could  joy-  fully exclaim :  "  The  sun  that  smiled  on  Homer  smiles  also  on  us  now  !  "  By  its  entry  into  the  antique  world  the  German  tongue,  which  had  so  often  been  impoverished  and  obscure,  reacquired  a  considerable  proportion  of  its  ancient  wealth,  and  it  now  came  to  display  an  unanticipated  plastic  softness  and  flexibility.  Alone  among  the  new  languages  of  civilisation,  German  showed  itself  competent  to  employ  at  once  faithfully  and  vividly  all  the  measures of  the  Greeks  ;  as  soon  as  Voss,  the  German  Homer,  had  shown  the  way,  Germany  gradually  became  the  leading  speech  of  the  world  for  translations,  hospitably  providing  a  second  home  for  the  poetic  figures  of  all  peoples  and  all  ages.  Yet  this  charming  receptivity  implied  neither  weakness  nor  lack  of  independence  :  the  German  disciples  of  the  classic  preserved  then:  spiritual  freedom  from  the  classical  ideals,  not  allowing  themselves,  as  had  happened  to  the  humanists  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  to  be  led  astray  from  the  firm  regulation  of  their  own  lives  by  the  moral  views  of  the  antique  world.  Winckelmann,  indeed,  reminds  us  in  many  of  his  characteristics  of  the  unrestrained  heroes  of  the  Renais-  sance :  but  the  majority  of  poets  and  thinkers  who  followed  in  his  footsteps  remained  German,  taking  from  the  Hellenic  culture  that  only  which  was  accordant  to  the  German  nature  ;  and  the  poem  which  of  all  the  works  of  modern  art  approximates  most  closely  to  the  spirit  of  the  antique,  Goethe's  iphigenia,  was  nevertheless  permeated  by  a  sentiment  of  loving  gentleness  such  as  was  never  understood  by  the  hard-hearted  heathen  of  antiquity.

Independent  of  these  two  tendencies,  and  yet  at  one  with  both  in  the  struggle  for  the  rights  of  the  free  artistic  creator,  Lessing  went  on  his  way.  The  most  productive  critic  of  all  time,  he  stood  in  relation  to  the  pathetic  exuberance  of  Klopstock  as  once  Puffen-  dorf  and  Thomasius  had  stood  in  relation  to  pietism,  at  the  same  time  divergent  and  bringing  fulfilment.  His  creative  criticism  effected  that  which  the  enthusiasm  of  the  new  lyric  poetry  would  never  by  its  own  unaided  powers  have  succeeded  in  effecting,  the  permanent  destruction  of  the  strained  unnaturalness  of  the  poetic  art  of  Gottsched,  the  expulsion  from  the  German  Parnassus  of  the  bastard  type  of  didactic  poem,  the  liberation  of  the  nation  from  the  yoke  of  the  rules  of  art  imposed  by  Boileau.  Little  as  we  are  justified  in  ascribing  to  the  man  who  regarded  patriotism  as  a  heroic  weak-  ness the  conscious  sentiment  for  the  fatherland  characteristic  of  our  own  day,  yet  through  those  powerful  controversial  writings  which  held  up  the  dramas  of  Voltaire  for  the  laughter  of  the  Germans  there  runs  that  same  great  tendency  of  a  strengthening  national  life  that  we  find  in  the  heroic  progress  of  Frederick.  Lessing's  criticism  turned  the  German  poets  from  the  courtiers'-versification  of  the  Bourbons  to  the  methods  of  Aristotle  rightly  understood,  to  the  simple  examples  of  classic  art,  and  he  taught  them  to  esteem  that  truth  which  is  true  to  nature  more  than  all  highly  elaborated  rules.  That  criticism  displayed  to  them  in  the  plays  of  Shakes-  peare a  source  of  primitive  Teutonic  life  which  became  a  fountain of  youth  for  German  art ;  the  poet  of  the  merry  England  of  old  soon  found  in  the  free  secular  sense  of  the  Germans  a  fuller  under-  standing than  in  his  own  fatherland  sterilised  by  puritanism.  Lessing,  above  all,  educated  the  new  public  ;  he  was  the  first  German  man  of  letters,  the  first  who  by  his  own  personal  worth  raised  to  honour  the  profession  of  the  free  author,  and  the  first  who  understood  how  to  make  an  effective  appeal  to  all  the  cultured  minds  of  the  nation.  The  most  obscure  problems  of  theology,  of  aesthetics,  of  archaeology,  seemed  luminously  clear  when  treated  by  him  in  the  light  tones  of  the  lively  speech  of  Upper  Saxony,  in  that  prose  that  was  simple  and  yet  so  full  of  art,  which  every-  where reflected  his  own  inmost  nature,  the  serenity  of  his  own  understanding.

And  here,  even  in  the  earliest  youth  of  the  classic  German  prose,  it  became  manifest  that  our  free  tongue  was  suited  to  every  individuality  of  style,  that  it  permitted  each  creative  mind  to  work  after  its  own  fashion.  The  style  of  Lessing,  plainly  modelled  on  French  examples,  was  no  less  German  than  were  the  majestic  periods  of  Winckelmann — for  both  these  authors  wrote  as  they  had  to  write.  But  the  security  of  the  literary  sense  of  self-sufficiency  first  came  to  the  Germans  when  the  great  critic  showed  himself  also  to  be  an  original  artist,  presenting  to  our  stage  the  first  works  that  were  not  shamed  by  contrast  with  the  rich  reality  of  the  Frederician  epoch,  and  that  could  bear  comparison  with  the  dramas  of  foreign  lands.  These  were  works  displaying  the  keenest  understanding  of  art,  and  yet  full  of  passionate  dramatic  movement  ;  apt  for  the  stage,  and  yet  composed  in  perfect  freedom  ;  works  of  imperishable  human  content  and  yet  taking  their  figures  with  a  vigorous  hand  from  the  animated  life  of  the  immediate  present.  Thus  he  rose  higher  and  higher,  dispersing  in  all  directions  the  seed  of  free  cul-  ture. By  his  Emilia  he  gave  our  young  literature  the  courage  to  raise  its  voice  against  the  lack  of  freedom  in  the  state  and  in  society.  His  theological  controversial  writings  laid  the  foundations  for  a  new  epoch  in  theological  science,  for  the  biblical  criticism  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  last  of  his  poetic  works  established  the  forms  for  the  drama  of  lofty  style  which  was  subsequently  to  undergo  further  development  at  the  hands  of  Schiller,  and  mani-  fested at  the  same  time  that  comprehending  faith  in  enlightenment  whose  serene  mildness  was  not  to  become  apparent  to  other  nations  until  after  the  storms  of  the  Revolution.

In  the  seventies,  a  new  and  still  richer  generation  came  upon  the  stage.  The  universal  spirit  of  Herder  united  at  once  the vigorous  understanding  of  Lessing  and  the  rich  emotional  nature  of  Klopstock.  He  rediscovered  that  truth  which  had  been  lost  in  the  long  centuries  overlaid  by  barbarism,  that  art  is  not  the  exclusive  possession  of  particular  peoples  or  ages,  but  is  a  common  gift  of  all  nations  and  all  times  ;  and  he  led  back  our  German  lyric  poetry  to  the  ancient  forms  and  subjects  of  the  folk-songs.  The  moving  tones  of  German  rhyme  came  once  more  to  their  own,  and  emotional  feeling  found  a  warm,  profound,  and  natural  expression  in  songs  and  ballads.  A  thoroughly  unhistoric  epoch,  one  which  had  acquired  its  fame  in  the  destruction  of  a  decaying  world  of  historical  ruins,  was  awakened  by  Herder  to  an  under-  standing of  historical  life.  His  free  spirit  despised  the  poverty  of  that  self-satisfied  illusion  which  regards  all  the  children  of  men  as  created  only  "  for  that  which  we  term  civilisation."  He  recog-  nised that  each  nation  has  its  own  measure  of  happiness,  its  own  golden  age  ;  and  with  wonderful  insight  he  discerned  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  peoples.  It  was  through  his  work  that  the  contrast  between  the  naive  civilisation  of  anti-  quity and  the  sentimental  culture  of  the  modern  world  first  became  apparent.  To  his  prophetic  glance  there  was  already  revealed  the  interconnection  between  nature  and  history  ;  he  conceived  the  magnificent  idea  of  "  following  the  footsteps  of  the  Creator,  of  thinking  after  His  manner,"  of  seeking  the  revelation  of  God  at  once  in  the  constructive  energies  of  the  world-all  and  in  the  transforma-  tions of  human  history  ;  he  gave  a  new  profundity  to  the  idea  of  humanity  when  he  thought  of  mankind  as  a  "  tone  in  the  chorus  of  creation,  a  living  wheel  in  the  works  of  nature."  No  writer  of  the  eighteenth  century  passed  a  severer  judgment  than  Herder  upon  the  late  manifestations  of  Christianity,  and  yet  none  dis-  played a  profounder  understanding  of  faith  than  did  this  intrinsic-  ally religious  spirit.  The  highest  goal  of  his  endeavour  was  to  purify  religion  from  all  that  was  despiritualised  and  enslaved.  Every  one  of  his  writings  breathes  an  air  of  intense  piety,  an  intimate  and  joyful  faith  in  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  God,  a  faith  that  ultimately  overcomes  all  the  caprices  of  a  self-tormenting  nature  inclined  to  get  out  of  tune.  Thus  it  was  that  an  unsparing  opponent  of  the  errors  of  the  Church  could  without  hypocrisy  remain  a  great  divine  and  an  ecclesiastical  official — a  striking  testimony  to  the  sober-minded  freedom  of  the  age.

The  new  universal  culture  for  which  the  bold  anticipations  of  Herder  had  merely  paved  the  way,  now  received  their  definitive  artistic  form  in  the  work  of  the  poet  of  mighty  speech  to  whom  a God  gave  power  to  express  in  song  what  he  had  learned  in  suffering.  It  was  this  mysterious  power  of  conveying  an  immediate  environ-  ment that  his  contemporaries  first  learnt  to  marvel  at  in  the  young  Goethe.  Soon,  too,  they  felt  the  influence  of  his  unending  love,  of  his  unsurpassed  receptiveness  for  all  that  is  human.  It  seemed  like  a  personal  revelation  of  himself  when  he  made  his  Son  of  God  exclaim :  "  Oh,  my  generation,  how  I  yearn  towards  thee  !  And  how  dost  thou,  too,  pitiful  in  heart,  supplicate  Me  in  thy  deep  distress  !  "  Like  the  bards  of  all  ages  when  art  was  naive,  he  sang  only  what  he  had  himself  experienced ;  yet  his  spirit  was  so  rich  and  multiform  that  his  poetry  gradually  encompassed  the  wide  circle  of  German  life,  and  during  many  decades  almost  every  new  idea  which  this  time  of  restless  creation  conceived,  found  its  most  profound  and  most  powerful  expression  in  the  work  of  Goethe ;  until  at  length  the  entire  world  of  nature  and  of  human  life  was  reflected  in  the  old  man's  quiet  eyes.  By  his  early  poems  he  brought  to  German  lyric  poetry  that  new  life  which  Herder  had  merely  foreshadowed.  All  the  charming  and  tender,  sweet  and  yearning  feelings  of  the  German  heart,  which  had  been  obscured  in  the  pathetic  style  of  Klopstock,  the  writer  of  odes,  now  found  expression  ;  the  ancient  songs,  such  as  Roslein  auf  der  Heide,  delighted  once  more  the  cultured  youth  of  the  day,  now  that  Goethe  had  borrowed  them  from  the  herds-  man and  the  hunter,  had  ennobled  their  simplicity  by  the  magic  of  his  art.  The  Germans  learnt  once  more,  from  his  genial  poems,  to  be  unrestrainedly  joyful,  to  give  themselves  up  without  reserve  to  the  heavenly  delight  of  the  moment.  Then  came  Goetz  to  reproduce  before  the  eyes  of  the  nation  the  rough,  untamed  energy  and  greatness  of  the  ancient  German  life  ;  then  did  the  Sorrows  of  Werther  furnish  satisfying  expression  for  the  storm  and  stress  of  passion  which  filled  the  hearts  of  the  young  generation.  It  was  also  politically  significant  that  even  in  this  dispersed  and  distracted  nation,  a  poet  should  attain  an  irresistible  general  success,  like  that  which  of  old  had  been  attained  elsewhere  by  Cervantes ;  and  all  that  was  vigorously  youthful  drew  together  in  glowing  enthusiasm.  At  the  close  of  the  Frederician  epoch,  the  poet  emerged  from  those  struggles  of  the  heart  to  which  we  owe  the  most  beautiful  love  poems  in  the  German  tongue,  to  become,  after  ten  years  of  life  at  court  that  were  full  of  work  and  of  distrac-  tion, once  more  an  artist.  He  hastened  to  "  that  land  where  for  every  receptive  mind  the  most  individual  culture  begins."  There,  in  the  south,  he  learnt  to  reconcile  northern  passion  and  emotional profundity  with  classical  purity  of  form.  However  great  he  was,  and  however  powerful  his  influence,  he  never  claimed  dominion  over  our  poetry,  and  German  freedom  would  never  have  permitted  any  such  claim.  Even  after  the  appearance  of  this  almighty  genius,  the  literary  movement  went  on  its  course  in  joyful  unre-  straint. Hundreds  of  independent  minds  continued  to  work  after  their  own  fashion.  Everywhere  in  the  Poets'  Associations  and  in  the  Freemasons'  Lodges there  was  an  ardent  search  for  pure  humanity,  for  knowledge  of  the  eternal ;  and  everywhere  in  this  life  of  activity  there  was  a  joyful  foreshadowing  of  a  wonderful  future.  This  generation  felt  itself  raised  above  the  common  reality  of  things,  carried  as  if  on  the  wings  of  the  wind  towards  the  dawning  of  the  light,  towards  the  perfection  of  humanity.  The  thoughtless  masses,  it  is  true,  then  as  at  all  times,  asked  merely  for  comfortable  amusement.  Wieland's  roguish  liveliness  was  more  agreeable  to  them  than  the  pathos  of  Klopstock,  just  as  subsequently  Kotzebue  was  more  pleasing  than  Schiller  or  Goethe.  But  in  the  best  circles  of  society,  a  joyful  idealism  was  dominant,  and  it  was  this  which  gave  its  stamp  to  the  culture  of  the  age.

Meanwhile  the  nation  discovered  that  it  possessed,  not  merely  the  greatest  poet,  but  also  the  greatest  philosopher  of  the  day.  The  opposition  between  the  German  and  the  Anglo-French  views  of  the  world-order  was  described  by  Goethe  in  the  simple  words :  "  The  French  do  not  understand  that  there  is  anything  in  human  beings  unless  it  has  come  into  them  from  outside."  To  the  German  idealism,  it  seemed,  on  the  contrary,  a  problem  for  solution,  how  anything  at  all  could  enter  a  soul  from  outside.  To  the  enlighten-  ment of  the  West,  the  world  of  sensuous  experience  appeared  the  one  incontestable  reality.  Then  Kant  undertook  to  throw  light  on  the  facts  of  human  cognition,  and  asked  the  profound  question,  how  is  the  scientific  cognition  of  nature  in  any  way  possible  ?  This  was  the  great  turning  point  of  the  new  philosophy.  With  the  same  royal  self-confidence  as  Goethe,  Kant  had  begun  the  work  of  his  life  :  "  Nothing  shall  hold  me  back  from  my  course."  He  started  from  the  ideas  of  the  mathematical  century,  and  faith-  fully followed  with  independent  mind  every  movement  of  the  new  decades.  Towards  the  end  of  the  Frederician  epoch,  he  produced  those  works  which  for  a  long  time  to  come  were  to  establish  the  fundamental  moral  ideas  of  the  ripened  Protestantism.  More  boldly  than  any  of  the  atheists  of  the  Encyclopaedia,  he  con-  tested the  illusion  that  a  science  could  ever  be  derived  from  the supra-sensual,  yet  in  the  domain  of  the  practical  reason  he  found  once  more  the  idea  of  freedom.  From  the  necessities  of  moral  action,  he  derived  the  great  conception  (not  based  upon  theological  crutches,  and  therefore  invincibly  victorious)  that  the  most  incom-  prehensible is  of  all  things  the  most  certain :  the  empirical  ego  is  subordinated  to  the  laws  of  causality,  the  intelligible  ego  acts  with  freedom.  For  free  activity,  he  propounded  that  imperative  in  which  simple-mindedness  and  the  highest  culture  could  both  find  peace  :  "  Act  as  if  the  maxims  in  accordance  with  which  you  are  acting  must  become  natural  laws."  Kant's  ideas,  moreover,  like  everything  that  was  written  in  this  blossoming  time,  first  came  to  full  fruition  through  the  power  of  personality.  The  serene  wisdom  of  the  thinker  of  Konigsberg,  which  demanded  from  men  that  they  should  even  die  in  a  good  humour,  the  simple  greatness  of  this  life  utterly  filled  with  the  ideal,  profoundly  moved  the  minds  of  his  contemporaries.  Kant  was  the  architect  of  his  Old  Prussian  home,  he  reintroduced  the  remote  Eastern  Mark  as  an  active  member  of  the  community  of  German  intellectual  workers,  and  the  uprising  of  1813  showed  how  profoundly  this  valiant  people  had  taken  to  heart  the  saying  that  nothing  anywhere  in  the  world  could  be  esteemed  except  a  good  will.

Now  there  appeared  upon  the  scene  the  young  poet  who  was  destined  to  diffuse  the  ideas  of  the  Kantian  ethics  through  the  widest  circles  of  the  nation.  Rough  and  formless  seemed  the  youthful  writings  of  Schiller,  the  product  of  an  invincible  energy  of  will  in  conflict  with  the  control  of  petty  enslaving  circumstances  ;  but  the  bold  conception  of  his  story-telling,  his  powerful  pathos,  his  sustained  passion,  and  the  vigorously  ascending  course  of  his  technique,  already  sufficed  to  herald  Germany's  discovery  of  her  greatest  dramatist — a  dictatorial  spirit,  born  to  mastership  and  victory,  who  now  in  his  days  of  youthful  fermentation  irresistibly  forced  upon  his  audience  the  savage  and  the  horrible,  and  who  subsequently,  matured  and  refined,  lifted  thousands  with  himself  above  the  common  miseries  of  life.  Out  of  the  clamorous  rhetoric  of  these  tragedies,  there  spoke  a  wealth  of  new  ideas,  a  glowing  yearning  for  freedom,  and  the  hatred  of  a  great  soul  for  the  rigid  forms  of  the  ancient  society.  The  writings  of  Rousseau  and  the  political  movement  of  the  neighbouring  lands  were  already  throwing  their  first  sparks  over  Germany.  One  who  despised  everything  that  was  dull,  narrow,  and  commonplace,  this  son  of  the  petty-  bourgeois  land  of  Swabia,  reached  out  into  the  great  circles  of  a  historical  world  ;  he  was  the  first  to  bind  the  cothurni  on  to  the  feet of  our  sons.  He  first  led  them  among  kings  and  heroes,  into  the  greatest  altitudes  of  humanity.

Beside  such  a  wealth  of  art  and  science  a  purely  political  litera-  ture appears  small  and  mean.  Just  as  every  great  transformation  of  our  intellectual  life  has  reflected  itself  in  the  destinies  of  a  German  university,  so  on  this  occasion  also  we  can  trace  the  connection  between  the  beginnings  of  our  classical  literature  and  the  first  blossoming  of  the  Georgia  Augusta  University.  There  proceed  from  Gottingen  a  zealous  care  for  jurisprudence  and  the  science  of  the  state,  and  this  movement  was  reciprocally  intercon-  nected with  the  great  thought-current  of  the  century  which  was  everywhere  drawing  its  sources  from  the  exact  sciences  and  streaming  towards  the  freedom  of  the  historical  world.  It  was  a  living  law  which  was  expounded  by  the  publicists  of  Gottingen ;  it  was  a  point  of  honour  in  the  anti-imperial  pro-  fessors to  define  the  rights  of  Protestantism  and  of  the  temporal  estates  of  the  empire  against  the  shadowy  claims  of  the  Emperor-  ship. Yet  neither  the  rough  candour  of  Schlozer  nor  the  industry  of  Putter,  neither  the  learnedness  of  the  two  Mosers  nor  any  other  of  the  remarkable  manifestations  of  political  and  publicist  science  characteristic  of  that  day,  bears  the  stamp  of  genius.  There  is  not  a  trace  of  the  bold,  universal  grasp  of  Puffendorf,  not  a  trace  of  that  creative  criticism  which  found  expression  in  the  ardent  voice  of  the  poets,  there  is  nothing  of  that  inconceivable  wealth  of  expression  which  delights  us  in  the  belletristic  literature  of  the  time.  Beside  the  silvery  tones  of  the  prose  of  Lessing  and  Goethe  the  language  of  Putter  has  the  flat  sound  of  base  metal.

Whilst  German  poetry  and  philosophy  were  soaring  above  the  work  of  the  neighbouring  nations,  in  political  science  the  English  and  the  French  took  the  lead.  It  was  only  in  the  actions  and  in  the  writings  of  the  great  king,  himself  untouched  by  the  literary  revival  of  his  own  nation,  that  Germany  took  an  effective  part  in  the  great  political  thought-movement  of  the  century.  In  Herder's  Ideas,  how  weak  are  the  political  sections  when  compared  with  the  richness  of  those  that  deal  with  the  history  of  civilisation.  The  one  vigorous  and  peculiarly  endowed  political  thinker,  belonging  to  the  younger  political  life  of  Germany,  Justus  Moser,  exercises  a  real  influence  upon  his  contemporaries  only  hi  the  sphere  of  aesthetics,  by  his  spirited  description  of  German  antiquity  ;  it  was  not  until  much  later,  in  the  days  of  the  revival  of  historical  jurisprudence,  that  his  profound  historical  view  of  the  state  was  understood  by  the  nation.  The  German  readers brought  to  the  publicists  a  richer  abundance  of  historical  know-  ledge than  was  brought  by  the  British  and  by  the  French,  but  they  had  not  a  glimmer  of  political  passion  or  of  political  understanding.  This  utterly  unpolitical  age  understood  how  to  feel  its  way  to  art  under  conditions  whose  absolute  contradiction  was  perceived  by  all.  But  while  the  research  of  German  thinkers  was  boldly  directed  towards  the  solution  of  the  most  obscure  riddles  of  the  universe,  there  did  not,  even  after  the  terrible  teaching  of  the  Seven  Years'  War,  appear  a  single  man  who  could  lay  his  finger  upon  the  wounds  of  the  German  state,  or  could  with  unsparing  courage  ask  the  deci-  sive question :  What  is  the  significance  for  the  future  of  our  country  of  this  uprising  of  a  new  German  great  power  ?  German  life  failed  to  discover  the  exhaustive  expression  either  in  the  wealth  of  ideas  of  its  literature  or  in  the  activities  of  the  Prussian  state.  There  were  moments,  indeed,  when  the  two  creative  energies  of  our  new  history  appeared  to  come  into  contact  and  to  attain  to  a  mutual  understanding.  We  of  this  later  generation  are  moved  to  learn  how  the  gruff  officers  of  Frederick's  army  sought  counsel  and  edifica-  tion in  Leipzig  from  the  pious  Gellert.  The  poet  of  the  Spring,  Ewald  Kleist,  the  Prussian  recruiting  officer,  who  in  Zurich  sought  refreshment  from  the  hardships  of  his  man-hunting  career  in  the  circle  of  the  artistic  disciples  of  Klopstock,  and  who  then  found  a  soldier's  death  at  Kunnersdorf,  appears  to  us  to-day  a  more  signifi-  cant figure  than  many  a  more  highly  gifted  poet,  because  he  united  in  a  single  personality  a  heroic  sense  of  the  poetic  yearning  of  this  teeming  time.  On  the  whole,  however,  it  is  certain  that  the  Prussia  of  that  day  was  no  less  unaesthetic  than  the  German  literature  of  the  time  was  unpolitical.  In  the  days  of  Lessing,  the  Prussian  capital  was  for  some  years  the  Acropolis  of  German  criticism ;  since  the  seventies,  its  public  had  possessed  the  most  developed  artistic  sense  in  Germany  and  there  had  prevailed  in  the  town  a  refined  and  intellectual  sociability  ;  but  in  respect  of  crea-  tive capacity  it  was  poorly  equipped.  A  shallow  eudaemonism  was  dominant.  For  the  dull  understanding  of  Nicolai,  the  flight  of  the  young  German  poetry  was  too  lofty;  while  the  critics  of  Berlin  were  thus  lamenting,  elsewhere  in  the  empire  were  being  fought  the  battles of  the  new  German  culture.  The  firm  foundation  of  national  power  was  lacking  to  our  classical  literature.  This  literature  has  proved  for  all  time  that  the  proud  freedom  of  poesy  can  dispense  with  the  sun  of  good  fortune  ;  that  a  new  wealth  of  ideas  must  inevitably  find  form  and  expression  as  soon  as  it  springs  up  in  the  soul  of  a  nation.  There  was  danger,  however,  that  the nation  would  morbidly  over-value  the  intellectual  goods  for  the  very  reason  that  its  literary  life  was  so  much  more  magnificent  than  its  political.  The  patriotism  of  our  poets  remained  too  subjective  to  exercise  a  direct  influence  upon  the  popular  sentiment.  The  cosmopolitan  tendency  which  inspired  the  entire  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century,  did  not  find  in  Germany,  as  it  found  in  France,  a  counterpoise  in  a  highly  developed  national  pride,  and  it  there-  fore threatened  to  alienate  the  Germans  from  their  own  state.

Never  since  the  time  of  Luther  had  Germany  occupied  so  shining  a  position  in  the  European  world  as  to-day,  when  the  greatest  heroes  and  the  greatest  poets  of  their  age  and  century  belonged  to  our  nation.  And  this  abundance  of  life  came  but  a  hundred  years  after  the  disgrace  of  the  Swedish  distresses.  Any-  one who  at  this  time  made  a  journey  through  the  leading  states  of  Central  and  Northern  Germany,  gained  the  impression  that  here  was  a  noble  people  peacefully  developing  towards  a  beautiful  future.  The  humanistic  culture  of  the  time  was  actively  engaged  upon  innumerable  institutions  of  general  utility.  The  old  curse  of  mendicity  disappeared  from  our  highways,  and  the  great  towns  provided  with  a  free  hand  for  poor-houses  and  hospitals.  Zealous  pedagogues  laboured  to  transform  the  education  of  youth  in  accord-  ance with  new-found  systems,  without  depriving  them  of  the  innocence  of  the  "  natural "  human  beings  of  Rousseau.  Every-  where the  newly  enlightened  world  was  straining  at  the  bonds  imposed  by  the  old  feudal  order.  There  were  nobles  here  and  there  who  voluntarily  freed  their  serfs.  Philosophers  noted  with  satisfaction  that  the  son  of  a  knacker  had  in  Leipzig  become  a  doctor,  and  that  in  caste-ridden  Weimar  a  young  Frankfort  doctor  had  risen  above  the  heads  of  the  native  nobility  to  become  a  minister  of  state.  A  cheerful  enthusiasm  for  nature  drove  out  the  old  anxiety  regarding  the  evils  of  fresh  air,  put  an  end  to  the  philistine  customs  of  a  close  indoor  life  :  the  men  of  learning  began  once  more  to  feel  themselves  at  home  upon  God's  earth.  Yet  this  people  of  ours  was  sick  within.  Motionless  and  unreconciled,  the  great  lie  of  the  imperial  law  stood  contrasted  with  the  new  culture  and  the  new  state  of  the  Germans.  In  the  petty  terri-  tories of  the  south  and  of  the  west,  all  the  sloth,  all  the  inertia  of  German  life  lay  like  a  great  unlighted  bonfire,  awaiting  the  fire-  brand which  the  restless  neighbour-nation  was  to  hurl  across  the  frontier.  The  glory  of  the  Frederician  age  had  hardly  begun  to  pale  when  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  fell  into  shameful  ruin.

Literary characteristics of the epoch

Not  every  epoch  understands  its  own  nature.  More  especially  in  those  weary  periods  which  usually  follow  the  decisive  moments  of  national  Hfe,  courageous  and  high-spirited  individuals  are  apt  to  be  completely  deceived  regarding  the  driving  energies  of  the  age.  Before  the  war  no  one  had  imagined  how  much  bravery  and  civic  sense,  how  much  power  of  self-sacrifice  and  noble  passion,  slumbered  among  the  people  of  the  German  north ;  now,  when  all  these  hidden  virtues  had  manifested  themselves  so  gloriously,  the  greatly  moved  spokesmen  of  the  patriots  were  simply  unable  to  believe  that  the  high  enthusiasm  of  the  War  of  Liberation  could  evaporate  as  soon  as  its  aim  had  been  secured.  Who  could  dispute  the  contention  that  the  federal  act  and  the  conclusion  of  peace  had  miscarried  only  because  the  people  had  not  been  able  to  parti-  cipate in  the  negotiations  of  the  diplomats  ?  All  the  more  certain  was  it  that  the  nation,  as  soon  as  it  had  received  the  promised  constitutional  government,  would  attend  to  its  own  affairs  with  zeal  and  understanding,  and  would  lead  the  errant  cabinets  back  into  the  paths  of  national  statecraft.  It  was  in  such  a  sense  that  Arndt  wrote,  at  the  beginning  of  the  first  year  of  peace :  "  In  this  year  1816,  between  the  rulers  and  the  peoples,  the  bond  of  love  and  obedience  must  be  indissolubly  tied."  He  saw  the  doors  of  a  new  epoch  widely  opened ;  as  soon  as  the  beautiful  new-born  child  of  this  year,  constitutional  freedom,  should  make  its  entry  into  all  the  German  states,  "  those  who  had  fallen  in  the  field  would  exult,  and  widows  and  afiianced  maidens  in  their  solitude  would  weep  tears  of  joy."

The  sanguine  man  was  to  learn  all  too  soon  how  completely  he  had  misunderstood  the  character  and  sentiments  of  his  nation.  Germany  stood  at  the  threshold  of  a  lengthy  period  of  political  tutelage,  full  of  error  and  disillusionment ;    public  opinion,  which Arndt  esteemed  as  "  the  mightiest  queen  of  life,"  showed  but  little  understanding  of  the  problems  of  constitutional  government,  and  hardly  even  displayed  any  serious  interest  in  the  matter.  The  solitary  widows  and  afhanced  maidens,  the  warriors  who  had  returned  to  their  homes  to  exchange  the  sword  for  the  ploughshare  or  the  carpenter's  plane,  were  hard  pressed  by  poverty ;  their  struggles  were  directed  to  providing  a  subsistence  for  themselves,  to  discovering  how  they  could  rebuild  huts  upon  the  plundered  battle-fields  of  the  national  war.  Germany  was  once  again  the  most  impoverished  of  all  the  lands  of  western  Europe  ;  in  many  regions  of  the  march  of  Brandenburg  there  began  for  the  fifth  time  a  fierce  struggle  for  the  first  beginnings  of  civic  welfare.  With  a  quiet  confidence  in  God,  the  common  people  returned  to  the  arduous  labours  of  the  day,  patiently  bearing  the  lot  of  privation  which  came  to  them  as  the  reward  of  so  many  victories.  That  spirit  of  restlessness  and  brutalisation,  which  after  great  struggles  is  apt  for  a  time  to  persist  in  the  sentiments  of  the  masses,  was  nowhere  seen  among  the  pious  and  sober-minded  men  who  had  fought  in  this  holy  war.  But  amid  the  pressure  of  economic  cares  there  was  no  room  left  for  poHtical  passion.  Even  the  memory  of  all  the  wonders  of  the  last  three  years  rarely  found  open  expression,  although  it  still  persisted  in  loyal  hearts.  Twice  or  thrice  in  suc-  cession, on  October  i8th,  bonfires  flamed  on  the  hill-tops ;  but  after  that,  in  most  cases,  they  were  seen  no  longer,  sometimes  because  they  were  forbidden  by  the  police,  sometimes  because  the  masses  became  indifferent.  In  this  generation,  which  was  in  general  so  passionately  fond  of  writing,  the  number  of  popular  books  and  woodcuts  describing  to  the  nation  the  most  remarkable  age  of  its  recent  history,  remained  extraordinarily  small.  An  affected  picture,  "  The  Return  of  the  Young  Hero,"  was  occa-  sionally to  be  seen  hanging  on  the  walls  in  the  houses  of  well-to-do  bourgeois  whose  sons  had  gone  to  the  front  among  the  voluntary  yagers  ;  at  fairs,  and  in  country  inns,  even  the  portrait  of  Blucher,  the  popular  hero,  was  rarely  to  be  seen.

Among  the  cultured  classes,  too,  there  were,  generally  speak-  ing, only  three  sharply  separated  circles  in  which  the  elevated  mood,  the  proud  patriotic  hopes,  of  the  years  of  war,  were  still  long  preserved  during  peace  :  the  Prussian  officers'  corps  ;  the  students  at  the  universities  ;  and  finally,  a  moderate  number  of  patriotic  authors  and  men  of  learning,  to  whom  people  now  began  to  apply  the  new  Spanish  party-name  of  liberals.  Prussian  officers   lived   and   moved   among   memories   of    the   campaigns  ; with  a  vigorous  sense  of  self-approval  they  regarded  the  re-estab-  lished glory  of  their  flag,  while  contemplating  with  profound  discontent  the  rickety  structure  of  the  Germanic  Federation  and  the  disastrous  issue  of  the  peace  negotiations.  During  the  struggle  they  had  learned  to  respect  the  warlike  energies  of  the  bourgeoisie,  and  had  adopted  into  their  own  circle  many  valiant  comrades  from  the  ranks  of  the  volunteers.  Now,  by  the  new  Army  Law,  the  education  of  all  young  men  fit  for  military  service  was  entrusted  to  their  hands  ;  they  came  in  contact  with  all  classes  of  the  population,  and  continued  at  the  same  time  to  pre-  serve the  free  scientific  spirit  which  had  been  awakened  in  them  by  Scharnhorst ;  it  was  only  in  cases  of  isolated  reversion  that  they  continued  to  exhibit  the  caste  arrogance  of  earlier  days.  But  although  the  foreign  powers  and  the  minor  German  courts  regarded  with  great  suspicion  the  national  pride  and  the  fresh  intellectual  life  of  this  people's  army,  the  strictly  monarchical  sentiments  of  the  officers  remained  completely  inaccessible  to  all  party  aspira-  tions. Their  comrades  of  the  Russian  guard  had  for  the  first  time  become  acquainted  with  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution  during  their  stay  in  France,  and  had  thence  taken  home  with  them  revolutionary  views  which  were  subsequently  to  bear  fruit  in  foolish  con-  spiracies. Upon  the  Prussian  officers,  on  the  contrary,  the  sight  of  the  general  perjury  and  the  savage  party  struggles  of  the  French  exercised  only  a  repellent  influence  ;  now,  as  in  the  nineties,  they  prided  themselves  on  their  opposition  to  the  Revolution  ;  they  prided  themselves  on  their  antique  Prussian  loyalty  to  the  throne,  and  were  incHned  to  despise  the  new  constitutional  doctrine,  if  only  for  the  reason  that  it  was  derived  from  France.  Even  Gneisenau,  who,  but  a  year  before,  had  demanded  the  speedy  completion  of  the  Prussian  constitution,  returned  home  in  a  changed  mood,  and  urgently  advised  that  the  carrying  out  of  such  proposals  should  be  allowed  to  mature  with  extreme  slowness.^  The  only  pelitical  idea  which  was  passionately  discussed  in  the  letters  and  con-  versations of  the  army,  was  the  hope  of  a  third  Punic  War,  which  should  finally  enable  the  Germans  to  secure  their  ancient  western  frontier  and  should  restore  to  them  a  respected  position  among  the  nations.

Far  more  lively  was  the  mood  of  the  young  volunteers  who  now  returned  from  their  regiments  to  the  lecture  theatres  of  the  universities.  Patriotic  and  religious  enthusiasm,  anger  at  the  shameful  peace,  and  obscure  ideas  regarding  freedom  and  equality, which  had,  unconsciously  for  the  most  part,  been  borrowed  from  the  despised  French — all  this  was  simmering  confusedly  in  the  heads  of  these  Teutonising  youths,  generating  a  noble  barbarism,  which  regarded  as  valid  only  the  virtues  of  the  citizen,  and  which  avowed  adhesion  to  the  saying  of  Fichte,  that  it  was  better  to  have  Hfe  without  science  than  science  without  Hfe.  Meanwhile  the  exaggerated  national  pride  of  Teutonism  was  too  obviously  in  contradiction  with  the  free  broad-mindedness  of  our  cosmo-  politan people,  to  whom  it  was  quite  impossible  to  remain  per-  manently unjust  to  a  foreign  nation ;  the  contempt  displayed  for  all  grace  and  for  refined  culture  was  too  un-German,  the  aspect  of  this  arrogant  student-community,  now  childishly  touching,  now  almost  ludicrous,  was  too  sectarian  for  its  political  fanaticism  to  be  effective  throughout  wide  circles.  The  old  rule  still  held  good  that  the  men  of  fifty  and  sixty  years  of  age  govern  the  world.  Whilst  the  political  war-cries  of  the  patriotic  writers  found,  indeed,  approval  in  isolated  instances  among  the  older  men,  they  did  not  awaken  the  strong  passion  which  eventuates  in  action.

With  more  accuracy  than  Amdt  did  Hegel  grasp  the  spirit  of  the  time  when  he  said  that  the  nation  had  completed  the  work  of  rough-hewing,  and  could  now  once  more  turn  its  mind  inward  to  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  mighty  harmonies  to  which  the  age  of  our  classical  poetry  had  given  utterance  were  still  resounding  ;  the  rich  treasures  which  during  the  last  two  generations  the  intel-  lectual work  of  the  nation  had  disclosed  were  by  no  means  exhausted.  The  ambition  of  this  thoroughly  unpolitical  genera-  tion continued,  undisturbed  by  all  the  prose  of  external  life,  to  concern  itself  almost  exclusively  with  the  things  of  the  spirit.  To  its  best  men,  the  days  of  the  Napoleonic  wars  soon  came  to  seem  no  more  than  an  episode,  like  a  hailstorm  which  had  broken  over  the  blooming  garden  of  German  art  and  science.  Just  as  the  common  people  once  more  returned  to  their  ploughs,  so  the  men  of  culture  again  took  their  pens  in  hand,  not,  like  the  former,  in  quiet  renunciation,  but  inspired  with  the  joyful  conscious-  ness that  they  belonged  once  more  to  themselves  and  their  own  inmost  life.  With  astonishing  distinctness  now  became  visible  that  inward  contradiction  which,  since  the  flourishing  of  the  new  literature,  had  come  to  exist  in  the  character  of  our  nation  :  those  valiant  Teutons  who  in  the  sagas  of  primitive  heathendom  had  continually  dreamed  of  war  and  victory,  and  who  since  then  in  each  successive  century  had  deafened  the  world  with  the  clash  of  their  swords,  now  esteemed  warlike  renown  less  highly  than did  any  other  people ;  they  lived  in  the  belief  that  Germany's  sharpest  weapon  was  German  thought.

Throughout  the  world,  the  decade  following  the  overthrow  of  Napoleon  was  a  blossoming  time  of  the  sciences  and  the  arts.  The  nations  which  had  just  been  fighting  so  fiercely  one  with  another,  now  engaged  in  a  fine  rivalry  in  respect  of  the  fruits  of  their  intellectual  life  ;  never  before  had  Europe  approximated  so  closely  to  that  ideal  of  a  free  world-literature  of  which  Goethe  dreamed.  In  this  peaceful  rivalry,  Germany  took  the  first  place.  What  a  change  from  the  days  of  Louis  XIV,  when  our  nation  had  been  forced  to  go  humbly  to  school  to  all  the  other  nations  of  the  west.  Now  the  whole  world  revered  the  name  of  Goethe.  The  quaint  guest-chambers  of  the  Erbprinzen  and  of  the  Adler  in  Weimar  were  always  full  of  distinguished  Englishmen  who  desired  to  pay  their  respects  to  the  prince  of  the  new  poetry.  In  Paris,  Alexander  Humboldt  enjoyed  a  repute  which  exceeded  that  of  almost  any  native  man  of  learning  ;  when  a  stranger  entered  a  hackney-coach  and  gave  the  address  of  the  great  traveller,  the  driver  respectfully  lifted  his  hat  and  said :  "  Ah  !  chez  M.  de  Humboldt !  "  When  Niebuhr  came  to  Rome  as  Prussian  ambas-  sador, no  one  in  the  world-city  ventured  to  contest  with  him  the  glory  of  being  the  first  among  all  men  of  learning.

Foreigners  spoke  little  of  our  state,  of  its  warlike  deeds.  To  all  the  foreign  powers  the  sudden  revival  in  strength  of  the  centre  of  Europe  was  disagreeable,  and  they  all  rivalled  one  another  in  the  endeavour  to  consign  to  oblivion  Prussia's  share  in  the  libera-  tion of  Europe.  Not  one  of  the  foreign  mihtary  historians  who  in  these  years  of  historical  production  described  the  most  recent  campaigns,  did  anything  like  adequate  justice  to  the  services  of  Blucher's  headquarters  staff.  The  old  prestige  of  the  Prussian  army,  which  in  the  days  of  Frederick  had  been  dreaded  by  all  as  the  greatest  army  in  the  world,  had  by  no  means  been  re-established  by  the  victories  of  Dennewitz  and  Belle  Alliance.  Since  it  is  always  difficult  to  gain  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  true  course  of  a  coali-  tion war,  the  public  opinion  of  Europe  gladly  contented  itself  with  contemplating  the  simple  conclusion  that  since  the  Prussians  had  been  beaten  when  they  fought  alone  at  Jena  they  had  been  saved  only  by  foreign  help.  For  this  reason,  too,  no  one  in  foreign  lands  had  any  interest  in  the  political  institutions  to  which  Prussia  owed  her  freedom.  Now,  as  before,  Prussia  remained  the  least  known  and  the  most  completely  misunderstood  state  of  Europe.  Moreover,  the  new  Reichstag  of  Ratisbon,  which  now  assembled in  Frankfort,  aroused  the  scorn  of  Europe  by  its  fruitless  disputes.  Soon  after  the  wonderful  uprising  of  our  nation,  the  old  and  con-  venient opinion  became  generally  current  that  by  a  wise  pro-  vision of  nature  the  German  nation  was  foreordained  to  eternal  weakness  and  dissension.  All  the  more  willingly  did  people  recognise  the  intellectual  greatness  of  this  powerless  nation  ;  it  was  solely  to  their  artists  and  to  their  men  of  learning  that  the  Germans  owed  the  fact  that  by  all  the  civiHsed  peoples  of  the  west  they  were  once  more  regarded  as  one  among  the  great  nations.  In  foreign  lands,  they  were  now  spoken  of  as  the  nation  of  poets  and  thinkers  ;  in  the  partition  of  the  earth  they  should  be  content  with  the  lot  of  the  poet  which  Schiller  ascribed  to  them,  and,  intoxicated  with  the  divine  light,  should  be  satisfied  to  lose  the  light  of  earth.

For  the  first  time  since  the  days  of  Martin  Luther,  the  ideas  of  Germany  once  more  made  the  round  of  the  world,  and  now  found  a  more  willing  acceptance  than  of  old  had  the  ideas  of  the  Reformation.  Germany  alone  had  already  got  completely  beyond  the  view  of  the  world-order  characteristic  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  sensualism  of  the  days  of  enlightenment  had  been  long  replaced  by  an  idealist  philosophy ;  the  dominion  of  reason  by  a  profound  reHgious  sentiment ;  cosmopolitanism  by  a  delight  in  national  peculiarity ;  natural  rights  by  a  recognition  of  the  living  growth  of  the  nations  ;  the  rules  of  correct  art  by  free  poesy,  bubbling  up  as  by  natural  energy  from  the  depths  of  the  soul ;  the  preponderance  of  the  exact  sciences  by  the  new  historic  o-  aesthetic  culture.  By  the  work  of  three  generations,  those  of  the  classical  and  of  the  romanticist  poets,  this  world  of  new  ideas  had  slowly  attained  to  maturity,  whereas  among  the  neighbour  nations  it  had  hitherto  secured  no  more  than  isolated  disciples,  and  only  now  at  length  made  its  way  victoriously  through  all  the  lands.

With  wonderful  elasticity  did  France  resume  her  intellectual  labours  after  the  long  and  heavy  slumber  of  the  imperial  age.  Madame  de  Stael's  book  upon  Germany,  which  the  Napoleonic  censors  had  suppressed  as  an  affront  to  the  national  pride,  was  now  in  everyone's  hands,  and  gained  everywhere  adherents  for  German  ideas,  which  were  given  the  comprehensive  name  of  romanticism.  The  dominion^!  of  the  sensualist  philosophy  collapsed  before  ';the  criticism|  of  the  doctrinaires ;  a  compact  circle  of  men  of  ^talent, ^.^suchj  men  as  Mignet,  Guizot,  and  the  Thierrys,  opened  to  the  French  an  understanding  of  the  world    of    history.     The    age   of    Louis   XIV,   which revolutionary  thinkers  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  still  regarded  as  the  epoch  of  classical  beauty  of  form,  began  to  lose  its  prestige,  and  soon  there  uprose  a  new  school  of  poets  to  liberate  France  from  the  tyranny  of  academic  rules,  so  that  Victor  Hugo  could  say  with  considerable  truth  of  his  own  people  that  romanticism  is  in  literature  that  which  liberalism  is  in  politics.  Yet  more  vigorous  and  more  direct  was  the  exchange  of  ideas  between  Germany  and  England ;  the  Germans  now  repaid  to  the  British  what  they  had  once  received  from  Shakes-  peare and  Sterne.  Walter  Scott,  the  most  fruitful  and  best-loved  poet  of  the  age,  went  to  school  to  Biirger  and  Goethe,  drawing  from  the  profound  spring  of  sagas  and  folk-songs  which  the  Ger-  mans had  unlocked  for  the  world  ;  by  his  historical  romances  the  broad  masses  of  the  European  reading  public  was  first  won  over  to  romanticist  ideals.  Some  of  the  Italians,  too,  above  all  Manzoni,  entered  the  path  of  the  new  poetry ;  but  among  this  semi-antique  people  of  Italy,  romanticist  poetry  could  just  as  little  attain  to  an  undisputed  dominion  as  had  in  former  days  the  northern  artistic  form  of  Gothic  architecture.

Everywhere  there  was  an  awakening  of  spirit.  In  Germany  itself,  the  wealth  of  this  fruitful  epoch  seemed  less  striking  than  in  neighbouring  countries,  for  the  classical  age  of  our  poetry  had  barely  come  to  an  end,  and  the  great  majority  of  the  younger  poets  regarded  themselves,  when  compared  with  the  heroes  of  those  great  days,  as  nothing  better  than  a  generation  of  epigones.  All  the  more  powerfully  and  fruitfully  did  the  creative  energy  of  the  German  spirit  unfold  itself  in  the  domain  of  science.  Almost  simultaneously  appeared  the  epoch-making  writings  of  Savigny,  the  brothers  Grimm,  Boeckh,  Lachmann,  Bopp,  Diez,  and  Ritter ;  whilst  Niebuhr,  the  Humboldts,  Eichhorn,  Creuzer,  and  Gottfried  Hermann,  went  vigorously  forward  along  the  paths  they  had  already  opened.  The  current  of  new  ideas  flowed  everywhere  unceasingly.  There  was  an  overplus  of  brilliant  men,  as  there  had  been  in  former  days  when  Klopstock  led  the  revival  of  Ger-  man poetry.  And  just  as  had  previously  been  the  case  with  the  pioneers  of  our  poetry,  so  now  this  new  generation  of  learned  men  was  permeated  with  an  innocent  and  youthful  enthusiasm,  with  a  serene  ambition  which  sought  nothing  more  in  the  world  than  the  blessedness  of  knowledge,  and  the  increase  of  German  glory  through  the  activities  of  free  investigation.

The  dry  dust  which  had  so  long  lain  upon  the  works  of  German  learning  was,  as  it  were,  wafted  away ;   the  new  science  felt  itself to  be  the  sister  of  art.  Its  disciples  had  all  drunk  from  the  cup  of  beauty,  and  many  of  them  had  even  received  the  determinative  impressions  of  their  lives  in  the  circles  of  the  poets.  Diez  con-  tinued to  cherish  after  many  years  the  sheet  of  paper  on  which  Goethe  had  once  written  for  him  the  title  of  Reynouard's  Proven9al  researches,  and  had  thus  indicated  to  the  young  man  the  way  to  his  life  work.  Boeckh  and  Creuzer  had  idled,  revelled,  and  caroused  so  many  nights  with  the  enthusiasts  of  Heidelberg  romanticism ;  I.  Bekker  had  delved  with  Uhland  among  the  treasures  of  the  Paris  library  ;  the  impish  Bettina  Arnim  some-  times played  her  mischievous  tricks  in  the  studies  of  Savigny  and  of  the  brothers  Grimm.  They  all  looked  up  with  veneration  to  old  Goethe,  assembling  round  this  central  spirit  to  form  as  it  were  an  invisible  church,  round  this  man  who  had  received  the  veil  of  poesy  from  the  hand  of  truth  herself,  and  who  incorporated  the  ideal  of  the  age,  the  living  unity  of  art  and  science,  at  once  in  his  life  and  in  his  works.  All  endeavoured  to  express  the  results  of  their  researches  in  a  nobler  and  worthier  form  ;  the  chaste  sim-  plicity of  Savigny's  writings,  the  powerful  sentiment  and  the  abundance  of  unsought,  vivid,  and  intuitive  images  in  the  pithy  style  of  Jacob  Grimm,  put  to  shame  the  sugary  artificiality  of  many  later  poets.  In  all  the  works  of  these  investigators,  a  warm  heart  and  that  creative  imagination  which  reshapes  historic  Hfe  had  just  as  great  a  share  as  had  industrious  research  and  critical  acumen.

Just  as  the  poetry  of  the  previous  generation  had  inspired  the  men  of  the  rising  generation,  so  the  speculative  work  of  the  previous  age  made  its  way  into  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  new  science.  It  was  only  because  the  German  spirit  had  so  long  been  profoundly  immersed  in  the  problem  of  the  unity  of  being  and  thinking,  that  that  spirit  now  became  able  to  diffuse  itself  through-  out the  world  of  history  without  becoming  superficial  and  without  losing  itself  in  a  mass  of  details.  It  was  not  in  vain  that  all  these  young  lawyers,  philologists,  and  l>istorians  had  sat  at  the  feet  of  the  philosophers.  They  wished  to  reach  out  through  history  into  the  secret  of  the  human  spirit  itself  ;  they  endeavoured,  as  W.  Humboldt  declared  of  himself,  to  gain  a  view  of  how  man  had  come  to  be,  and  thus  to  acquire  some  idea  of  what  man  may  be  and  ought  to  be,  to  approach  more  closely  to  the  ultimate  ques-  tions of  existence.  Hence  was  derived  the  comprehensive  outlook,  the  splendid  multiplicity,  of  this  generation  of  learned  men.  It  was  only  so  recently  that  the  wide  field  of  the  world  of  history  had been  first  occupied  ;  whoever  drove  his  ploughshare  through  this  virgin  soil,  subsequently  scattered  the  seed  with  no  niggard  hand,  so  that  it  was  dispersed  also  upon  his  neighbour's  land.  Almost  all  the  notable  men  of  learning  were  simultaneously  at  work  in  several  fields,  and  every  one  of  them,  when  immersing  himself  in  some  particular  form  of  study,  never  failed  to  keep  his  glance  fixed  upon  the  great  interconnection  of  the  sciences.  It  was  the  pride  of  this  fruit-bearing  generation  to  propound  brilliant  hypotheses,  and  to  illuminate  wide  prospects  which  the  scientific  researches  of  individual  workers  in  two  successive  generations  have  since  made  accessible  to  the  whole  world.

Through  the  blossoming  of  science,  the  universities  entered  the  foreground  of  the  nation's  spiritual  life.  They  had  ever  taken  a  rich  share  in  the  struggles  and  transformations  of  German  thought ;  but  now  they  assumed  the  leading  position  in  the  domain  of  the  spirit,  as  they  had  done  once  before  in  the  epoch  of  humanism  and  at  the  outset  of  the  Reformation.  University  professors  gradually  acquired  a  determinative  influence  upon  the  activities  and  views  of  our  nation,  such  an  influence  as  they  possessed  in  no  other  country  ;  among  the  leading*  authors  of  the  ensuing  decades,  there  were  but  few  who  had  not  held  an  academic  position  for  a  shorter  or  longer  period.  The  university  of  Berlin  soon  outsoared  all  others  ;  here,  during  these  years,  there  were  at  work  the  most  ardent  reforming  minds  in  German  science ;  yet  Berlin  was  never  more  than  first  among  equals,  for  this  country  offered  no  opportunities  for  a  centraUsation  of  culture.  Never  have  our  universities  been  so  truly  free,  fulfilled  with  such  profound  inward  happiness,  as  in  these  quiet  years  of  peace.  The  quarrelsome  youths  brought  home  from  the  battle-fields,  in  addition  to  their  unmannerly  Teutonism,  to  their  arrogant  political  dreams,  a  fine  enthusiasm,  and  a  warm  receptivity  for  ideals  ;  the  deplorable  roughness  and  intemperance  of  earlier  times  did  not  return.  Education  remained  free  from  corporate  coercion  and  corporate  tendencies,  for  all  felt  that  in  science  everything  was  still  in  a  state  of  youthful  growth.  No  one  was  astonished  when  a  man  of  learning,  even  of  mature  age,  changed  from  one  faculty  to  another,  or  when  a  philologian  like  Dahlmann,  who  had  never  heard  a  historical  lecture,  was  summoned  to  the  chair  of  history.  When  a  man  displayed  the  stuff  of  which  a  master  is  made,  no  one  asked  whose  pupil  he  had  been.  Most  of  the  university  lecturers  did  their  professorial  work  with  admirable  zeal ;  but  if  a  fine  spring  day  lured  them  into  the  neighbouring  hills,  even the  most  industrious  among  them  did  not  hesitate  to  write  up  on  the  door  of  his  lecture-theatre  hodie  non  legitur.

The  students  of  all  faculties  thronged  round  notable  teachers  of  philosophy,  history,  and  philology,  and  many  of  them  con-  tinued to  pursue  such  studies  for  years  before  thinking  of  engaging  in  a  professional  occupation  for  themselves.  The  classical  state  schools,  avoiding  mind-destroying  polymathy,  still  knew  how  to  awaken  in  their  pupils  a  permanent  delight  in  classical  activity  and  an  impulse  towards  free  human  culture.  The  disease  of  the  universities  of  to-day,  the  dread  of  examinations,  was  still  almost  entirely  unknown.  The  princely  schools  of  Saxony,  and  the  convent  schools  of  Wiirtemberg,  anciently  celebrated  homes  of  classical  learning,  sent  their  senior  students  to  the  uni-  versity as  soon  as  the  teachers  considered  that  the  time  was  ripe,  the  state  leaving  them  to  do  as  they  thought  best.  Entry  into  the  state  service  and  the  ecclesiastical  service  of  the  petty  states  was  for  the  most  part  secured  by  young  men  who  had  finished  their  university  career,  and  was  secured  by  patronage,  in  accordance  with  the  ancient  patriarchal  manner.  It  was  only  in  Prussia,  after  the  reorganisation  of  the  administration  by  Frederick  WiUiam  I,  that  a  system  of  regular  state-examinations  had  come  into  existence,  and  from  Prussia  this  mechanical  ordering,  which  was  unquestionably  juster,  and  was  demanded  by  the  manifold  relationships  of  a  great  state,  gradually  made  its  way  into  the  petty  states.  But  here  also  a  very  moderate  standard  was  exacted,  for  the  state  needed  many  young  officials  for  its  new  provinces.  The  idealistic  tendency  of  the  time  forbade  that  studies  should  be  anxiously  directed  with  the  view  to  the  earning  of  a  living.  Youth  still  enjoyed  undisturbed  academic  freedom  ;  everyone  Hstened  and  learned  as  fancy  directed  him,  if  he  did  not  prefer  to  pass  his  golden  student  days  in  the  sole  pursuit  of  uncontrolled  enjoyments.

Such  was  the  life  of  the  little  learned  repubhcs,  happy  free  states  of  absolute  social  equality  and  freedom  from  restraint,  raised,  as  it  were,  above  the  pettiness  of  everyday  life.  Men  of  great  talent,  who  in  every  other  country  would  have  demanded  a  wide  stage  for  their  activities,  felt  perfectly  happy  in  the  poverty  and  exiguity  of  these  little  university  towns,  with  their  ancient  castles  and  narrow,  winding  streets,  where  every  house  had  memories  of  some  merry  wit  among  the  students,  or  of  some  distinguished  professor.  Here  science  was  supreme ;  the  professor,  revered  by  a  grateful  audience,  regarded  himself  with  frank  self-satisfaction. Often  enough  there  occurred  fierce  intellectual  disputes,  after  the  German  manner ;  the  scientific  opponent  was  apt  to  be  regarded  as  a  desecrator  of  the  temple,  for  everyone  was  whole-heartedly  devoted  to  his  own  researches.  But  these  straightforward  and  frugal-minded  men  were  Uttle  troubled  with  vulgar  ambition.  They  made  it  a  point  of  honour  to  despise  the  display  and  comfort  of  material  existence  ;  they  still  all  firmly  beHeved  in  the  proud  saying  of  Schiller  :  "In  the  end  we  are  idealists,  and  would  be  ashamed  that  it  could  be  said  of  us  that  things  formed  us,  and  not  that  we  formed  things."

Even  after  decades  had  passed,  in  Tfibingen  people  used  to  speak  of  the  wealthy  bookseller  Cotta,  who  had  first  introduced  the  unheard-of  luxury  of  a  sofa  into  the  unpretentious  town  of  the  Muses.  The  youthful  incompleteness  of  our  civilisation,  which  still  knew  nothing  of  the  many-sided  social  activities  of  the  fife  of  great  towns,  redounded  to  the  advantage  of  reflectiveness  and  the  peaceful  pursuit  of  scientific  work.  Like  the  classical  poetry  of  an  earlier  day,  so  now  the  new  research  remained  perfectly  free,  almost  untouched  by  the  favour  of  the  court  and  by  official  influence ;  not  even  the  prosecution  of  the  demagogues  was  able  to  disturb  the  inner  life  of  science.  Although  now  almost  all  the  German  states,  nobly  competing  one  with  another,  endeavoured  to  secure  the  activities  of  leading  teachers  for  their  respective  universities,  in  the  eyes  of  the  courts  and  of  the  bureaucracy  even  a  professor  of  European  reputation  was  merely  a  professor,  without  rank  at  court.  The  man  of  science,  on  the  other  hand,  looked  down  with  all  the  pride  of  idealism  upon  the  aims  of  commercial  Hfe.  Every  teacher  appealed  to  the  best  intelligences  among  his  pupils  to  devote  themselves  entirely  to  science ;  mediocrities  were  good  enough  for  the  handicraft  work  of  the  soldier  and  the  official,  and  above  all  for  the  thoroughly  despised  world  of  business  life.  An  incomparably  greater  preponderance  of  the  spiritual  energies  of  the  nation  devoted  itself  to  learned  activities,  and  it  remains  a  fine  testimony  to  the  fertihty  of  this  generation  that,  none  the  less,  the  officialdom  now  numbered  among  its  ranks  an  extraordinary abundance  of  men  of  talent.

Now,  just  as  sixty  years  before,  while  the  political  life  of  the  nation  was  flowing  subdivided  in  innumerable  streams  and  streamlets,  it  was  only  the  authors  and  the  men  of  learning  who  spoke  directly  to  the  nation  as  a  whole.  For  this  reason  they  regarded  themselves  as  the  chosen  representatives  of  the  people and  of  its  highest  goods ;  it  was  but  very  slowly  that  a  few  politicians  gained  general  repute  beside  them.  The  whole  epoch  exhibited,  for  good  and  for  evil,  the  characteristics  of  a  literary  age.  Even  now,  a  poem  by  Goethe,  an  incisive  criticism,  or  a  learned  feud,  such  as  that  between  the  symboUsts  and  the  critical  philologians,  aroused  far  greater  interest  among  the  leading  spirits  of  the  nation  than  did  any  event  in  the  world  of  politics.  Karl  Immermann  voiced  the  very  spirit  of  this  romantic  age  when  he  declared  that  he  could  not  follow  a  parliamentary  debate  with  attention,  because  he  could  not  form  any  mental  picture  of  such  void  abstractions.  The  complete  sacrifice  of  the  free  personality  in  the  service  of  the  state  remained  no  less  antipathetic  to  this  generation  than  was  the  life  of  political  parties,  with  its  voluntary  limitations  and  its  fundamentally  unjust  hatreds.  To  the  German,  the  highest  of  all  aims  was  still  to  Hve  out  his  own  life,  to  develop  his  own  ego,  in  its  free  peculiarities,  in  all  possible  directions,  and,  as  W.  Hum-  boldt expressed  it,  to  pay  more  attention  to  the  doing  than  to  the  deed.

Although  the  dominant  tendency  of  the  age  ran  absolutely  counter  to  the  enhghtened  cosmopolitanism  of  the  years  before  the  Revolution,  this  romantic  generation  had  none  the  less  preserved  many  of  the  humanly  lovable  virtues  of  the  philosophic  century.  The  young  Teutonisers  might  arrogantly  decry  French  triviality ;  the  leaders  of  science  and  art  continued,  after  the  old  and  genuine  German  manner,  to  exhibit  gratitude  and  receptivity  for  every  fine  work  of  poetry  and  research,  even  if  it  came  from  much-abused  France.  Notwithstanding  the  mystical  enthusiasm  of  the  time,  the  old  broad-minded  tolerance  still  persisted.  The  contrasts  of  religious  life  had  not  yet  become  accentuated ;  they  did  not  as  yet  exercise,  as  they  do  to-day,  a  falsifying  and  embittering  influence  in  the  sphere  of  politics.  No  one  was  surprised  if  a  liberal  was  at  the  same  time  a  strict  church  Christian.  To  everyone  it  seemed  perfectly  in  order  that  Catholic  ecclesiastics  should  attend  the  consecration  of  a  Protestant  church  ;  even  zealous  converts  like  F.  Schlegel,  Stolberg,  and  Klinkowstrom  remained  on  terms  of  cordial  friendship  with  some  of  their  old  Protestant  associates.  The  struggle  of  the  literary  parties  did  not  render  impossible  the  recognition  of  the  human  value  of  an  opponent,  nor  exclude  a  genuine  delight  in  every  happy  discovery.  Uproarious  youths  prided   themselves   upon    their   Germanic   strictness    of   morals ; mature  men  displayed  in  their  moral  judgments  a  fine  and  liberal  mildness,  which  was  in  truth  far  more  German.  Exhibiting  consideration  for  human  weakness,  they  placed  little  value  upon  that  correctness  of  conduct  which  to  the  prudish  sense  of  the  present  day  appears  to  be  the  only  token  of  morality,  and  willingly  let  a  hot-blooded  friend  go  his  own  way,  if  he  would  but  co-operate  in  the  work  of  a  free  human  culture,  and  if  only  he  did  not  lose  faith  in  the  divine  destiny  of  our  race.

It  was  not  without  reason  that  the  poets  and  men  of  learning  looked  down  with  contempt  upon  the  prose  of  Philistinism.  They  lived  in  a  free  and  intelligent  sociabiUty  which  knew  how  to  ennoble  life  by  the  serene  play  of  art  and  which  approximately  reahsed  Schiller's  ideal  of  an  aesthetic  education.  The  exchange  of  ideas  in  correspondence  and  conversation,  the  natural  means  for  the  intercommunication  of  daily  impressions,  had  not  yet  been  rendered  obsolete  by  news-  papers. There  yet  existed  the  basis  of  all  social  charm,  the  frank  and  daily  intercourse  between  the  two  sexes,  for  women  were  still  able  to  follow  in  their  entirety  the  thoughts  of  men.  There  was  not  a  town  in  the  realm  without  its  connoisseurs,  collectors,  and  critics,  without  its  circles  of  lovers  of  the  theatre  and  of  the  arts.  When  the  cheerful  populace  of  the  smaller  towns  assembled  for  their  simple  meals  by  the  gloomy  flickering  light  of  tallow  candles,  all  contributed  according  to  their  respective  capacities  in  the  way  of  riddles  and  witticisms,  songs  and  rhymed  toasts — since  for  many  years  past  every  cultured  German  had  known  how  to  provide  on  his  own  initiative  for  the  poetic  needs  of  the  household.  Social  Hfe  was  warmed  by  cheerful  pleasures ;  in  a  game  of  forfeits  a  kiss  was  still  permissible  in  all  honour  ;  the  free-spirited  girls  of  the  day,  who  were  none  the  less  carefully  trained  for  domestic  life,  still  frankly  admitted  that  Kathchen  of  Heilbronn  was  a  figure  altogether  after  their  taste.  In  the  narrower  circles  of  the  initiates  how  much  fine  intelligence  and  wit,  how  much  merry  humour  and  eager  enthusiasm,  now  prevailed — as  when  Ludwig  Devreint  and  Callot-Hoffmann  celebrated  their  extravagant  bacchanals  all  through  the  night  in  the  taverns  of  Lutter  and  Wegner  ;  or  when  Lobeck  and  the  Konigsberg  philologians  joined  in  a  drinking-bout  after  the  Greek  manner,  their  heads  crowned  with  roses,  talking  in  Greek  of  the  heroes  of  Homer  and  of  the  fortunate  island  of  the  Phaeacians.  The  social  life  of  the  day,  notwithstanding  its  occasional  beastliness  and  excesses,  exhibited none  the  less  an  abundance  of  noble  intellectual  enjoyments,  of  which  music  almost  alone  has  been  preserved  amid  the  dulness  and  the  weary  ostentation  of  modern  society.  The  women  who  had  been  young  during  those  years,  seemed,  even  in  advanced  age,  to  the  posterity  of  a  duller  generation,  to  be  illumined  as  by  a  poetic  charm  ;  they  won  the  hearts  of  all  by  their  inexhaustible  amiability,  by  their  refined  understanding  of  everything that  is  human.

Doubtless  there  was  also  manifest  at  the  same  time  an  indication  of  the  commencement  of  decay.  Literature  had  for  some  time  run  to  seed ;  writers  offered  to  readers  what  they  thought  the  readers  wanted,  whereas  the  classical  poets  of  earlier  days  had  spontaneously  expressed  what  already  lay  half-conscious  in  the  soul  of  the  nation.  The  love  of  novelty  and  the  sensuality  of  the  reading  world  were  exploited  by  a  mass  of  trivial  light  literature ;  since  a  national  style  had  not  come  into  existence  in  any  branch  of  creative  literature,  profounder  natures  readily  lapsed  into  arbitrary  and  strained  experiments,  so  that  Goethe  characterised  these  years  as  the  epoch  of  forced  talents.  The  fashionable  intermingling  of  poetry  and  criticism  rendered  it  easy  for  a  barren  dilettantism  to  increase  beyond  measure.  Whoever  moved  in  the  circles  of  romanticism,  repeating  the  catchwords  of  this  school,  and  sometimes  cudgelling  his  brains  over  the  design  for  a  drama  or  an  epic  poem,  regarded  himself  as  a  poet,  and  forgot  the  consciousness  of  his  incapacity  in  the  favourite  consolation  that  the  artist  was  made  in  the  world  of  thought  and  aspiration,  and  that  Raphael,  even  if  born  without  hands  would  have  been  the  greatest  of  all  painters.  The  terribly  misused  word  "  genius "  was  a  charter  for  every  folly,  every  extravagance.  The  straightforward  human  understanding  was  apt  to  be  ruined  by  ingenious  toying  with  new  ideas  and  with  surprising  points  of  view.  The  belief  in  the  boundless  rights  of  the  sovereign  personality,  the  general  desire  to  be  something  different  from  other  men,  led  some  to  moral  anarchy  and  others  to  vain  self -admiration.  With  nervous  sensitive-  ness, people  watched  every  breath  of  their  own  beautiful  spirits.  In  the  letters  of  Gentz  and  in  the  memoirs  of  Rahel  Varnhagen,  the  barometer  plays  the  part  of  the  mysterious  elemental  energy  which  bestows  upon  genius  the  dark  and  the  bright  hours.

The  thoughts  of  the  nation  were  still  so  completely  dominated  by  literature,  that  even  the  great  contrasts  of  poUtical     and     religious     Hfe     frequently     found     expression    in learned  disputes.  Such  was  the  nature  of  the  struggles  between  Savigny  and  Thibaut,  between  Voss  and  Stolberg.  When  Gottfried  Hermann  took  the  field  against  Creuzer  and  the  symbolists,  he  regarded  himself  as  the  champion  of  freedom  against  the  tenebr tones,  the  men  of  darkness  in  the  state  and  in  the  church.  Even  the  purely  political  parties,  whose  weak  beginnings  were  now  at  length  becoming  manifest,  emerged  directly  out  of  literary  life.  The  immediate  intervention  of  poHtical  theory  in  the  destiny  of  states,  which  so  strikingly  distinguishes  modern  history  from  the  more  ingenuous  days  of  antiquity  and  of  the  middle  ages,  was  nowhere  more  conspicuous  than  here  in  the  land  of  learning.  German  Uberalism  sprang,  not  from  the  class  interests  of  the  wealthy  and  self-conscious  bourgeoisie,  but  from  the  academic  ideas  of  the  professors.  With  the  indefinite  historical  yearning  for  the  great  days  of  the  old  emperordom,  which  had  first  come  into  existence  in  literary  circles  during  the  epoch  of  foreign  dominion,  there  gradually  became  intermingled  the  doctrines  of  the  new  philosophy  regarding  the  natural  right  of  the  free  personality ;  to  these  were  subsequently  added  a  few  phrases  from  Montesquieu  and  Rousseau  ;  and  finally,  in  addition,  a  large  proportion  of  the  unconscious  prejudices  of  the  learned  caste.  Thus  there  came  into  existence  a  system  of  ideas  which  were  supposed  to  correspond  with  the  law  of  reason,  and  were  to  lead  our  nation  through  freedom  back  to  the  attainment  of  its  ancient  power.  In  the  writings  of  Rotteck  this  doctrine  was  produced  in  a  condition  of  complete  elaboration,  like  a  philosopher's  system  and,  just  like  such  a  system,  put  forward  a  claim  to  perpetuate  itself  through  the  world  by  the  might  of  reason,  by  its  theoretical  incontrovertibility.  The  over-  throw of  the  Napoleonic  world-empire  had  been  effected  solely  by  the  power  of  ideas  which  had  been  bom  in  the  circles  of  the  brain-workers,  had  from  these  passed  to  the  nation,  had  finally  overpowered  even  the  hostile  crowns,  and  had  led  to  the  holy  war — this  view  was  assumed  by  literary  politicians  to  be  indisputable  ;  thus  it  seemed  that  Germany's  internal  Uberation  would  also  be  well  secured  if  only  all  parties  would  fully  accept  the  sacred  truths  of  the  new  constitutional  doctrine,  and  would  hold  firmly  to  this  creed  with  the  faithful  conviction  of  the  man  of  learning  or  of  the  martyr  of  the  church.  To  this  generation  of  well-meaning  doctrinaires  it  still  remained  altogether  unknown  that    the   state   has    power,   and    belongs   to   the   realm   of    the will.  It  was  not  until  decades  had  passed,  filled  with  crass  confusions  and  profound  disillusionments,  that  German  party  life  could  outgrow  the  cradle  of  doctrine  and  raise  itself  from  a  policy  of  belief  to  a  policy  of  action.

In  the  Latin  countries,  poetry,  when  it  had  attained  to  classical  perfection,  had  everywhere  and  for  a  long  period  given  form  and  direction  to  the  spirit  of  the  nation.  So  extreme  was  the  stubbornness  of  the  Germans  that  even  during  the  golden  days  of  Weimar  they  would  never  yield  to  the  dominion  of  a  rule.  Whilst  Schiller  and  Goethe  still  stood  at  the  summit  of  their  creative  activities,  romanticism  was  already  beginning  a  fierce  attack  upon  the  classical  ideal.  When  the  War  of  Liberation  had  reduced  the  literary  struggle  to  silence,  the  anxiety  about  the  fatherland  repressed  all  other  thoughts  ;  the  few  writings  which  ventured  forth  during  this  wild  time  seemed  to  unite  in  advocating  Christian  and  patriotic  enthusiasm.  But  hardly  had  peace  been  concluded  when  the  sharp  contrasts  which  the  manifold  life  of  Germany  contained,  once  more  and  in  a  moment  broke  forth  into  active  life.  Even  half-forgotten  thoughts  from  the  first  years  of  the  Revolution,  ideas  which  had  been  sup-  posed to  have  been  long  outgrown,  re-emerged  into  the  light  of  day ;  for  it  is  the  lot  of  every  literature  which  is  no  longer  in  its  first  youth  to  find  that  at  times  the  past  once  more  comes  to  Hfe,  and  that  the  shades  of  the  dead  take  part  in  the  struggles  of  the  living.  Rationalism  and  religious  sentiment,  criticism  and  mysticism,  natural  rights  and  historical  doctrines  of  the  state,  Nazarene  and  Hellenic  ideals  of  nationalism  and  cosmopolitanism,  liberal  and  feudal  tendencies,  struggled  and  intertwined  in  perpetual  change.

It  was  not  merely  the  timid  Gentz  who  complained  in  alarm  that  the  long-desired  time  of  peace  had  brought  to  the  Germans  a  war  of  all  against  all.  Even  Arndt,  who  was  ever  sanguine,  could  not  conceal  his  disgust  when  at  the  court  of  the  young  crown  prince  of  Prussia  he  saw  Alexander  Humboldt,  the  advocate  of  a  purely  scientific  cosmopolitanism,  and  at  the  same  time  the  brothers  Gerlach,  hotspurs  of  Christo-Germanic  religious  fanaticism.  He  anxiously  asked  how,  in  view  of  the  immeasurable  divergence  of  sentiments,  this  nation  could  ever  attain  to  internal  peace,  to  firm  decision.  In  the  long  run,  indeed,  the  healthy  sense  of  the  nation  succeeded  in  grasping  and  retaining  all  that  was  genuine  and  viable  in  this  anar-  chical confusion.     Nevertheless,    many    a   fine    talent    succumbed hopelessly  amid  the  confusion  of  opinions ;  and  whoever  found  courage  to  take  part  in  the  struggles  of  the  German  spirit  had  to  be  prepared  to  accept  a  lot  of  renunciation.  Every  notable  intelligence,  even  if  high  above  the  sectarian  spirit,  was  forced,  willingly  or  unwillingly,  into  the  struggle  of  the  literary  parties  and  was  extolled  beyond  measure  by  one  faction,  while  being  abused  by  the  other  with  all  the  lack  of  restraint  characteristic  of  German  fault-finding ;  those  only  who  had  attained  to  a  great  age  might  hope,  Hke  Savigny  and  Uhland,  to  secure  belated  recognition   even   from   their   opponents.

Classical Poetry

Among  the  people  all  remained  tranquil.  Not  a  hand  was  raised  to  resist  the  new  authorities  ;  even  the  complaints  regarding  the  loss  of  the  much-prized  ancient  liberty,  sounded  dull  and  timid.  The  imperial-patriotic  jurist,  Gaspari,  found  even  in  his  distress  a  good-natured  word  of  gratitude  for  the  Imperial  Deputa-  tion, because  by  its  pensions  this  body  "  had  at  least  brought  consolation  to  the  unfortunate " ;  and  even  the  conservative  Barthold  Niebuhr  was  unwilling  to  lament  over  the  dead  or  to  contest  the  necessity  of  this  breach  of  law.  The  few  among  the  cultured  cosmopolitans  of  North  Germany  who  still  at  times  looked  down  out  of  the  heaven  of  ideas  into  the  low  world  of  political  life,  greeted  the  triumph  of  the  princely  order  as  a  victory  of  modern  civilisation  ;  they  hoped,  as  Harl  of  Erlangen  expressed  it  in  his  work  upon  the  latest  state-changes  in  Germany,  that  the  "  beautiful  dawn  of  enlightenment  would  at  length  expel  obscurity  from  the  spiritual  lands."  A  sounder  view  than  that  of  most  of  his  con-  temporaries was  taken  by  young  Hegel  concerning  the  situation  of  the  empire.  He  saw  in  this  chaos  "  the  juxtaposition  of  two  contradictions,  that  a  state  is  at  the  same  time  to  be  and  not  to  be,"  and  he  found  the  ultimate  cause  of  the  trouble  in  the  vaunted  German  freedom.  But  his  insight  appears  merely  as  the  uncannily  clear  vision  of  one  who  is  hopelessly  diseased  ;  no  breath  of  passion  inspires  his  wise  words  ;  for  this  reason,  after  scientifically  dis-  cussing the  problem,  he  allowed  his  essay  to  remain  unpubhshed.  To  the  arrogance  of  the  Berliners,  which  seemed  to  increase  with  the  increasing  weakness  of  their  state,  it  appeared  that  the  Princes'  Revolution  had  not  done  enough  for  Prussia.  In  the  carping  circles  of  the  capital,  where  such  men  as  Held  and  Buchholz  were  the  loudest  talkers,  the  king  was  blamed  because  he  had  not  grabbed  enough  in  the  general  scramble.  "  Why,"  it  was  asked,  "  did  not  Prussia  swallow  all  the  North  German  territory,  without  paying  so  many  compliments,  and  without  troubUng  itself  about  copy-  book morality  and  so-called  legality  ?  "  The  great  majority  of  the  nation  was  equally  unconcerned  with  such  frivolous  boastings,  as  with  the  quiet  distresses  of  the  dethroned,  for  the  nation  continued  to  maintain  its  unshaken  indifference.

One  man  alone,  with  moral   earnestness   and  statesmanUke  insight,  ventured  to  speak  openly  of  the  disgrace  of  the  fatherland. When  the  Prince  of  Nassau  endeavoured  to  deprive  the  ancient  imperial  knightly  house  of  Stein  of  its  territorial  suzerainty,  the  Baron  Karl  von  Stein  sent  an  open  letter  to  the  petty  despot,  referring  him  in  pithy  phrases  to  the  judgment  of  his  own  conscience  and  to  the  punishments  that  would  be  inflicted  by  an  offended  Deity,  and  concluded :  "If  the  great  and  beneficial  aims  of  independence  and  self-sufficiency  of  Germany  are  to  be  attained,  the  petty  states  must  be  united  with  the  two  great  monarchies  upon  whose  existence  depends  the  endurance  of  the  German  name,  and  may  Providence  allow  me  to  Hve  to  see  this  fortunate  event."  It  was  through  this  letter  that  the  name  of  the  president  of  the  West-  phaUan  Chamber  first  became  known  outside  the  bounds  of  Prussia.  His  proud  spirit  was  admired,  but  the  nation  was  not  yet  com-  petent to  understand  the  ideas  of  the  most  vaUant  of  its  sons.

Yet  this  land  of  ours  was  not  a  Poland,  and  there  still  lived  in  our  people,  which  received  so  equably  the  blows  of  the  stranger,  the  joyful  consciousness  of  a  great  destiny.  The  same  decade  which  witnessed  the  burial  of  the  ancient  German  state  brought  to  the  new  poetry  its  purest  successes.  How  remote  now  seemed  those  days  when  Klopstock  had,  with  a  beating  heart,  seen  the  German  Muse  start  on  her  uncertain  course.  Schiller  was  singing  with  quiet  pride  :  "  We  may  freely  display  the  laurels  that  have  bloomed  on  the  German  Pindus  !  "  The  Germans  had  long  been  aware  that  they  had  enriched  with  new  and  independent  ideals  the  treasures  of  European  culture  that  had  been  handed  down  to  them,  and  that  they  occupied  a  place  in  the  great  community  of  civilised  nations  which  no  one  else  in  the  world  could  fill.  It  was  with  enthusiasm  that  the  youth  of  our  nation  spoke  of  German  profundity,  of  German  idealism,  of  German  universality.  To  look  freely  forth  over  all  the  dividing  limits  of  finite  existence,  to  regard  nothing  human  as  foreign,  to  traverse  the  realm  of  ideas  in  living  community  with  the  best  of  all  nations  and  all  times —  this  was  regarded  as  German,  this  was  esteemed  the  special  privilege  of  German  culture.  The  national  pride  of  this  idealist  generation  was  gratified  with  the  idea  that  no  other  people  was  able  to  follow  to  the  uttermost  the  bold  flight  of  German  genius,  to  attain  to  the  freedom  of  our  cosmopolitan  sense.

In  fact  our  classical  literature  bore  the  definite  stamp  of  national  peculiarity.  Madame  de  Stael  herself  admitted  that  those  only  who,  hke  herself,  were  half  German  by  blood,  could  adequately  grasp   of  the  wonderful  peculiarity  of  German  thought.     All  the activity,  all  the  passion  of  our  youth  became  involved  in  these  literary  struggles  which  had  now  for  three  generations  enticed  German  men  into  their  charmed  circle.  An  incomparable  mass  of  new  ideas  was  springing  up.  As  the  talented  Frenchwoman  put  it,  "an  ingenuous  foreigner  might  easily  regard  as  a  genius  any  skilled  German  talker,  who  is  merely  echoing  the  ideas  of  others."  The  insatiable  impulse  towards  the  communication  of  ideas,  which  is  characteristic  of  all  spiritually  productive  epochs,  now  found  vent  in  an  extraordinarily  rich  interchange  of  letters.  Just  as  in  former  days  Hutten  had  joyfully  communicated  to  his  humanist  friends  every  new  revelation  which  came  to  his  mind,  so  now  the  invisible  Church  of  the  German  thinkers  joined  in  happy  mutual  devotion.  In  the  law  court,  behind  a  pile  of  legal  documents,  the  father  of  Theodor  Korner  eagerly  read  the  works  of  his  friends  at  Weimar  ;  and  how  often  did  Prince  Louis  Ferdinand,  when  in  WestphaUa  with  his  regiment,  ride  over  early  in  the  morning  to  Lemgo,  after  a  night  spent  in  feasting,  in  order  to  talk  with  the  Rector  Reinert  about  Sophocles  and  Homer.  Every  poem  was  an  event,  was  dis-  cussed, dissected,  admired,  in  detailed  letters  and  criticisms.  All  the  unavoidable  defects  of  literary  epochs,  tittle-tattle  and  party  spirit,  sentimentality,  paradox,  and  even  self-deception,  had  free  play.  Yet  out  of  the  very  weakness  of  the  time  there  spoke  the  vital  force  and  the  joy  of  Hfe  of  a  talented  and  high-thinking  generation,  to  whom  the  world  of  ideas  was  the  only  reality.  Un-  ashamedly WilUam  Humboldt  praised  the  divine  anarchy  of  Papal  Rome  because  it  left  thinkers  undisturbed  to  experience  and  to  contemplate.  What  did  he  care  for  the  Romans  of  flesh  and  blood,  as  compared  with  those  spiritual  voices  which  spoke  to  him  from  the  marble  statues  of  the  Vatican  ?  In  the  same  sense,  Schiller  complains  of  the  emptiness  of  his  revolutionary  age  which  stimulates  the  spirit  without  giving  to  it  any  object  upon  which  to  work,  without,  that  is  to  say,  any  aesthetic  image  to  contemplate.

One  who  does  full  justice  to  the  profound  earnestness  of  this  idealism,  and  to  the  abundance  of  intellectual  energy  which  is  required  to  carry  it  through,  will  no  longer  find  puzzling  the  political  incapacity  of  the  epoch  we  are  considering.  The  parsimony  of  nature  imposes  upon  the  creative  activity  of  nations,  just  as  of  individuals,  strict  limits,  and  to  every  great  human  activity  attaches  the  evil  of  one-sidedness.  It  was  impossible  that  a  generation  characterised  by  such  energy  of  intellectual  creation  should  at  the  same  time  possess  the  astute  sense  of  worldly  values,  the  resolute  unanimity,  and  the  hard  national  hatred,  which  alone  would  have saved  the  country  from  the  unparalleled  dangers  of  the  political  situation.  Just  as  Luther,  full  of  his  ideas  of  God,  had  no  glance  to  spare  for  works  of  art  in  the  Rome  of  Leo  X,  so  the  heroes  of  the  new  German  culture  deliberately  turned  their  gaze  away  from  the  desolation  they  saw  spreading  over  the  German  south-west,  and  joined  with  Goethe  in  thanking  destiny  that  they  themselves  were  safe  in  the  impassive  northern  region  which  it  was  not  so  easy  to  injure.

In  the  friendship  between  Schiller  and  Goethe,  the  human  amiability  and  the  creative  power  of  the  new  culture  found  their  most  finished  expression.  From  ancient  days  it  had  been  a  glory  of  the  Germans  to  claim  that  no  other  people  had  so  often  exhibited  the  finest  blossoms  of  friendship  between  men,  the  ungrudging  and  faithful  co-operation  of  great  men  for  great  ends  ;  and  among  the  numerous  fine  friendships  of  German  history,  this  was  the  finest  of  all.  During  ten  fruitful  years,  these  two  friends  never  ceased  to  provide  new  gifts  for  their  nation,  fulfilHng  Goethe's  own  saying  that  genius  is  that  human  power  which  furnishes  laws  and  rules  by  its  own  spontaneous  activity.  And  yet  it  was  only  a  part  of  their  natures  that  they  devoted  to  this  abundant  poietic  activity,  for  they  were  well  aware  that  no  one  wins  permanent  fame  who  is  not  himself  greater  than  his  works.

In  the  hearts  of  the  youth  of  the  time  there  was  preserved,  beyond  the  possibility  of  oblivion,  this  unique  picture  of  artistic  and  human  greatness  :  how  these  two,  so  long  separated  by  destiny,  by  the  course  of  their  education,  and  by  the  nature  of  their  respec-  tive gifts,  at  length  found  one  another,  and  thenceforward,  during  the  prime  of  their  lives,  stood  firmly  side  by  side  in  true  German  fealt37,  working  so  harmoniously  together  that  neither  knew  which  of  them  had  written  many  of  the  individual  epigrams  in  the  Xenien,  and  yet  each  of  them  fully  conscious  of  his  own  worth,  giving  and  receiving  in  perfect  freedom,  and  without  the  least  inclination  to  interfere  with  his  friend's  individuality.  On  the  one  side,  the  favourite  of  fortune,  brought  up  in  luxury,  liberally  endowed  with  rank  and  wealth,  beauty  and  health  ;  on  the  other  side,  the  man  sorely  tried,  who  had  for  years  contended  with  sickness  and  privation,  and  who  had  yet  remained  so  proud  and  free  in  spirit  that  not  a  single  line  of  his  writings  displays  the  common  needs  of  his  everyday  Hfe.  The  one  was  unrestrainedly  himself,  living  for  the  moment  only  and  indifferent  to  the  future.  He  allowed  the  golden  fruits  of  his  poetry  to  ripen  at  their  leisure  until  at    the    approved  hour  he   could   easily   pluck   them   from    the branch.  1  o  him,  the  German  tongue  revealed  her  most  cherished  secrets,  following  Hke  a  diligent  pupil  every  hint  of  the  master.  From  the  depths  of  an  ever  fresh  and  clear  imagination,  from  the  wide  extent  of  an  immeasurable  knowledge,  there  flowed  spon-  taneously into  his  mind  an  unsought  stream  of  images  and  ideas.  In  the  mind  of  the  other  there  glowed  a  nobler  ambition.  He  wished  to  conquer  here  and  now  ;  he  wished  to  transfigure  in  great  and  beautiful  lineaments  the  luminous  thoughts  which  moved  his  heart,  to  force  the  dull  world  to  believe  in  them  and  to  shake  off  "  all  the  rubbish  of  reality."  He  made  full  use  of  every  hour,  as  if  he  had  a  premonition  of  the  near  approach  of  death,  he  knew  how  to  compensate  by  untiring  industry  the  deficiencies  of  his  less  many-  sided  culture  ;  and  he  knew  how,  like  a  careful  steward,  to  make  a  secure  and  effective  use  of  every  word  in  his  less  wealthy  verbal  treasury.  He  availed  himself  to  the  utmost  of  the  force  of  his  ardent  will,  until  he  had  attained  to  a  finished  and  forcible  conclusion  ;  whereas  Goethe,  in  his  easy  way,  was  so  often  content  to  leave  his  work  rough-hewn.

Goethe's  genius  was  predominantly  lyrical,  and  to  him  all  poetic  activity  had  the  fervour  of  a  religious  creed  ;  and  yet  in  the  midst  of  the  excitement  of  subjective  sensibility,  he  never  failed  to  retain  that  "  kindly  restraint  in  love  with  the  real  "  which  he  so  greatly  esteemed  as  the  true  productive  state  of  the  born  poet.  When  he  came  to  an  end  of  his  inner  experiences  he  always  pro-  duced in  his  readers  the  lofty  illusion  that  he  had  himself  completely  disappeared  behind  imaginary  figures  which  had  been  nourished  upon  the  blood  of  his  own  heart.  The  dramatic  genius  of  Schiller  trod  more  firmly  in  the  objective  world.  Seeking  and  choosing,  he  often  reached  out  for  materials  which  originally  had  nothing  in  common  with  his  own  inner  life  ;  but  when  he  had  warmed  these  foreign  figures  with  his  formative  hands,  he  breathed  upon  them  with  the  breath  of  his  heroic  nature,  and  furnished  them  so  directly  and  so  powerfully  with  the  lofty  pathos  of  his  ardent  sensibility,  that  his  hearers  always  came  to  imagine  that  it  was  Schiller's  own  voice  they  were  hearing,  and  regarded  him  as  a  subjective  poet.  In  addition  to  the  secure  foothold  of  genius  walk-  ing amid  visions,  both  these  poets  were  endowed  with  that  clarity  of  consciousness  which  was  characteristic  of  the  whole  epoch,  and  they  loved  to  give  to  themselves  and  to  others  an  account  of  the  laws  of  their  art.  Neither  of  them  considered  that  in  aesthetic  culture  alone  was  to  be  found  the  true  task  of  their  epoch.  One  worked  as  statesman,  natural  philosopher,  and  psychologist,  the  other  as historian  and  philosopher,  to  render  a  many-sided  culture  more  profound  and  more  luminous.  Both  felt  at  one  with  their  nation.  They  did  not  fail  to  recognise  that  their  works  would  prove  fruitful  on  foreign  soil,  but  they  knew  that  it  was  to  German  life  that  they  owed  all  that  was  most  characteristic  in  their  activities,  and  that  they  could  find  an  intimate  and  spontaneous  understanding  only  where  German  hearts  were  beating  :  "In  the  Fatherland  write  what  pleases  thee  !  There  are  the  bonds  of  thy  affection,  there  is  thy  world  !  "

It  is,  however,  to  the  honour  of  German  uprightness  that  even  in  this  age  of  aesthetic  contemplation,  Schiller  stood  higher  in  the  favour  of  the  people  than  did  his  great  friend.  The  average  man  does  not  rise  beyond  the  material  stimulus  of  poetry,  and  for  this  reason  he  cannot  accept  the  one-sided  moral  estimate  charac-  teristic of  art.  It  was  only  richly  endowed  spirits  that  could  really  understand  the  profound  stream  of  the  later  poetry  of  Goethe.  Only  to  the  experts  in  life  was  the  inner  significance  of  his  figures  apparent ;  only  natures  with  insight  were  able  amid  his  protean  transformations  to  recognise  the  figure  of  the  genius  who  always  remained  true  to  himself.  Over  the  most  highly  cultured  members  of  the  nation  the  life  and  works  of  Goethe  gradually  came  to  exer-  cise a  quiet  but  irresistible  power,  which  became  ever  greater  as  the  years  passed.  We  owe  it  to  Goethe  that  WiUiam  Humboldt  was  able  to  say  that  nowhere  else  was  the  true  essence  of  poetry  so  profoundly  understood  as  in  Germany.  From  The  Table  Talk  of  Luther,  the  Germans  had  once  learnt  what  it  means  to  live  wholly  in  God ;  how  to  sense  the  omnipotence  and  the  love  of  the  Creator  in  every  simple  event  of  the  twenty-four  hours.  Now  the  new  humanism  incorporated  itself  in  a  powerful  and  original  human  existence.  From  the  Hfe  of  Goethe,  the  happy  circle  of  those  with  insight  learned  how,  to  the  spirit  of  the  artist,  every  experience  becomes  an  image,  how  the  freest  culture  returns  to  Nature,  how  distinguished  pride  harmonises  with  cordial  simplicity  and  democratic  love  for  mankind.  As  is  the  dramatist's  right,  Schiller's  influence  was  more  in  the  direction  of  width  ;  to  him  belonged  the  hearts  of  the  enthusiastic  youth  of  his  time  ;  his  moral  earnestness  touched  the  conscience  ;  his  joyful  belief  in  the  nobility  of  mankind  was  as  easily  comprehensible  to  all  as  was  the  sparkling  beauty  of  his  ever-perspicuous  speech.  It  is  he  whom  we  have  to  thank  for  the  fact  that  the  delight  in  the  new  culture  became  diffused  through  the  widest  circles,  in  so  far  as  it  was  possible  for  this  literature  to  become  popular  ;  by  the  powerful rhetoric  of  his  Jungfrau  von  Orleans  even  the  courts  of  BerUn  and  Dresden  were  shaken  out  of  their  essential  prosiness.  Goethe,  as  a  youth,  had  been  inspired  with  enthusiasm  for  the  Strasburg  cathedral,  and  had  been  the  first  among  his  contemporaries  to  gain  an  insight  into  the  life  of  mediaeval  Germany  ;  it  was  a  delight  to  him  to  incorporate  the  archaic  into  the  wealth  of  his  speech  and  to  reanimate  it  with  life.  Schiller,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  modern  of  the  moderns,  modern  in  sensibility  and  in  speech,  devoid  of  all  sentiment  for  German  antiquity,  and  for  this  reason  all  the  more  popular  ;  for  the  nation  which  had  forgotten  its  own  past  demanded  novelty  and  plainness.

In  Italy,  Goethe  enjoyed  a  second  youth,  living  himself  into  the  classical  world,  so  that  he  became  at  home  in  antiquity  as  had  no  one  since  Winckelmann.  Having  assimilated  the  new  views  which  flowed  into  his  mind  in  Italy,  he  now  astonished  the  nation  by  a  series  of  poems  which,  in  contrast  with  the  obviousness  and  vital  warmth  of  his  youthful  writings,  displayed  to  the  Germans  a  loftiness  of  style  and  a  pregnant  worth  which  had  hitherto  been  unknown.  But  he  had  to  learn  that  the  mass  of  his  readers  could  not  follow  his  new  style,  and  that  they  were  unable  to  understand  either  the  tender  sensuous  beauty  of  his  IpUgenia,  or  the  restrained  but  profound  passion  of  his  Tasso.  The  Germans  lost  sight  of  the  poet  now  that  he  had  buried  himself  "  in  his  badger's  earth,"  and  year  after  year  through  research  and  contemplation  became  the  confidant  of  nature.  He  ventured  upon  the  titanic  under-  taking, proceeding  step  by  step  from  the  simplest  to  the  highest  organisation,  to  gain  an  understanding  of  Nature  as  a  whole,  and  in  that  understanding  to  Hve  at  one  with  nature.  And  this  scientific  cognition  was  at  the  same  time  artistic  contemplation  ;  he  gave  himself  up  to  nature  with  all  the  energies  of  his  soul,  so  intimately  and  so  lovingly  that  he  could  with  justice  speak  of  his  geological  studies  as  his  "  friendship  with  the  earth."  Research  did  not  lead  him  astray,  but  strengthened  in  him  the  naive  contem-  plative attitude  of  the  poet  who  always  seeks  the  centre  of  gravity  of  the  world  in  the  heart  of  humanity.  To  his  seeing  gaze,  the  all  became  alive  ;  and  inasmuch  as  he  recognised  how  the  eternal  is  active  throughout  all  nature,  he  cleaved  all  the  more  joyfully  to  the  belief  in  the  independent  conscience,  the  sun  of  our  moral  system.  Since  he  had  come  to  sense  the  God  which  is  the  intimate  motive  energy  of  the  world,  the  serene  joy  of  his  poet's  spirit  seemed  explicable  through  the  consecration  of  a  pious  and  holy  conception  :  "  The  joy  of  life  streams  out  of  all  things,  from  the  smallest  as  from the  greatest  star  ;   all  advance  and  all  struggle  is  eternal  peace  in  God  our  Lord  !  "

Schiller,  meanwhile,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  had  in  his  poetic  activity  become  a  completely  new  man,  and  by  earnest  philo-  sophical research  had  acquired  the  knowledge  that  through  art  alone  will  our  race  attain  to  harmonious  perfection,  that  in  art  alone  is  man  at  once  active  and  free,  operating  effectively  upon  externals  and  at  the  same  time  altogether  himself.  Thus  was  the  most  intimate  secret  of  the  age  given  bold  enunciation.  A  thousand  delighted  voices  answered  his  rousing  appeal,  "  from  the  narrow  and  dull  life  of  every  day,  flee  to  the  refuge  of  the  ideal,"  and  welcomed  the  happy  message  that  the  artist  is  the  complete  man,  that  everything  beautiful  is  good,  and  that  that  alone  is  good  which  is  beautiful.  At  the  same  time  the  poet  passed  a  severe  and  even  a  harsh  judgment  upon  the  shapelessness  of  his  own  youthful  writings,  and  attained  to  a  mastery  of  the  classical  purity  of  form.  It  was  by  Schiller  that  the  work  of  Winckelmann  was  first  com-  pleted ;  only  after  Schiller  had  brilliantly  glorified  the  Gods  of  Greece,  did  the  longing  for  the  sublime  simplicity  of  the  antique,  the  cult  of  the  classical  ideal,  become  a  common  possession  of  cultured  Germans.  With  wonderful  speed  did  Schiller  make  him-  self at  home  in  this  world  from  which  lids  youth  had  been  so  remote.  With  the  certainty  of  genius  he  discovered  the  motive  energy  of  ancient  history,  the  last  and  highest  thought  of  Hellenism :  "  Even  though  the  body  be  fallen  into  dust,  the  great  name  lives  on  !  "

The  two  great  poets  having  thus  formed  an  alliance,  the  next  thing  was  to  permeate  the  world  with  this  new  idealism,  to  make  a  clean  sweep  of  the  spurious  wisdom  of  prosy  everyday  morality,  of  dull  utilitarianism  and  fantastical  obscurity,  to  drive  them  out  of  the  temple  of  the  German  Muses,  to  provide  an  open  road  for  all  that  was  truly  significant  and  creative,  to  convince  mediocrity  that  art  offers  no  place  for  it.  The  Xenien-dispnte  subserved  this  purpose.  It  was  a  party  struggle  in  the  grand  style  which,  in  spite  of  all  its  roughness  and  animosity,  was  yet  necessary  to  the  develop-  ment of  our  national  life  ;  the  Germans  were  well  aware  that  in  this  there  was  being  fought  a  question  vital  to  their  civilisation.  Inspired  by  his  active-minded  friend  to  fresh  creative  work,  Goethe  continued  to  show  himself  in  ever  new  manifestations.  Intoxi-  cated with  beauty,  with  the  pagan  frankness  of  a  rose-crowned  poet  of  antiquity,  he  sang  in  Roman  elegies  the  joys  of  the  love-warmed  camp,  and  only  on  occasions  when  he  was  furnishing  a  majestic view  of  eternal  Rome  did  he  allow  the  reader  to  perceive  that  the  intellectual  wealth  of  a  spirit  overlooking  all  the  centuries  was  hidden  behind  the  cordial  sensuality  of  these  delightful  verses.  Soon  afterwards  he  stood  once  more  in  the  midst  of  the  German  present,  describing  with  Homeric  simplicity  the  healthy  energy  of  our  middle  classes,  the  straightforward  greatness  which  dwells  amid  the  small  things  of  the  contented  home;  and  exhorted  our  people  to  remain  true  to  themselves,  in  a  time  of  stress  to  hold  fast  to  their  own.  The  ardent  and  faithful  love  for  the  fatherland  which  spoke  from  Hermann  und  Dorothea  made  but  slight  impres-  sion upon  Goethe's  contemporaries  in  their  pride  of  culture.  But  with  delight  did  they  recognise  their  own  personalities  in  the  figures  of  Wilhelm  Meisfer — in  these  men  without  fatherland,  without  family,  without  calling,  free  from  all  the  bonds  of  the  historical  present,  and  knov/ing  only  life  itself,  knowing  only  the  passionate  impulse  for  human  culture.  In  this  Odyssey  of  culture  Goethe  held  up  the  mirror  to  his  age,  delineating  with  wonderful  clearness  all  the  characteristics  of  that  literary  epoch,  alike  its  weakness  and  its  fullness  of  life  ;  and  he  fulfilled  the  highest  task  of  the  romantic  poet,  succeeding  where  none  had  succeeded  before  in  showing  how  life  itself  educates  striving  and  erring  men.

Schiller,  meanwhile,  less  many-sided,  ceaselessly  making  the  most  of  his  natural  gifts,  acquired  the  mastery  of  the  German  stage.  To  him  was  essential  that  vigorous  dramatic  stimulus  which  Goethe  was  glad  to  keep  at  a  distance.  BriUiant  pictures  of  battle  and  victory  passed  through  his  dreams.  The  sound  of  the  trumpets,  the  rustle  of  the  banners,  and  the  clash  of  the  swords,  followed  him  even  to  his  death-bed.  The  passions  of  public  life,  the  struggles  for  the  great  purposes  of  mankind,  for  dominion  and  for  liberty,  those  mighty  changes  of  destiny  which  decide  the  issues  of  national  suffering  and  national  greatness,  furnished  the  natural  soil  for  his  dramatic  genius.  His  smaller  poems,  too,  deal,  by  preference,  with  the  beginnings  of  national  Ufe,  displaying  in  mani-  fold applications  how  the  sacred  compulsion  of  the  law  binds  unpeaceful  men  together  in  the  bonds  of  humanity.  Never  has  the  intertwining  of  the  simple  life  of  mankind  with  the  great  con-  trolling powers  of  the  state  and  of  society  been  more  beautifully  described  than  in  the  Lay  of  the  Bell.

However  profoundly  he  might  despise  this  "  prosaic  "  age,  however  proudly  he  might  reject  any  attempt  at  writing  poetry  with  a  purpose,  nevertheless,  this  mind  wholly  directed  towards  the  historic  world  was  yet  fulfilled  with  an  intense  political  passion, which  was  fully  understood  only  by  those  of  a  later  generation.  It  was  not  by  mere  chance  that  he  so  long  cherished  the  idea  of  cele-  brating in  an  epic  the  deeds  of  Frederick  the  Great.  When  the  Germans  took  up  arms  for  the  liberation  of  their  own  land,  the  glowing  picture  of  the  popular  uprising  in  Schiller's  Maid  of  Orleans  first  became  truly  comprehensible.  When  under  the  pressure  of  foreign  dominion  they  once  again  came  to  realise  them-  selves, they  were  first  able  to  do  full  justice  to  the  greatness  of  the  poet  who  in  his  two  most  powerful  dramas  had  brought  the  history  of  the  fatherland  so  near  to  their  understanding.  In  his  poetry  the  most  deplorable  period  of  our  past  regained  so  fresh  and  joyful  a  life  that  even  to-day  the  German  finds  himself  almost  more  at  home  in  the  camp  of  Wallenstein  than  among  the  soldiers  of  Frederick.  From  the  battles  of  the  sturdy  German  peasants  of  the  Alps  he  composed  a  luminous  picture  of  a  great  war  of  libera-  tion, incorporating  in  this  poem  everything  that  alone  such  a  high  spirit  as  his  could  say  concerning  the  eternal  rights  of  humanity,  concerning  the  fortitude  and  unanimity  of  free  peoples.  In  political  life,  Wilhelm  Tell  was  soon  to  become  more  significant  than  had  formerly  been  Klopstock's  Ballads  of  the  Bards.  It  was  upon  this  poem  in  especial  that  the  rising  generation  nourished  its  inspira-  tion for  liberty  and  fatherland.  To  the  young  enthusiasts,  the  dramatically  voiced  exhortation,  "  Unite,  unite,  unite  !  "  seemed  a  sacred  legacy  from  the  poet  to  his  own  people.

It  is  true  that  it  was  not  possible  for  Schiller  to  give  to  the  Germans  that  national  theatre  for  which  ever  since  Lessing  all  our  dramatists  had  longed.  This  could  be  created  by  no  single  man.  Schiller  endeavoured  to  attain  to  a  national  style,  which  should  consciously  and  independently  unite  in  itself  the  genuine  greatness  of  the  older  drama  ;  the  richness  in  figures,  the  activity  of  move-  ment, and  the  profound  characterisation,  of  Shakespeare  ;  the  lyrical  tendency  of  classical,  and  the  strict  composition  of  French  tragedy  ;  and  which  should  thus  express  the  character  of  our  new  culture.  But  there  was  lacking  to  the  poet  a  vigorous  intercourse  with  the  people.  It  is  only  the  loud  acclamations  of  the  audience  in  a  great  town  that  can  show  the  dramatist  when  he  has  found  that  which  is  common  to  all,  that  which  is  truly  popular.  The  handful  of  dull  petty  bourgeois  in  the  parterre  of  the  theatre  at  Weimar  were  not  the  people  ;  and  the  distinguished  wits  in  the  court  boxes  gave  the  same  applause,  and  even  a  more  lively  applause,  to  the  experiments  of  talented  caprice  as  to  what  was  simply  great.  What  was  above  all  lacking  in  the  Germans,  as  Goethe  complains,  was "  a  national  culture,  which  should  constrain  the  poet  to  adapt  to  that  culture  the  peculiarities  of  his  genius."  Giving  bounteously,  but  receiving  very  little,  stood  the  dioscuri  of  Weimar  over  against  their  people,  which  by  them  was  first  raised  to  a  loftier  culture.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  both  of  them,  after  many  attempts  with  trilogies  and  single  dramas,  with  iambics  and  couplets,  with  choruses  and  melodramatic  interludes,  did  not  after  all  succeed  in  creating  an  artistic  form  for  our  drama,  a  form  which  could  be  generally  recognised  as  national.  Just  as  the  ceremonious  and  exaggeratedly  pathetic  declamation  of  the  Weimar  actors  was  not  copied  by  the  rest  of  Germany,  so  the  dramatists  themselves  worked  arbitrarily  and  capriciously,  each  beginning  anew,  each  endeavouring  by  new  arts  and  new  artifices  to  outshine  all  the  others.  Our  stage  offered  a  picture  of  anarchy,  which  yet  displayed  all  the  charms  of  unrestrained  freedom.  No  one  was  more  pain-  fully aware  than  Goethe  himself  of  the  petty  dispersal  of  German  life,  and  of  the  disastrous  influence  of  this  dispersal  upon  art.  Of  his  own  Wilhelm  Meister  he  said  that  he  had  been  forced  to  choose,  "  a  most  wretched  kind  of  matter,  comedians,  country  gentry  and  such  stuff,"  because  German  society  had  nothing  better  to  offer  to  the  poet ;  and  in  his  Tasso,  with  a  bitterness  which  must  have  been  the  outcome  of  personal  experience,  he  described  the  oppres-  sive narrowness  of  life  at*  petty  courts — oppressive  and  narrow  despite  all  the  refinement  of  its  culture.

It  was  not  only  the  natural  tendency  of  the  German  spirit  (which  finds  more  satisfaction  in  the  depiction  of  character  than  in  the  discovery  of  tense  situations),  that  was  responsible  for  the  rare  appearance,  in  this  blossoming  time  of  German  poetry,  of  that  humour  which  was  brilliant  enough  in  our  merry  sixteenth  century.  Another,  and  indeed  the  chief,  reason  of  this  failure  was  the  atrophy  of  our  public  life.  Comedy  could  not  follow  the  bold  advance  of  tragedy.  Comedy  is  rooted  always  in  the  present,  and  flourishes  only  amongst  people  who  possess  an  ingenuous  belief  in  themselves,  who  feel  perfectly  at  home  in  their  own  skins  ;  it  needs  firmly  established  national  customs  and  ideas  of  decorous  behaviour,  unless  it  is  to  occupy  itself  with  arbitrarily  chosen  and  commonplace  social  struggles  and  interests,  unless  it  is  to  become  insipid.  In  the  slowly  reviving  German  nation  there  were  as  yet  but  weak  beginnings  of  all  this.  The  most  popular  comic  dramatist  of  the  time,  Kotzebue,  whose  talent  in  this  direction  was  unquestionable,  repelled  nobler  natures  not  only  by  the  inborn  commonness  of  a  thoroughly  superficial  spirit,  but  even  more  by  the  pettiness  of the  circumstances  he  described,  and  by  the  insecurity  of  his  moral  sentiment  which  oscillated  between  lamentable  weakness  and  smirking  looseness.  Even  Jean  Paul,  der  Einzige,  who  was  then,  with  high  artistic  aims,  devoting  himself  to  the  service  of  the  comic  Muse,  was  defeated  by  the  desultory  unreadiness  of  German  social  life.  His  figures  moved,  now  in  the  heavy  and  suffocating  atmosphere  of  the  confined  and  poor-spirited  life  of  the  little  town,  and  now  in  the  tenuous  ether  of  an  ideal  freedom,  where  man  can  no  longer  breathe.  The  enthusiasm  of  his  warm-  hearted love  of  humanity  fails,  nevertheless,  to  furnish  him  with  any  firm  moral  grasp  ;  he  capriciously  plays  with  the  eternal  laws  of  the  moral  world,  in  order  subsequently  to  luxuriate  in  glorified  sentimentality,  and  to  leave  his  lovers  "  to  dwell  in  the  brief  and  blessed  elysium  of  the  first  kiss."  His  readers  had  no  definite  sense  of  style,  and  consequently  he  could  permit  to  his  humour -all  possible  manifestations  of  caprice  ;  unashamedly  he  gives  free  rein  to  the  lack  of  form  then  natural  to  the  German  spirit,  twisting  language  out  of  its  proper  channels,  and  overloading  it  with  inflated  artificialities.

The  moral  dangers  of  the  aesthetic  view  of  the  world-order  did  not  escape  the  keen  sight  of  Goethe.  He  warned  the  youth  of  his  time  that  they  should  "  know  how  to  accompany  the  Muses,  but  should  not  take  the  Muses  for  their  leaders  "  !  Yet  it  was  a  rich  generation  which  so  unrestrainedly  followed  its  own  impulses.  All  the  sluices  of  the  German  genius  seemed  to  have  been  raised  ;  our  music  attained  its  most  classical  development ;  in  philology,  F.  A.  Wolf,  and  in  the  fine  arts,  Asmus  Karstens,  were  adventur-  ously breaking  new  ground.  Even  social  charm,  which  is  apt  to  be  lacknig  to  German  straightforwardness,  was  brilliantly  developed  in  the  circles  of  the  elect  ;  seldom  have  woman's  love  and  woman's  naughtiness  been  described  in  a  more  delightful  and  seductive  manner  than  in  the  letters  of  Caroline  SchelUng.  Nor  can  we  fail  to  rejoice  in  the  contemplation  of  the  noble  prince  who  allowed  all  these  great  men  to  work  as  they  pleased,  who  understood  them,  and  who  at  the  same  time  was  himself  so  firm-hearted  and  so  stately.  Unrestrainedly  Charles  Augustus  shared  in  this  young  and  vigorous  life,  until  at  length  he  was  taught,  not  by  foreign  counsel  but  by  personal  experience,  "  gradually  to  impose  limits  upon  his  free  soul."

Men  of  the  old  French  nobility,  such  as  Talleyrand,  Segur  and  Eigne,  were  accustomed  to  maintain  that  no  one  could  really  know  what  life  was  who  had  not  had  experience  of  the  last  days  of  the  old  regime  ;   but  with  much  better  reason  could  the  poets and  thinkers  of  Germany  say  the  like  of  their  golden  age.  A  wonderful  compactness  of  spiritual  existence  enabled  each  one  to  effect  the  harmonious  development  of  his  gifts  in  every  direction  ;  and  it  merely  corresponded  to  the  actual  circumstances  of  the  day  if  this  fine  sociability  was  more  highly  esteemed  than  the  dull  life  of  the  state,  if  again  and  again  in  the  letters  of  Schiller  and  of  Goethe  we  find  expression  given  to  the  ancient  desire  that  above  all  the  state  must  not  encroach  upon  "  the  freedom  of  the  individual."  The  attitude  of  this  artistic  world  to  the  state  was  brilliantly  displayed  by  William  Humboldt  in  his  treatise  upon  the  limits  to  the  effective  power  of  the  state.  He  contends  that  the  highest  aim  of  life,  the  education  of  human  beings  to  individuality  of  energy  and  culture,  can  be  attained  only  when  the  individual  moves  freely  amid  manifold  situations.  For  this  reason  the  state,  which  is  an  institute  of  compulsion,  must  confine  itself  to  securing  life  and  property,  but  must  leave  the  kingly  human  being  to  act  freely  in  all  other  respects.  The  state  stands  on  a  higher  level  in  proportion  as  the  individuality  of  the  persons  who  combine  to  make  it  a  state  is  higher,  richer,  and  more  independent.  In  this  way  was  the  Kantian  doctrine  of  the  constitutional  state  in  the  aesthetic  sense  carried  a  stage  further  ;  the  barren  doctrine  of  individualism  based  on  natural  right  gained  ground  when  it  became  associated  with  the  cult  of  the  free  personality.  The  admirers  of  classical  antiquity  were  preaching  the  flight  from  the  state,  the  precise  opposite  of  Hellenic  virtue.

All  too  soon  was  to  come  a  terrible  awakening  from  these  joyful  dreams  ;  all  too  soon  was  the  pride  of  culture  to  learn  that  for  noble  peoples  there  is  something  even  more  terrible  than  vulgarity — disgrace.  Nevertheless,  the  heroes  of  German  poetry  are  by  no  means  exposed  to  the  reproach  of  being  accomplices  in  the  disgrace  of  their  fatherland.  The  destruction  of  the  old  German  state  had  been  determined  ;  the  participation  of  our  poets  in  the  political  events  of  the  time  could  not  have  sufficed  to  avert  this  destiny,  and  could  only  have  diverted  them  from  the  contem-  plation of  the  eternal.  They  cherished  the  most  peculiar  gift  of  our  nation,  the  sacred  fire  of  idealism.  It  is  to  them  in  especial  that  we  owe  it  that  there  still  continued  to  exist  a  Germany  when  the  German  Empire  had  disappeared  ;  that  even  in  the  midst  of  need  and  servitude  the  Germans  could  still  continue  to  believe  in  themselves,  in  the  imperishability  of  the  German  essence.  Out  of  the  culture  of  the  free  personality  issued  our  political  freedom  and  the  independence  of  the  German  state.

In  the  poem  which  more  proudly  and  more  firmly  than  any  other  voiced  the  contempt  of  the  idealists  for  vulgar  reality,  in  Schiller's  Reich  der  Schatten,  we  find  the  words  :

"Incorporate  the  Godhead  into  your  own  wills, 

Then  will  it  descend  from  its  lofty  throne  !  "

The  poet  left  them  unaltered,  although  Humboldt  aptly  remarked  that  they  failed  to  render  satisfactorily  the  fundamental  aesthetic  ideas  of  the  poem.  But  Schiller  knew  what  he  was  about.  For  the  culture  which  he  and  his  friends  were  announcing  was  not  contemplative  enjoyment  but  joyful  activity.  Surrender  of  the  whole  personality  to  the  service  of  the  ideal  did  not  weaken  the  energy  of  the  will,  but  strengthened  it,  fulfilling  its  disciples  with  that  steadfastness  of  soul  which  regards  "  everything  which  we  term  destiny  as  simply  a  matter  of  indifference,"  as  Gentz  said  of  Humboldt  himself.  This  active  humanism  was  neither  soft,  nor  yet  hostile  to  the  state  ;  but  it  had  not  yet  grasped  the  nature  of  the  state,  and  needed  the  schooling  of  experience  to  develop  all  the  virtues  of  the  citizen  and  of  the  hero.  When  Humboldt,  who  was  now  preaching  that  people  should  turn  their  backs  upon  the  state,  subsequently  served  his  own  state  with  the  greatest  fideHty,  he  was  not  contradicting  himself,  but  was  simply  marching  a  few  steps  further  along  the  same  road  :  he  had  learned  that  the  nobility  of  free  human  culture  cannot  exist  in  an  oppressed  and  dishonoured  people.

Meanwhile  there  began  in  literature  a  new  tendency  which  was  to  lead  the  Germans  to  a  profounder  understanding  of  the  state  and  of  the  fatherland.  The  first  manifestations  of  the  young  Romantic  School  seemed  at  the  outset  to  bear  witness  to  a  moral  and  artistic  decHne.  Whereas  the  last  tw^o  literary  generations  had  been  extraordinarily  rich  in  noble  and  lovable  figures,  now  the  number  of  the  empty-headed,  the  lascivious,  and  the  over-  cultured,  underwent  an  enormous  increase.  The  Storm  and  Stress  Movement  upon  which  the  rising  generation  of  poets  plumed  itself,  was  no  longer  naive  youthful  passion,  but  already  displayed  the  characters  of  decadence.  Simple  delight  in  the  beautiful  was  replaced  by  a  morbid  ambition  which  wished  at  all  costs  to  furnish  forth  novelties,  and  Goethe  says  aptly  of  his  successors,  "  they  seem  to  be  like  knights  who,  endeavouring  to  outshine  their  prede-  cessors, look  for  a  guerdon  outside  the  lists."

The  poetic  faculty  of  the  romanticists  fell  far  below  their intentions.  Even  to  contemporaries  it  was  obvious  that  their  imaginations  worked  vigorously  in  the  void.  Their  leaders,  despite  stormy  claims  to  genius,  were  rather  finely-cultured  connoisseurs  than  creative  artists  ;  their  art  was  rather  a  deliberate  experimen-  tation than  an  instinctive  creation.  Goethe's  "  living  absorption  into  reality  "  was  to  be  replaced  by  irony  (the  deadly  enemy  of  all  naivety)  as  the  true  poetic  mood.  The  fine  saying  that  "  all  noble  natures  pay  with  what  they  themselves  are,"  served  to  their  arro-  gant sterility  as  an  excuse  for  idleness.  Arbitrary  caprice  confused  the  boundaries  of  all  artistic  form,  corrupted  the  chaste  simplicity  of  tragedy  with  operatic  songs,  introduced  the  onlookers  as  partici-  pators in  dramatic  action,  brought  upon  the  stage  the  incomprehen-  sible experiences  of  remote  nations  and  times — ^whereas  the  stage  should  always  remain  contemporary  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  and  should  represent  nothing  but  what  the  audience  can  sympathetically  understand.  As  Schiller  puts  it,  language  had  now  been  so  highly  cultivated  by  great  masters  that  it  saved  the  writer  the  trouble  of  philosophising  and  thinking  for  himself  ;  the  younger  generation  stretched  its  signification  beyond  the  limits  of  the  possible,  speaking  of  "  sounding  colours  "  and  "  aromatic  tones."  The  boundaries  between  poetry  and  prose  were  destroyed,  poetry  taking  the  form  of  discussions  about  art,  whilst  criticism  concerned  itself  with  fantastic  pictures.  Art  was  science,  science  was  art ;  all  the  manifestations  of  the  spiritual  life  of  mankind,  belief  and  knowledge,  prophecy  and  poetry,  music  and  the  fine  arts,  emerged  from  the  single  ocean  of  poesy  to  return  to  it  once  again. 

The  result  was  that  the  romanticists,  while  they  continually  spoke  of  popular  poetry,  attained  to  a  fantastic  and  artificialised  view  of  the  world-order  which  was  comprehensible  to  none  but  a  few  initiates,  and  to  these  comprehensible  only  in  scant  measure.  Frederick  Schlegel's  Lucinde  furnishes  a  tragical  testimony  at  once  to  the  lack  of  discipline  and  to  the  incapacity  of  this  school.  Here  we  have  an  artificially  heated  imagination  luxuriating  in  "  dithyrambs  over  the  most  beautiful  situation,"  without  ever  becoming  sensuously  warm  and  comprehensible,  but  resembling  the  loquacious  ramblings  of  a  drunken  pedant.  Even  philosophy  became  infected  by  the  presumptuousness  and  the  obscurity  of  romanticism.  Hitherto  it  had  escaped  the  cosmopolitan  influences  which  had  invaded  all  the  other  branches  of  literature,  but  had  created  for  itself  an  independent  world  of  ideas  which  had  remained  as  incomprehensible  to  the  foreigner  as  was  the  terminology  of  the    German    philosophers.      The    genius   of    our    speech,   whose tendency    was    in    the    direction    of    brilliant    and    verbose    in-  definiteness,   lent    itself    only  too    readily  to  the    mystical  bent  of    the     German    nature ;    and   to    these    incHnations,    romantic  enthusiasm   was    to    prove    altogether   disastrous.     When   young  Schelling,  inspired  by  the  ideas  of  Goethe,  determined  to  follow  nature  as  it  is  displayed  in  all  that  lives,  it  is  true  that  with  astonishing  boldness  he  opened  to  philosophic  thought  a  completely  new  domain  ;   but  he  utterly  lacked  that  profound  modesty  which  Kant  had  never  failed  to  display  in  his  boldest  speculations.     The  inspiration  of  the  "  intellectual  outlook,"  which  in  the  domain  of  the    experimental  sciences    will  no  more  than    furnish    brilliant  hypotheses,  which  always  need  verification  by  empirical  proof,  was  to  serve  him  in  place  of  observation  and  comparison.     He  imagined  that  by  arbitrary  interpretations,  drawn  from  the  realms  of  his  own  fancy,  he  could  force  from  nature  those  secrets  which  nature  will  reveal  to  none  but  those  who  search  for  them  with  a  loving  and  self -renouncing  diligence.     For  the  sober  investigators  there  were  contemptuously  reserved  the  spiritless  handicrafts.     Good  society  displayed  an  enthusiasm  for  natural  philosophy,  or  learned  with  satisfaction  from  Gall's  doctrine  of  the  skull  Ixow  easy  it  is  for  the  man  of  genius  to  solve  the  most  obscure  problems  of  psychology  and  natural  science.    All  the  deplorable  effects  of  over-education  began    to    manifest    themselves.     Intellectual    pride    capriciously  questioned  the  world-saving  laws  of  the  moral  life,  looking  down  with   contemptuous   laughter   upon   Schiller,    the   moral   pedant.  Weaker  natures  became  the  prey   of  an  over-intellectual  faint-  heartedness,  learning  to  contemplate  everything  from  all  sides,  whilst  losing  sight  of  the  contrasted  view-points  which  the  intellec-  tual wealth  of  the  times  offered  to  all,  and  losing  the  energy  for  independent    thought    and    will.      Everyone   who   had    given   a  theoretical   explanation    of    a   historical   phenomenon,    and    had  learned  to  explain  its  origin,  imagined  that  he  had  also  thereby  provided  a  justification  for  its  existence.

None  the  less,  the  romantic  poetry  bore  most  valuable  fruit  in  our  hfe,  not  so  much  through  the  works  of  art  which  it  produced,  as  in  consequence  of  the  stimulus  it  imparted  to  science  through  the  new  and  wider  outlook  it  provided  for  the  general  feeUng  and  thought  of  the  nation.  It  refined  the  sentiment  of  nature,  and  rendered  that  sentiment  more  profound  ;  it  awakened  an  under-  standing for  the  soul  of  the  countryside,  for  the  magical  charm  of  the  lonely  forests,  of  the  rocky  wildernesses,  of  the  moss-grown  springs.     The  eighteenth  century,  like  the  ancients,  had  felt  itself at  home  in  the  richly  cultivated  and  fertile  plain,  but  the  new  time  sought  for  the  romantic  stimulus  of  nature  :  our  youths  learned  to  prize  once  more  the  blameless  joys  of  the  fresh  and  free  life  of  the  wanderer,  and  our  people,  down  into  the  lower  strata  of  the  middle  class,  gradually  became  enriched  by  an  abundance  of  new  outlooks  upon  life.  The  world  of  fairy  tale,  of  the  mysterious,  of  chiaroscuro,  was  now  for  the  first  time  fully  opened  to  German  poetry.  Its  visionary  figures  were  less  vivid,  less  sharply  defined,  less  complete,  than  were  those  of  the  classical  period  of  our  art  ;  and  yet  they  rose  in  relief  out  of  a  distant  background,  seeming  to  carry  with  them  unending  significance,  and  they  were  surrounded  with  the  atmosphere  of  the  "  moonlit  night  which  bewitches  our  senses  with  its  charm."  Primevally  old  and  long  forgotten  sensa-  tions of  the  Teutonic  mentality  were  once  more  revived.

The  romanticists  felt  that  the  classical  ideals  had  completely  failed  to  represent  the  innermost  life  of  our  people  ;  they  sought  for  new  materials,  overrunning,  in  the  spirit  of  adventurous  con-  quistadors, the  whole  world  as  far  as  the  cradle  of  humanity  in  India,  and  further  yet  to  the  nature-races  in  the  forgotten  corners  of  the  world.  Wherever  the  all-engendering  poetry  had  incorporated  itself  in  language,  art,  and  religion,  its  manifestations  were  sought  with  intention  to  wed  them  to  the  German  genius.  Just  as  of  old  the  Romans  had  placed  in  their  Pantheon  the  images  of  the  gods  of  the  subject  races,  so  now  should  the  new  race  that  was  victorious  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit,  that  conceived  itself  as  penetrating  and  overlooking  all  other  nations  with  its  gaze,  take  to  itself,  in  faithful  reproduction,  the  poetry  of  all  lands.  The  fine  sense  of  form  and  the  graceful  feminine  receptivity  of  A.  W.  Schlegel  brought  the  German  translator's  art  to  its  finest  blossom.  One  after  another  there  speedily  appeared  German  versions  of  Shakespeare,  Cervantes,  Calderon,  and  a  number  of  other  happy  translations.  The  German  art  of  poetry  proved  itself  adequate  for  all  these  strange  tasks,  and  there  was  even  a  danger  of  its  succumbing  to  an  over-elaborated  formalism  which  was  contrary  to  its  innermost  nature  ;  for  in  all  epochs  of  their  greatness  the  Teutons  have  ever  prized  content  far  above  form.  Nevertheless,  the  bold  voyages  of  discovery  made  by  the  romanticists  brought  an  invaluable  and  permanent  gain.  It  was  in  their  circles  that  there  first  awoke  the  historical  sense  which  had  always  been  lacking  throughout  the  philosophical  century.  A.  W.  Schlegal,  in  his  lectures  on  the  history  of  literature,  following  the  foreshadowings  of  Herder,  developed  the  great  idea  that  art  is  rooted  in  the  soil  of  nationality,  that  in  every  people  their  language, their  religion,  and  their  art  can  be  understood  only  as  a  necessary  unfolding  of  the  popular  spirit.  Thus  was  the  foundation  laid  upon  which  subsequently  was  to  be  erected  the  magnificent  structure  of  comparative  philology,  comparative  literature,  and  the  comparative  history  of  the  arts.

Moreover,  this  free  voyaging  into  great  distances  led  the  romanticists  home  again.  Since  everywhere  in  history  they  were  searching  for  national  characteristics  and  for  the  primitive  peculiarities  of  the  peoples,  they  were  ultimately  led  to  ask  themselves  the  question,  how  this  new  German  people  had  itself  come  into  existence.  It  occurred  to  them  to  look  the  antiquity  of  their  own  fatherland  once  more  in  the  face,  and  the  new  genera-  tion found  the  image  a  strange  one,  as  to  a  grown  man  is  apt  to  seem  strange  his  own  hkeness  as  a  boy.  With  delighted  shamefaced-  ness  the  Germans  discovered  how  ludicrously  little  they  knew  of  the  wealth  of  their  own  land.  The  much-abused,  obscure  night  of  the  Middle  Ages  became  illuminated  once  more  with  a  cheerful  light.  A  multicoloured  turmoil  of  strange  figures,  of  monks  and  minnesingers,  of  saintly  women  and  glorious  champions,  moved  before  their  enchanted  gaze  ;  the  Hohenstaufen  emperors,  whose  name  was  still  known  in  Swabia  among  the  common  people,  reappeared  as  the  knightly  heroes  of  the  nation.  The  dealers  at  the  annual  fairs,  who  sold  to  humble  readers  the  coarse-paper  editions  of  old  folk-  books,  now  sometimes  ventured  to  offer  his  wares  to  men  of  learning.  Educated  people  gave  attentive  ear  when  the  servant-maid  was  telling  the  children  fairy  tales,  and  word  was  passed  round  among  initiates  that  in  the  m3^ths  of  the  ancient  Teutonic  heathendom  there  still  lay  concealed  an  inexhaustible  treasure  of  profound  and  moving  sentiment.  Johannes  MfiUer  gave  for  the  first  time  a  detailed  description  of  mediaeval  Hfe  in  his  History  of  Switzerland,  which,  despite  its  tortuous  and  artificial  rhetoric,  was  none  the  less  profound  and  vivid,  and  brought  forward  an  abundance  of  new  historical  points  of  view.  This,  too,  was  the  first  book  to  refer  to  the  heroic  greatness  of  the  Nibelungenlied.  In  the  year  1803  was  published  Tieck's  collection  of  German  minnesongs.  Three  years  later  Schenkendorf  issued  his  appeal  against  the  utilitarian  barbarians  who  wished  to  lay  hands  on  the  old  High-Master's  castle  at  Marienburg  :  the  despised  Gothic  now  came  to  its  own,  under  the  name  of  the  Old  German  architectural  art.

Thus  there  began  on  all  sides  a  re-entry  into  German  life ;  a  great  transformation  was  manifesting  itself,  and  before  long  this  transformation  was  accelerated  by  the  pressure  of  the  foreign  yoke, by  the  awakening  of  national  hatred.  Their  aesthetic  delight  in  the  antique  and  the  popular,  made  the  romanticists  opponents  of  the  Revolution ;  they  detested  the  "  clean-shaven  aspect "  of  modern  equality  before  the  law ;  they  detested  the  natural  right  which  would  impose  its  bald  rules  upon  the  beautiful  multipHcity  of  historical  phenomena  ;  they  loathed  the  new  world-empire  which  threatened  to  destroy  the  abundance  of  national  states  and  national  legal  developments.  There  happened  now  for  the  first  time  in  history  what  could  happen  only  in  so  thoroughly  ideaUstic  a  nation,  that  a  movement  which  in  its  origin  was  purely  aesthetic,  rejuvenated  and  transformed  political  views.  For  this  generation,  poetry  was,  in  actual  fact  the  ocean  into  which  all  rivers  flowed.  If  science,  faith,  and  art  were  to  be  understood  as  the  necessary  outcome  of  the  folk-spirit,  no  less  certain  was  it  that  the  law  and  the  state  owed  their  origin  to  the  same  spirit.  Sooner  or  later  it  was  inevitable  that  this  necessary  conclusion  should  be  drawn,  and  that  the  idea  of  the  national  state  should  be  conquered  for  German  science.  The  connec-  tion between  Frederick  Gentz  and  the  romantic  school  rested  upon  the  feeling  of  a  profound  inner  kinship,  and  it  was  directly  from  the  ideas  and  foreshadowings  of  the  romanticists  in  the  domain  of  the  philosophy  of  history  that  was  subsequently  derived  the  historico-political  doctrine  of  Niebuhr  and  Savigny.

No  less  weighty  with  consequences  was  the  revival  of  religious  sentiment  now  preparing  in  the  younger  generation.  Our  classical  poetry  held  aloof  from  the  life  of  the  church.  Although  it  was  in  intimate  harmony  with  the  fundamental  moral  ideas  of  Protes-  tantism, it  would  not  recognise  any  of  the  existing  religions  as  "  religion."  To  Kant  it  seemed  that  religion  was  the  recognition  of  our  duties  as  the  laws  of  God,  the  acceptance  of  the  divine  element  in  will ;  his  sublime  strictness  did  not  do  full  justice  to  the  sentiments  of  the  believing  heart,  to  the  impulse  towards  elevation  and  submission.  It  was  this  wonderful  world  of  feeling,  of  myste-  rious yearning,  which  irresistibly  drew  the  glances  of  the  roman-  ticists. Whilst  the  most  enthusiastic  spirits  among  them  were  becoming  intoxicated  with  the  sensuous  beauty  of  the  Catholic  cult,  or  were  reaching  out  towards  the  discovery  of  a  new  aesthetic  world-religion,  young  Schleiermacher  remained  firmly  planted  upon  the  soil  of  Protestantism.  His  spirit  was  too  closely  directed  towards  the  world  of  affairs  for  it  to  be  possible  for  him  like  the  poets  of  Weimar,  to  forget  reality  for  art  ;  and  yet  he  was  too  much  of  an  artist  to  find  satisfaction  in  the  pitiless  general  rule  of  the  categorical  imperative.     To  him  the  individual  form  of  the general  moral  law  was  to  be  found  in  the  personality  which  at  once  freely  develops  its  own  individuality  and  at  the  same  time  consciously  harmonises  itself  to  the  great  objective  orderings  of  the  state  and  of  society.  In  his  lectures  concerning  religion,  he  opposes  to  the  cultured  despisers  of  religion  the  warning,  "  religion  hates  soH-  tude  :  "  and  he  showed  how  religion  has  its  roots  in  feeling,  how  it  possesses  a  primitive  Hfe  precedent  to  all  intercourse  and  all  doctrine,  a  moral  energy  which  is  effective  in  all  mankind.  Only  through  religion  can  the  human  being,  immersed  in  the  finite,  make  himself  at  one  with  the  infinite  and  become  eternal  in  every  moment.  With  patriotic  pride,  which  gave  anticipations  of  the  moods  of  later  years,  he  referred  to  the  invincible  might  of  the  home  of  Protes-  tantism, "  for  Germany  is  still  always  here,  and  its  invisible  energy  is  unweakened."  Just  as  he  appealed  to  a  philosophical  self-  sufficiency  on  behalf  of  the  common  religious  life,  so  also  did  he  wish  to  enforce  the  value  of  the  state.  The  state,  he  taught,  is  the  finest  of  all  human  works  of  art ;  it  first  gave  to  the  individual  life  in  the  highest  degree  ;  and  for  this  reason  the  coercion  exercised  by  the  state  must  never  be  felt  as  a  burdensome  restraint.

Similar  views  were  reached  by  Fichte,  that  rigid  and  stiff-necked  thinker  to  whom  the  emotional  wealth  of  Schleiermacher  appeared  to  be  womanish  weakness  ;  for  the  literary  movement,  which  to  us  who  look  back  upon  it  to-day  seems  so  simple  and  so  necessary,  fulfilled  itself  only  amid  the  continuous  conflicts  of  self-confident  and  strongly  individual  personalities.  The  philosophy  of  Fichte  was  the  last  word  of  transcendental  idealism.  To  the  world  of  experience,  he  flatly  denied  all  reality.  It  was  only  because  moral  activity  demands  a  stage,  that  the  spirit  was  forced  to  look  out  of  itself  into  an  outer  world,  and  to  assume  this  world  to  be  real.  In  his  political  writings  also,  this  venturesome  man  appeared  to  despise  all  the  limits  of  historical  reality.  He  wished  to  realise  perpetual  peace,  the  ideal  of  the  age,  by  the  complete  abolition  of  international  trade,  so  that  the  "  closed  commercial  states  "  should  have  inter-  course with  one  another  only  through  the  interchange  of  scientific  ideas  ;  and  in  his  speeches  upon  the  elements  of  the  present  age,  he  proclaimed  it  as  the  privilege  of  the  sun-like  spirit  to  soar  above  the  crowd,  and  as  a  cosmopolitan  to  find  its  fatherland  "  where  light  is  and  justice."  None  the  less  there  speaks  through  these  lectures  an  active  mind  which  reached  out  beyond  the  world  of  theories.  Every  sentence  preaches  the  strict  service  of  duty  :  there  is  only  one  virtue,  to  forget  oneself  ;  and  only  one  vice,  to  think  of  oneself.     Without  knowing  it,  in  his  harsh  admonitions, directed  against  the  slackness  of  his  contemporaries,  he  was  glori-  fying the  manly  virtues  of  Old  Prussia.  It  was  merely  as  a  bold  suggestion  that  he  expressed  a  thought  in  sharp  contradiction  with  his  cosmopolitan  dreams.  In  the  end,  he  said,  the  state  is  the  vehicle  of  all  civilisation,  and  is  therefore  justified  in  claiming  all  the  energies  of  the  individual.

Thus  within  the  bosom  of  the  literary  movement  there  was  preparing  a  new  political  tendency.  One  who  cast  even  a  casual  glance  upon  the  distressing  contradiction  in  German  affairs,  one  who  saw  in  close  juxtaposition  so  flourishing  an  intellectual,  and  so  miserable  a  political  life,  might  well  be  reminded  of  the  times  of  Phihp  of  Macedon,  when  upon  the  grave  of  Grecian  freedom,  upon  the  battle-field  of  Chaeronsea,  the  Thebans  erected  the  beautiful  lion  monument,  and  Lycurgus  adorned  conquered  Athens  with  magnificent  buildings.  Just  as  Hellas  had  once  stood  insecurely  between  Persia  and  Macedonia,  so  now  Germany,  pregnant  with  thought,  stood  between  Austria  and  France.  Yet  in  truth,  the  position  of  affairs  in  Germany  was  by  no  means  so  hopeless  ;  the  melancholy  proverb  that  the  owl  of  Minerva  begins  her  flight  only  in  the  twilight,  applied  to  Hellas  but  not  to  Germany.  Our  classical  literature  was  not  the  expiring  flicker  of  an  ancient  civili-  sation, but  the  significant  beginning  of  a  new  development.  Not  among  us  was  an  Aristotle  making  a  comprehensive  survey  of  the  last  data  of  civilisation  on  its  way  down  to  the  grave  ;  for  in  Germany  a  youthful  generation,  one  which  amid  all  its  errors  was  filled  with  the  joy  of  hfe  and  with  a  sense  of  security  in  the  future,  was  astonishing  the  world  with  ever  new  discoveries.  Never  for  a  moment  among  the  intellectual  leaders  of  the  nation  was  there  any  failure  to  believe  in  the  great  destiny  of  Germany.  "  Despite  their  miserable  constitution,"  writes  A.  W.  Schlegel,  *'  and  despite  their  defeats,  the  Germans  remain  the  salvation  of  Europe."  In  the  same  sense  writes  NovaHs,  that  whilst  other  nations  were  dissipating  their  energies  in  party  struggles,  or  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  the  Germans  were  building  up,  with  all  possible  diligence,  a  higher  epoch  of  civihsation,  and  would  in  course  of  time  gain  an  enormous  preponderance  over  the  other  civilised  nations.  Even  the  gloomy  Holderhn,  who  was  profoundly  affected  by  the  impo-  tence of  the  Germans,  "  poor  in  deed,  though  rich  in  thought,"  still  exclaimed  in  joyful  prophecy  :

"  Shall  there  come  as  lightning  comes  from  the  clouds 

Action  out  of  thought  ?     Will  the  books  soon  come  to  life  ?  "

Servile  sentiment  was  ever  far  from  this  generation  of  poets  and  thinkers.  It  is  true  that  Germany  sent  her  pilgrims  to  take  their  place  upon  that  great  foreign  stream  which,  during  the  Consu-  late and  the  first  years  of  the  Empire,  was  setting  towards  Paris  from  all  the  ends  of  Europe.  In  Paris,  as  once  of  old  in  imperial  Rome,  the  finest  artistic  treasures  of  the  world  were  now  stored,  and  once  again,  as  in  the  days  of  Augustus,  there  was  assembled  in  a  capital  city  a  cosmopolitan  public,  whose  critical  judgment  determined  which  among  many  beautiful  things  was  the  most  beautiful.  It  was  in  the  galleries  of  the  Louvre  that  the  over-  whelming greatness  of  Raphael  was  first  recognised.  The  German  intellectuals  found  the  petty  towns  of  the  homeland  too  narrow :  they  hastened  to  the  Seine  to  intoxicate  themselves  alike  in  the  noble  and  in  the  ignoble  joys  of  the  capital  of  the  world.  Yet  even  in  the  dazzling  splendour  of  their  new  quarters  they  did  not  lose  the  sense  of  their  own  superiority  ;  they  did  not  forget  that  in  the  production  of  all  these  stolen  glories  the  French  themselves  had  no  share,  but  had  first  through  the  works  of  Laplace  slowly  begun  to  rise  out  of  barbarism  towards  civilisation.  While  Frederick  Schlegel  was  marvelling  at  the  turtle-soup  and  the  naked  actresses  of  the  new  Babylon,  he  wrote,  "  Paris  has  only  one  fault,  that  there  are  so  many  French  there  "  ;  and  his  Dorothea  adds,  "  it  seems  almost  incredible  how  stupid  are  the  French."  More  finely  than  these  mocking  cosmopolitans  did  Schiller  voice  the  national  pride  of  his  own  nation  of  thinkers.  He  knew  that  the  victories  of  Kant  and  of  Goethe  were  of  greater  significance  than  the  laurels  of  Marengo,  that  the  Germans  always  had  the  right  to  remind  their  boastful  neighbours  of  the  eternal  good  of  humanity,  and  he  writes  proudly  and  grandly  concerning  the  Pantheon  of  the  Parisian  plunderers  :

"He  alone  possesses  the  Muses, 

Who  bears  them  warm  in  his  bosom ; 

To  the  Vandal,  they  are  stone!"

The Young Romantics

It  was  not  the  pubUcists  alone  whose  writings  displayed  the  national  passion,  for  this  affected  the  whole  of  our  literature.  To  the  scions  of  the  Romantic  school,  Achim  von  Arnim  proposed  the  task  of  breathing  the  fresh  morning  air  of  the  old  German  life,  of  entering  devoutly  into  the  glories  of  the  sagas  and  chronicles  of  their  ancient  homeland.  Thus  should  we  learn  to  understand  how  we  had  come  to  be,  and  thus  could  we  gain  new  confidence  for  the  struggles  of  the  present.  It  was  in  the  consciousness  of  a  lofty  patriotic  call,  and  with  all  the  overstrained  self-consciousness  pecuhar  to  our  nineteenth  century  literature,  that  the  young  poets  and  men  of  learning  set  to  work.  Just  as  happened  at  a  later  date  in  the  case  of  the  orators  of  Uberalism  and  the  writers  of  Young  Germany,  they  always  retained  the  firm,  conviction  that  the  new  order  of  German  affairs  was  in  reality  created  by  themselves  ;  that  the  statesmen  and  the  soldiers  had  merely  carried  out  what  they  had  themselves  conceived  in  thought  much  more  finely  and  far  more  grandly.  Once  more  there  came  to  German  literature  a  period  of  youth.  As  formerly  the  generation  of  1750  had  discovered  the  world  of  the  heart,  and  with  naive  wonderment  had  dug  into  its  treasures,  so  now  the  new  Romanticism  greeted  with  intoxicated  dehght  the  even  more  joyful  discovery  of  the  ancient  glories  of  the  fatherland.  They  contemplated  German  antiquity  with  the  wondering,  wide-open  eyes  of  childhood ;  through  all  which  they  thought  and  dreamed  there  flowed  a  sentiment  of  historical affection,  a  feeling  of  deliberate  'contrast  to  the  recent  culture  and  to  the  fostering  of  the  exact  sciences  characteristic  of  the  Napoleonic  empire.  Out  of  the  ferment  of  the  New  Romanticism  sprang  the  great  epoch  of  the  historical  and  philological  sciences,  and  these  sciences,  outwinging  poetry,  now  assumed  for  a  long  time  the  foreground  of  intellectual  life.

For  some  years,  Heidelberg  was  the  favourite  assembling  place  of  the  young  literary  world.  How  painfully  had  the  noble  Charles  Frederick  of  Baden  suffered  all  through  these  evil  years  from  the  disgraceful  position  of  the  German  petty  princes  ;  but  now  in  his  old  age  he  could  once  more  display  his  love  for  the  father-  land by  a  good  action.  He  restored  the  University  of  Heidelberg,  which,  under  the  Bavarian  rule,  had  fallen  into  complete  decay,  doing  so  from  the  first  with  the  intention  that  it  should  be  something  more  than  a  mere  provincial  university  ;  he  provided  on  the  Neckar  a  free  city  for  the  young  literature,  almost  the  only  one  in  the  deso-  lated Germany  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  ;  and  was  able  to  delight  in  seeing  how,  for  the  third  time,  the  ancient  Rupertina,  [Heidelberg  University],  as  of  old  in  the  days  of  Otho  Henry  and  of  Charles  Louis,  was  able  to  intervene  in  the  course  of  German  life  with  new  creative  ideas.

Here,  in  the  most  delightful  corner  of  our  Rhenish  land,  was  the  cradle  of  the  New  Romantic  school.  The  castle,  ivy-clad  and  hidden  among  the  blossoms  of  the  trees  as  if  covered  with  snow,  the  towers  of  the  ancient  cathedral  in  the  sunlit  plain  beneath,  the  ruined  baronial  castles  which  seemed  to  cling  to  the  rocks  like  swallows'  nests,  everything  here  aroused  memories  of  a  high-spirited  earlier  time,  which  to  the  yearning  imagination  of  the  day  seemed  far  more  agreeable  than  the  insipid  present.  Achim  Arnim  and  Clemens  Brentano  met  here  ;  here  too  came  Gorres,  no  longer  able  to  endure  existence  on  the  French  side  of  the  Rhine,  so  close  to  the  French  inferno.  The  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  felt  at  home  everywhere  on  German  soil,  wherever  they  found  warm-hearted  friends  and  could  live  undisturbed  their  lives  in  the  ideal ;  now  the  North  Germans  began  to  look  with  longing  towards  the  beautiful  lands  of  the  vines  and  of  the  traditions.  How  delighted  was  Heinrich  Kleist  when  from  his  poor  Braden-  burg  he  found  his  way  into  the  mountains  of  South  Germany.  It  was  first  in  these  romantic  circles  that  the  land  and  people  of  our  south  and  west  once  more  found  honour.  The  love  for  the  Rhine,  which  is  characteristic  of  all  of  German  blood,  became  a  cult  of  enthusiasts  now  that  the  river  was  in  the   hands   of  the foreigner.    How  often,  when  friends  touched  glasses,  was  repeated  the  complaint  of  Frederick  Schlegel :

"  Wave  so  lovable  and  mighty, 

Fatherland  upon  the  Rhine, 

See  how  fast  my  tears  are  flowing 

Since  the  stranger  now  has  all."

The  Rhine  was  now  Germany's  sacred  stream,  over  every  one  of  its  churches  there  hovered  an  angel,  round  every  ruin  there  played  the  nixies  and  the  elves,  or  the  heroic  shades  returned  to  visit  the  great  scenes  of  history.  A  number  of  poems  and  romances  endeavoured  to  reproduce  these  images.  The  ballads  of  the  classical  poetry  had  for  the  most  part  dealt  with  the  grey  primeval  time,  and  their  figures  had  moved  upon  an  indefinite  ideal  stage  ;  now  the  poet  must  give,  even  to  his  shortest  pieces,  a  definite  territorial  background,  and  must  clothe  his  figures  in  historical  costume.  As  the  poet's  images  moved  through  the  mind,  people  hoped  to  hear  the  roaring  waters  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Neckar,  and  in  his  heroes  they  wished  to  rediscover  the  vigorous  simplicity  of  their  German  forefathers.

That  portion  of  the  history  of  our  country  which  alone  con-  tinued to  Hve  in  the  memory  of  the  common  people,  the  last  hundred  and  fifty  years,  was  repulsive  to  the  patriot  as  the  time  in  which  Germany  had  been  torn  asunder,  and  was  horrible  to  the  poet  through  the  prosiness  of  its  vital  forms.  It  was  only  in  the  Middle  Ages  that  the  unbroken  energy  of  German  nationality  was  supposed  to  have  displayed  itself,  and  when  they  spoke  of  the  Middle  Ages  people  referred  chiefly  to  the  period  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  sixteenth  century.  The  merry  guild  customs  of  the  old  manual  workers,  the  secret  rites  of  the  operative  masons,  the  love  of  wandering  of  the  travelling  scholars,  the  adventures  of  knightly  brigands — such  had  been  the  true  German  life,  and  its  theatre  was  to  be  found  in  the  artist's  country  of  the  south-west,  in  the  true  ancient  empire.  But  in  all  this  enthusiasm  there  was  no  thought  of  a  subdivision  of  German  culture.  The  North  Germans,  with  some  of  the  Protestant  Swabians  and  Franconians,  continued  to  set  the  tone  for  the  whole  of  Germany  ;  even  the  born  Rhine-  landers  among  the  Romanticists,  Gorres,  Brentano,  and  the  Boisserees  (the  first  Catholics  who  counted  in  the  history  of  our  new  literature),  owed  the  best  values  of  their  lives  to  that  common  German  culture  which  was  derived  from  Protestantism.     Whoever still  felt  and  thought  as  a  German,  was  seized  by  the  historic  yearning  of  the  time  ;  even  the  unaesthetic  nature  of  Baron  von  Stein  was  not  altogether  untouched  by  this  influence.  A  national  feeling  and  national  confidence  built  themselves  up  upon  these  pictures  of  the  early  days  of  our  homeland.  Only  among  the  Teutons,  of  this  the  young  generation  felt  assured,  could  individual  originality  thrive  ;  in  France,  as  A.  W.  Schlegel  said  mockingly,  nature  had  provided  thirty  million  examples  of  one  single  original  human  being.  Only  upon  German  soil  did  the  spring  of  truth  well  forth  ;  among  the  French,  the  spirit  of  lies  was  dominant — for  to  the  youth  of  the  new  romantic  epoch,  all  was  classed  as  lying  which  seemed  to  them  to  lack  freedom,  to  be  dull,  to  be  unnatural,  and  they  included  in  these  categories  the  academical  regulation  of  art,  the  mechanical  ordering  of  the  poUce-ruled  state,  and  the  sobriety  of  the  severe  culture  of  the  understanding.  Among  the  writings  of  this  circle  at  Heidelberg,  none  were  so  momentous  as  Des  Knahen  Wunderhorn,  the  collection  of  German  folk-songs  made  by  Arnim  and  Brentano.  The  figure  of  the  vigorous  youth  upon  the  title-page,  riding  along  upon  a  bare-backed  steed,  swinging  the  horn  of  his  songs  in  his  raised  hand,  seemed  like  that  of  a  herald  summoning  all  to  the  joyful  struggle  against  the  spirit  of  lying.  It  was  not  without  misgiving  that  the  friends  sent  out  into  the  world  of  culture  these  ill-written  poems,  and  they  begged  Goethe  to  cover  them  with  the  mantle  of  his  great  name.  It  seemed  to  them  of  profound  importance  that  the  gifts  of  old  German  fife  should  not  be  squandered  as  had  been  the  forests  of  the  stripped  mountains  along  the  Rhine  ;  they  hoped  for  the  coming  of  a  new  time  full  of  song  and  gamesomeness  and  cordial  joy  of  life,  in  which  training  to  arms  would  once  again  become  the  chief  pleasure  of  the  Germans,  and  in  which  ever^^one  might  range  the  world  as  happily  and  freely  as  "  the  glorious  students,"  the last  artists  and  discoverers  in  this prosaic  age.

The  collection  of  verses  appeared  at  the  appropriate  hour,  for  just  at  this  time  Schiller's  Wilhelm  Tell  began  to  exercise  an  influence  through  wide  circles,  awakening  everywhere  an  under-  standing of  the  simple  energy  of  our  ancestors.  There  was  no  end  to  the  delighted  admiration  of  the  readers  when  the  bells  of  the  Wunderhorn  related  with  sweet  sound  how  richly  endowed  had  been  this  old  Germany  with  the  divine  gift  of  poesy,  with  abundance  of  love  and  longing,  of  courage  and  roguery  ;  thousands  of  nameless  students,  lansquenets,  hunters,  and  beggars  moved  through  its  artless  songs.     Herder's  great  revelation  that  poetry  is  a  common heritage,  now  first  received  general  understanding.  Subsequently  von  der  Hagen  published  the  Nihelungenlied ;  however  bungling  the  mode  of  treatment,  the  mighty  figures  of  Hagen  and  Kriemhild  aroused  in  the  minds  of  the  readers  the  joyful  conviction  that  even  six  hundred  years  before  Goethe  our  people  had  known  a  great  epoch  of  poetry.  Yet  dilettantism  still  predominated.  Medi-  aevaUsm  and  Germanism  were  regarded  as  practically  synonymous.  Fundamentally  divergent  epochs  of  mediaeval  civilisation  were  uncritically  confused,  and  the  enthusiasts  were  quite  unable  to  dream  that  in  the  blossoming  time  of  the  days  of  chivalry  the  detested  French  had  really  been  the  pioneers  of  civilisation.  Fouque,  the  weakly  visionary  (who,  nevertheless  from  time  to  time  succeeded  in  producing  a  fable  full  of  meaning,  recording  the  secrets  of  the  forest  and  of  the  water,  or  who  could  now  and  then  write  a  powerful  description  of  some  old  Norse  hero)  was  for  some  years  the  fashionable  poet  of  the  world  of  good  society.  The  ladies  of  Berlin  were  enthusiasts  for  his  graceful,  modest,  and  lovely  maidens,  for  the  incomparable  virtue  of  his  knights,  and  they  adorned  their  dressing-tables  with  iron  crucifixes  and  silver-mounted  devotional  books.

Teutonic  philology  had  hitherto  been  a  mere  accessory  to  other  sciences,  the  supplementary  study  of  certain  historians,  jurists,  and  theologians.  Now  at  length  it  endeavoured  to  stand  upon  its  own  feet,  and  to  realise  for  German  antiquity  Herder's  bold  anticipations,  and  F.  A.  Wolf's  views  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Homeric  poems.  It  was  the  brothers  Grimm  who  first  gave  to  German  philology  the  character  of  an  independent  science.  Little  atten-  tion was  paid  to  these  two  retiring  men  when  they  wrote  in  the  Einsiedlerzeitung  of  Heidelberg  ;  but  soon  they  were  to  prove  themselves  the  finest  and  the  strongest  among  their  fellows.  It  is  through  their  work,  above  all,  that  the  genuine  and  fruitful  nucleus  of  the  romantic  view  of  the  world-order  was  subsequently  handed  down  to  an  entirely  transformed  world  and  became  part  of  the  spiritual  inheritance  of  the  nation.  They  took  quite  seriously  the  old  article  of  faith  of  the  Romanticists  that  everything  flows  out  of  the  ocean  of  poetry  ;  and  in  every  domain  of  folk  life,  in  speech,  law,  and  custom,  they  endeavoured  to  demonstrate  how  culture  and  abstractions  have  everywhere  been  formed  out  of  the  sensual,  the  natural,  and  the  primitive.  How  condescendingly  had  the  writers  of  the  eighteenth  century  spoken  to  the  people  when  they  troubled  themselves  at  all  about  the  common  man  ;  but  now  the  experts  of  science  went  to  school  to  the  common  people, listening  diligently  to  the  chatter  of  the  spinning-room  and  the  shooting-gallery.  An  old  peasant-woman  helped  the  brothers  Grimm  in  the  collection  of  the  German  folk-tales,  and  thus  there  came  into  existence  a  book  like  Luther's  Bible,  a  glorious  common  heritage  of  the  European  peoples,  compiled  so  sympathetically  as  to  retain  its  permanent  national  characteristics.  The  ancient  Aryan  figures  of  fable,  Hop-o'-my-Thumb,  Lucky  Hans,  Snow  White  and  Rose  Red,  seem  such  essentially  German  figures,  and  the  simple  serenity  of  spirit  which  had  clung  to  them  in  their  wide  wanderings  through  the  nurseries  of  Germany  spoke  in  so  homely  a  manner  from  the  unadorned  and  faithful  narrative,  that  even  to-day  we  can  think  of  the  darUngs  of  our  childhood  only  in  these  particular  forms,  just  as  we  can  listen  to  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  in  no  other  words  than  those  of  Luther.

At  this  same  period,  another  and  even  more  grossly  neglected  treasure  of  the  nation's  early  days  was  rediscovered.  How  ter-  ribly had  our  ancient  cathedrals  had  to  suffer  for  the  self-satis-  faction of  the  last  century  ;  the  glorious  frescoes  on  their  walls  had  been  covered  with  stucco,  and  corkscrew  columns  and  trumpet-blowing  angels  with  puffed  cheeks  defiled  the  Gothic  altars.  Now  the  hatred  for  the  Church  and  the  hard  utilitarianism  of  the  Frenchified  bureaucracy  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  brought  a  new  wave  of  iconoclasm  over  Bavaria,  Swabia,  and  the  Rhineland.  A  number  of  venerable  churches  were  despoiled  and  came  under  the  hammer  ;  deplorable  was  the  sight  when,  during  the  breaking  down  of  the  walls,  the  stucco  fell  away,  and  for  a  moment  the  beautiful  old  frescoes  were  displayed  once  more  to  the  light  of  day,  then  to  crumble  away  for  ever.  Thereupon  the  brothers  Boisseree  resolved  to  save  what  it  was  still  possible  to  save  out  of  the  great  destruction.  Their  quiet  and  faithful  activity  was  the  first  sign  of  the  reawakening  of  the  German  spirit  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine.  Indefatigably  they  endeavoured  from  amid  the  lumber-rooms  of  the  houses  of  the  Rhenish  patricians  to  collect  the  forgotten  old  German  paintings.  Their  aged  mother  gave  her  blessing  to  this  pious  work,  and  their  Romanticist  friends  elsewhere  gave  faithful  help.  What  a  joy  it  was  to  Gorres  and  Savigny  when  a  fine  sculptured  altar-piece  could  be  picked  up  for  a  few  kreuzer  from  some  peasant  or  second-hand  dealer,  and  sent  along  to  the  brothers.  Everything  was  welcome  and  everything  was  admired  so  long  as  it  displayed  the  true  characteristics  of  the  old  German  spirit,  the  idealistic  softness  of  the  Cologne  school  of  painters  no  less  than  the  profundity  of  Diirer  and  the  powerful realism  of  the  old  Dutch  painters.  Then  Sulpice  Boisseree  found  one  of  the  old  sketches  for  the  cathedral  of  Cologne,  and  with  joyful  courage  projected  the  designs  for  his  great  work  on  the  cathedral.  In  these  weary  days  when  Napoleon  once  visited  his  good  town  of  Cologne  and  after  a  few  minutes  hurriedly  left  the  most  beautiful  cathedral  of  the  Germans  in  order  to  inspect  a  regiment  of  cuirassiers,  every  true  son  of  the  Rhineland  was  already  dreaming  of  the  re-estabUshment  of  the  Cologne  building  works,  which  had  formerly  for  centuries  been  the  living  focus  of  German  art  on  the  Rhine.

The  same  firm  faith  in  the  immortality  of  the  German  people  inspired  also  the  creator  of  the  history  of  our  politics  and  juris-  prudence, K.  F.  Eichhorn.  The  old  dominion  of  the  common  law  seemed  for  ever  broken,  the  domain  of  the  code  Napoleon  extended  up  to  the  shores  of  the  Elbe,  and  the  jurists  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  regarded  the  German  law  as  already  fit  for  burial.  Eichhorn  showed,  however,  how  the  law-making  spirit  common  to  the  whole  German  nation  had  ever  remained  active  through-  out the  many  transformations  in  the  constitution  of  the  state,  and  how  the  origin  and  growth  of  German  law  was  explicable  solely  out  of  this  persistent  natural  energy.  The  historical  view  of  the  nature  of  law,  for  which  the  way  had  been  paved  by  Herder  and  the  earlier  Romanticists,  now  suddenly  matured.  It  was  so  necessary  a  corollary  of  the  view  of  the  world-order  characteristic  of  the  new  age,  that  it  was  simultaneously  advocated  by  men  of  the  most  different  outlooks.  Among  these  were  Savigny,  the  legal  teacher  of  the  brothers  Grimm,  who  in  Landshut  had  already  awakened  the  suspicion  of  the  Bonapartist-Bavarian  bureaucracy  by  his  doctrine  of  the  law-creating  energy  of  the  folk  spirit.  Above  all  there  was  Niebuhr,  whose  Roman  History  speedily  aroused  general  admiration  as  the  greatest  scientific  achievement  of  the  day.  To  him  also  it  seemed  that  the  spirit  of  the  Roman  people  (and  this  was  an  idea  altogether  unknown  to  the  pragmatical  historians  of  the  eighteenth  century)  had  been  the  driving  energy,  the  formative  necessity  of  Roman  history  ;  and  at  the  same  time  he  indicated  new  paths  for  historical  research  by  a  keen  criticism  of  historical  sources,  which  with  a  sure  sense  rejected  as  fit  only  for  the  dust-heap  all  the  old  traditions  of  the  Seven  Kings  of  Rome.  Yet  he  also  was  of  opinion  that  "  the  historian  needs  a  positive  spirit."  Before  his  eyes,  the  dead  letters  of  the  historical  sources  came  to  life,  and  through  his  truly  creative  faculty  he  was  able  to  erect  upon  the  vestiges  of  a  destroyed  tradition  a  picture  of  real happenings.  With  how  restrained  a  freedom  did  he  exercise  poHtical  judgment,  quite  in  Stein's  distinguished  manner.  He  found  just  praise  for  the  moderation  of  the  plebs,  severe  criticism  for  the  arrogance  of  the  patricians,  and  at  the  same  time  he  drew  the  genuinely  Prussian  conclusion  that  under  the  rule  of  a  strong  throne  such  manifestations  of  class  arrogance  would  never  have  been  possible.  Thus  in  almost  all  branches  science  showed  itself  even  more  vigorous  and  more  productive  than  were  most  of  the  younger  poets.  This,  too,  was  a  sign  of  the  times  that  Alexander  von  Humboldt's  Ansichten  der  Natur  first  made  available  for  the  whole  German  nation,  in  a  simple  and  classical  form,  the  acquire-  ments of  profound  scientific  and  geographical  research.

It  was  a  crepuscular  time.  A  fresh  wind,  as  of  morning,  announced  the  approach  of  a  beautiful  day,  but  in  the  half  light  the  forms  and  masses  of  the  youthful  world  could  not  be  clearly  distin-  guished. Fundamentally  contrasted  opinions,  which  before  long  were  to  be  in  passionate  conflict,  still  proceeded  harmoniously  hand  in  hand.  Fouque,  the  reactionary,  lived  with  Fichte,  the  radical,  as  a  son  with  a  father.  Of  the  Romantic  poets,  some  held  piously  to  the  old  faiths,  whilst  others  were  merely  playing  ironically  with  mediaeval  ideals.  In  the  domain  of  history  there  ap-  peared, side  by  side  with  the  strictly  methodical  investigations  of  Niebuhr  and  Eichhorn,  such  fantastical  works  as  Creuzer's  Symholik,  the  first  attempt  to  understand  the  secret  night-side  of  classical  culture  and  the  origin  of  the  mysteries  of  the  ancients  — a  book  full  of  talented  foreshadowings,  but  obscure  and  full  of  arbitrary  caprices.  The  scientific  contemplativeness  of  the  historical  school  of  jurists  was  not  free  from  timorousness  and  fear  of  action  ;  in  essentials  those  of  this  school  had  little  in  common  with  the  hopeful,  undismayed  freedom  of  spirit  of  Arndt,  and  they  betrayed  much  more  kinship  with  the  views  of  F.  Gentz,  who  now,  exhausted  by  excesses,  cold  and  blase,  tended  more  and  more  amid  the  dull  and  unreflective  hfe  of  Vienna  to  become  an  uncondi-  tional admirer  of  the  good  old  time.  The  inexhaustible  pageant  of  German  history  made  it  possible  for  everyone,  whatever  might  be  his  own  shade  of  opinion,  to  be  an  enthusiast  for  some  particular  epoch  of  the  history  of  the  fatherland.  Some  were  charmed  by  the  strange  magic,  and  others  by  the  fresh  and  vigorous  folk-  characteristics,  of  mediaeval  life.  Whilst  Fichte  drew  the  atten-  tion of  his  admirers  to  the  magnificent  civic  Hfe  of  the  Hansa  towns,  and  to  the  faithful  who  fought  in  the  League  of  Schmalkald,  Frederick  Schlegel  condemned  Frederick  the  Great  as  "  a  hereditary enemy,"  and  the  boastful  visionary  Adam  Miiller  glorified  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  as  an  incorporation  of  Christ.

Even  more  confused  was  the  motley  of  religious  sentiment.  It  is  true  that  men  who  were  Protestant  through  and  through,  such  as  Schleiermacher,  Fichte,  and  the  brothers  Grimm,  never  vacillated  in  their  evangelical  conviction.  Savigny,  on  the  other  hand,  was  brought  nearer  to  the  views  of  the  pre-Lutheran  Church  by  the  brilliant  Catholic  Sailar.  Schenkendorf  sang  enraptured  songs  to  Mary,  Queen  of  Heaven ;  the  conversion  of  F.  Schlegel  and  F.  Stolberg  to  the  Roman  Church  threw  a  strong  light  upon  the  moral  weakness  of  the  aesthetic  views  of  life  which  were  still  predominantly  characteristic  of  the  age.  A  gloomy  hatred  of  the  Jews  replaced  the  broad-hearted  tolerance  of  the  Frederician  days.  Many  among  the  enthusiasts  of  mediaevalism  believed  themselves  able  to  see  plainly  sculptured  on  every  Jewish  face  the  instruments  of  Christ's  passion.  Political  hatred  played  a  part  in  the  produc-  tion of  these  sentiments,  for  Napoleon  was  endeavouring  with  considerable  success  to  secure  the  aid  of  European  Jewry  on  behalf  of  his  world  empire.  All  these  different  tendencies  were  for  the  moment  in  tolerable  harmony,  and  the  aged  Voss  found  very  little  approval  when,  with  a  sound  understanding  and  with  unrestrained  roughness,  he  attacked  the  dream-world  of  the  Romanticists  in  the  name  of  [Protestant  freedom  of  thought.  In  this  chaotic  activity  no  one  found  himself  more  at  home  than  the  noisy  Gorres,  the  honourable  Jacobin  in  the  monk's  cowl,  who  found  it  possible  to  be  at  one  and  the  same  time  a  radical  and  an  admirer  of  the  Middle  Ages,  a  Germanist  and  a  venerator  of  the  Roman  papacy,  always  brilliant,  stimulating  and  stimulated,  overflowing  with  sesthetic,  historical,  and  natural-philosophical  instances,  and  yet  always  subject  to  a  sort  of  rhetorical  and  poetical  intoxication.  All  these  different  minds  were  at  one  in  a  single  resolve  :  they  all  desired  that  it  should  be  possible  for  them  once  more  to  experience  a  heartfelt  joy  in  their  German  nature  ;  they  wished  to  maintain  their  native  peculiarity  and  to  develop  it  further  in  complete  freedom,  without  any  regard  for  foreigners  who  desired  to  make  the  world  happy  by  the  imposition  of  a  foreign  dominion.

The  political  passion  of  the  time  foimd  its  mightiest  artistic  expression  in  the  works  of  Heinrich  von  Kleist,  that  profoundly  unhappy  poet  who  surpassed  all  other  poets  of  the  younger  genera-  tion. In  the  primitive  force  of  his  dramatic  passion,  and  in  his  power  of  vigorous  characterisation,  he  exceeded  even  Schiller,  but  the  wealth  of  ideas,  the  lofty  culture,  the  wide  outlook,  and  the adequate  self-confidence  of  our  greatest  dramatist  were  denied  to  this  son  of  ill-fortune.  Hardly  noticed  by  his  contemporaries,  and  robbed  by  a  cruel  destiny  of  all  joy  in  his  own  creative  work,  he  seems  to  us  who  look  back  upon  him  as  the  one  truly  apt  poet  of  this  time  of  oppression,  as  the  herald  of  that  elemental  hatred  which  foreign  injury  had  poured  into  the  veins  of  our  good-natured  people.  His  Penthesilea  was  the  most  savage,  his  Kdthchen  von  Heilbronn  was  the  tenderest  and  noblest,  among  the  twilit  dream-  figures  of  German  Romanticism ;  but  his  Hermannsschlacht  was  a  lofty  song  of  revenge,  a  mighty  hymn  of  the  lust  of  reprisal — as  true,  as  vivid,  as  full  of  life  in  every  characteristic  as  formerly  Klopstock's  songs  of  the  bards  had  been  indefinite  and  confused,  every  feeling  pouring  directly  from  the  heart  of  one  thirsting  for  revenge.  Not  like  the  patriotic  men  of  learning  had  Kleist  found  it  necessary  to  acquire  the  idea  of  the  fatherland  by  a  reflective  process ;  he  experienced  the  naive  and  natural  hatred  of  the  Prussian  officer ;  he  saw  the  ancient  and  glorious  flag  which  had  been  the  pride  of  himself  and  of  his  house  trampled  in  the  dust,  and  he  longed  to  chastise  the  being  responsible  for  this  insult.  Everywhere  this  rolling  stone  passed,  he  was  followed,  as  if  by  the  call  of  the  Erinyes,  by  the  wild  question  :  "  Art  thou  yet  on  thy  feet,  Germania  ?  Is  the  day  of  thy  revenge  at  hand  ?  "  Stormily,  dreadfully,  as  never  before  from  a  German  mouth  did  there  spring  from  his  lips  the  poetry  of  hatred  :

"  Rescue  from  the  yoke  ol  serfage, 

Which,  from  iron-ore  fast-forged, 

Hell's  own  first-born  son  the  tyrant 

Rivets  fast  upon  our  necks  ! "

This  was  the  same  unrestrained  natural  force  of  national  passion  as  had  once  sounded  in  the  wild  strains  of  the  March  of  the  Marseillaise,  but  incomparably  more  poetical,  more  truthful,  more  deeply  felt.  Subsequently,  in  his  Prinz  Friedrich  von  Hom-  burg,  the  unhappy  poet  created  the  one  artistically  complete  speci-  men of  our  historical  dramas  which  drew  its  materials  from  the  recent  and  still  vividly  remembered  German  history  ;  this  was  the  most  beautiful  poetic  celebration  of  Prussian  glory-in-arms.  When  this  work  also  was  ignored  by  his  contemporaries,  and  when  the  situation  of  the  fatherland  seemed  to  become  ever  more  hope-  lessly tragical,  the  impatient  man  died  by  his  own  hand,  a  victim  of  inborn  morbid  dispositions,  but  also  a  victim  of  this  gloomy despairing  time.  It  was  characteristic  of  the  great  transformation  that  had  taken  place  in  the  national  life  that  a  man  belonging  to  the  old  Brandenburger  race  of  soldiers  should  glorify  Prussian  mihtarism  with  all  the  brilliancy  of  colouring  characteristic  of  the  new  poetry  ;  this  Prussian  militarism  which  had  so  long  been  with-  out understanding  and  misunderstood,  which  had  remained  remote  from  modern  German  culture.  How  actively  now  was  the  stiff  and  arrogant  Junkerdom  of  the  Mark  taking  part  in  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  nation  :  a  whole  series  of  its  sons,  Kleist,  Arnim,  and  Fouque,  the  Humboldts  and  L.  von  Buch,  stood  in  the  first  rank  among  Germany's  poets  and  men  of  learning.  The  phihstine  nature  of  the  old  Prussianism  had  at  length  completely  passed  away.

Strangely  enough,  no  one  contributed  more  powerfully  towards  this  great  transformation  in  the  emotional  spirit  of  the  German  people,  no  one  did  more  to  strengthen  the  happy  feeling  of  self-  satisfaction,  than  Goethe.  He  did  it  almost  against  his  own  will  by  a  work  which  originally  belonged  to  quite  a  different  epoch.  It  remained  as  ever  his  destiny  to  find  the  right  word  for  the  most  peculiar  and  most  secret  sentiments  of  the  Germans.  In  the  year  1808  appeared  the  first  part  of  Faust.  Goethe  was  now  almost  sixty  years  of  age,  and  for  nearly  forty  years  had  been  a  recognised  force  in  German  life.  A  pilgrimage  to  Weimar  to  see  the  dignified,  cheerful,  serious-minded  master,  had  long  been  regarded  as  a  necessary  duty  of  all  young  authors.  No  one  expected  from  Goethe  yet  another  creative  act,  participating  in  the  struggles  of  the  new  Germany  ;  everyone  knew  with  what  cold  and  distinguished  reserve  he  refused  to  have  anything  to  do  with  the  Hotspurs  of  Romanticism.  It  was  true  that  he  had  accepted  the  dedication  of  the  Wunderhorn  in  a  friendly  spirit,  and  that  he  gave  his  good  wishes  to  the  collection,  hoping  that  it  might  find  a  place  in  every  German  home.  He  himself,  in  his  happy  days  at  Strasburg,  had  sounded,  in  a  way  understood  by  but  few,  the  praises  of  Gothic  architecture.  When  now,  after  long  years,  he  saw  the  seed  thus  sown  springing  to  Hfe,  saw  the  whole  world  filled  with  enthusiasm  for  ancient  German  art,  he  expressed  the  opinion  that  humanity  is  first  truly  human  when  united,  and  he  delighted  in  the  amiable  enthusiasm  of  SupHce  Boisseree.  None  the  less,  the  stimulated  and  fantastical  nature  and  the  defiant  national  emotion  of  the  younger  generation  remained  repugnant  to  him.

His  own  culture  was  rooted  in  the  cosmopolitan  century  that  had  passed  away.     Never  could  he  forget  what  he  and  all  his  contemporaries  had  in  youth  owed  to  the  French.  The  elemental  unrest  of  Kleist  aroused  horror  in  his  contemplative  mind.  In  his  letters  to  his  old  comrade  Reinhard,  he  expressed  sharp  criticism  concerning  the  grotesqueries  of  Arnim  and  Brentano,  and  defended  the  old  and  honourable  rationalism  against  the  two-  faced  younger  natural-philosophy.  There  even  were  moments  in  which  he  roundly  declared  that  Romanticism  was  morbid,  in  contradistinction  to  the  healthiness  of  the  classical  spirit.  Least  of  all  could  he  forgive  the  young  people  for  the  way  in  which  their  literary  movement  was  directed  towards  political  ends ;  every  immediate  translation  of  art  into  the  prosy  life  of  the  state  seemed  to  him  a  desecration.  He  regarded  as  an  inevitable  destiny  the  great  disturbance  which  had  burst  over  Germany.  The  natural  elective  affinity  of  genius  led  him  to  believe  firmly  in  Napoleon's  fortunate  star.  What  did  he  know  of  Prussia  and  the  deadly  injury  that  had  been  inflicted  on  Prussian  pride  ?  How  could  the  son  of  the  good  old  time,  who  lived  in  Frankfort,  Strasburg,  Leipzig,  and  Weimar,  among  a  harmless  and  peaceful  people,  regard  a  war  waged  by  the  German  nation  as  possible  ?  Even  to  Goethe's  contemporaries  it  seemed  painful,  and  for  all  time  to  come  it  will  be  a  distressing  memory  to  the  Germans,  that  our  noblest  poet  could  see  nothing  more  in  the  enemy  of  his  country  than  a  great  man,  that  he  was  too  old  to  understand  fully  the  wonderful  and  saving  transformation  which  had  come  over  his  compatriots.  He  had  felt  so  solitary  since  the  death  of  Schiller.  Meditating  with  a  heavy  heart  upon  the  dear  shadows  of  happier  days,  he  let  the  greatest  work  of  his  Hfe  pass  out  into  the  hands  of  the  unknown  crowd.  When  fifteen  years  earlier  a  few  fragments  of  this  work  had  appeared,  no  one  had  taken  much  note  of  the  matter.

And  yet  this  poem  now  attained  a  success  as  flaming  and  as  irresistible  as  had  once  his  Sorrows  of  Werther,  as  if  these  lines,  over  which  the  poet  had  grown  old,  had  been  now  first  conceived,  and  were  written  for  the  day  in  which  they  appeared.  The  painful  question  whether  old  Germany  was  really  done  for,  was  on  every-  one's hps  ;  and  now,  in  the  decline  of  the  nation,  suddenly  there  came  this  work,  beyond  comparison  the  crown  of  the  whole  of  the  modern  poetry  of  Europe  ;  and  people  felt  a  joyful  certainty  that  only  a  German  could  have  written  thus,  that  the  poet  was  ours,  and  that  his  figures  were  one  flesh  and  blood  with  us  !  It  was  as  if  destiny  had  given  a  sign  that  the  civilisation  of  the  world  could  not  after  all  dispense  with  us,  and  that  God   still  had  in  His mind  a  great  destiny  for  this  people.  Schiller,  already,  had  imposed  upon  the  drama,  greater  tasks  than  had  been  imposed  by  Shakes-  peare, although  Schiller  had  not  attained  to  the  grand  power  of  dehneation  possessed  by  the  EngHshman  ;  the  tragedy  of  passions  was  not  enough  for  Schiller ;  he  wished  to  make  men  realise  through  their  senses  that  world-history  is  the  world  court  of  justice.  But  now,  with  the  appearance  of  Faust  there  was  something  yet  greater  ;  now  for  the  first  time  since  Dante  the  attempt  was  made  to  incorporate  in  poetry  the  whole  spiritual  heritage  of  the  epoch.  Such  from  the  first  had  been  the  poet's  conception,  as  he  himself  has  told  us ;  but  when  year  after  year  he  continued  to  carry  these  beloved  figures  in  his  heart,  when  again  and  again  in  all  happy  hours  he  returned  to  dwell  with  them,  they  grew  with  him  and  he  with  them.  The  old  puppet-show,  with  its  compactness  and  its  thoughtfulness,  its  carnival  jokes  and  its  distasteful  horrors,  became  expanded  into  a  great  world-picture  which  simply  disregarded  the  ancient  forms  of  dramatic  art,  to  produce  a  picture  of  the  promethean  urge  of  humanity.  In  this  poem  the  writer  exposed  the  entire  philosophical  content  of  his  age.  It  was  not  possible  for  Goethe,  the  modern,  as  it  was  for  Dante,  the  child  of  the  thirteenth  century,  to  pass  judgment  upon  the  world  from  the  altitude  of  an  unquestioning  and  complete  view  of  the  world-order.  He  made  no  attempt  to  conceal  that  he  was  a  striver,  that  he  could  never  bring  this  poem  to  an  end,  and  for  this  very  reason  his  writing  had  so  powerful  an  influence  upon  the  fermenting  time  because  he  issued  an  invitation  to  further  poetic  activity  and  to  further  reflection.  The  fundamental  idea  of  Goethe's  view  was,  however,  firmly  established.  To  him  humanity  remained  always  a  means  for  creation,  and  only  for  the  sake  of  humanity  did  the  world  exist.  Man's  salvation  by  deed,  by  the  loving  self-surrender  of  the  ego  to  the  all,  the  triumph  of  the  divine  over  the  spirit  of  renunciation  which  always  wills  evil  and  always  creates  good — ^this  was  the  joyful  belief  of  the  greatest  of  the  optimists,  this  was  the  poetic  theme  of  his  whole  life.

If  ever  a  poem  had  been  lived  it  was  this  one.  Everything  which  had  ever  seized  and  moved  the  poet's  protean  nature  was  incorporated  in  this  work :  the  cheerfulness  of  the  days  of  Leipzig,  the  happiness  in  love  of  the  Strasburgers,  Merck  and  Herder,  Spinoza  and  Winckelmann,  the  earth-friendship  of  the  man  of  science  and  the  experiences  of  the  statesman,  the  intoxication  with  beauty  of  the  Roman  elegies,  and  the  mature  wisdom  of  the  life  of the  old  man.  But  Faust  fascinated  the  Germans  by  an  addi-  tional charm,  by  one  reminding  them  intimately  of  home,  one  which  even  to  the  present  day  no  foreigner  has  fully  understood.  To  them  the  poem  seemed  a  symbolical  image  of  the  history  of  the  fatherland.  One  who  entered  deeply  into  its  spirit  was  able  to  overlook  the  whole  wide  way  which  the  Teutons  had  ranged  since  the  mysterious  days  when  they  still  lived  in  trustful  com-  munion with  the  gods  of  the  forest  and  of  the  field,  down  to  those  joyful  times  when  the  folk  had  emerged  "  from  the  pressure  of  gables  and  of  roofs,  from  the  churches'  venerable  night,"  issuing  forth  from  our  ancient  towns  in  search  of  freedom.  Here  was  to  be  found  the  exuberance  of  German  life  :  the  wild  and  devilish  frolics  of  our  folk-superstition,  and  the  tender  profundity  of  the  German  love  of  women,  the  humour  of  the  students,  the  war-lust  of  the  soldiers,  and  the  sunward  aspirations  of  German  thought  — almost  all  which  combines  to  make  up  our  life.  In  none  of  his  greater  works  since  Goefz  von  Berlichingen  had  Goethe  written  in  so  national  a  spirit.  The  simple  rhymed  couplets  of  the  ancient  merry  tales  of  the  carnival  rendered  with  wonderful  energy  and  clearness  every  changing  aspect  and  mood  ;  to  the  plain  reader  everything  seemed  comprehensible,  and  to  the  man  of  talent  every-  thing seemed  unfathomably  profound.

The  younger  poets  esteemed  Faust  as  the  perfection  of  Romantic  art  ;  they  felt  themselves  to  be  strengthened  and  encouraged  in  their  own  activity  now  that  the  prince  of  classical  poetry  plunged  into  the  quiet  world  of  Romanticism  and  made  his  witches  dance  upon  the  Blocksberg.  But  the  old  master  soon  showed  how  high  he  stood  above  the  literary  parties  of  the  day.  Soon  after  Faust,  he  published  his  Elective  Affinities.  Everyone  admired  the  psychological  profundity  and  the  magnificent  artistic  understanding  of  the  master,  for  he  had  never  before  produced  so  perfectly  finished  a  composition ;  yet  people  felt  uneasily  that  this  discussion  of  sensibihties  had  nothing  in  common  with  the  time  ;  it  seemed  to  be  written  for  a  generation  which  no  longer  existed.  What  matter  ?  To  the  young  people  Goethe  remained  the  divine  poet  of  Faust,  and  since  now  for  the  first  time  Schiller's  works  also  gained  complete  recognition,  the  common  veneration  for  the  heroes  of  Weimar  became  a  bond  of  unity  to  all  persons  of  refinement.  This  cult  was  also  favourable  to  the  self-  esteem  of  the  unhappy  nation.

Even  in  the  fine  arts  there  at  length  re-awakened  a  happy  delight  in  activity  ;   the  beginnings  of  our  new  school  of  painting were  directly  associated  with  the  re-discovery  of  German  antiquity.  How  soUtary  had  Asmus  Carstens  remained  in  his  talented  move-  ment towards  the  simplicity  of  nature  and  the  greatness  of  the  antique,  the  prophet  of  a  more  joyful  time  which  he  was  never  to  see.  But  now,  in  the  cloister  of  San  Isidoro  at  Rome,  there  was  a  whole  crowd  of  German  painters  assembled,  an  inspired  and  con-  fident young  generation,  enthusiasts  for  Diirer,  Memling,  and  van  Eyck,  who  regarded  themselves  as  predestined,  for  the  glory  of  God  and  for  that  of  the  German  fatherland,  to  overcome  the  academic  art  of  the  French  by  the  faithfulness  and  the  profundity  of  the  ancient  Christian-Teutonic  nature.  Among  these  young  painters,  the  Catholics  were  from  the  first  more  strongly  represented  than  among  the  poets  and  the  men  of  learning.  The  greatest  of  them  all,  Peter  CorneHus,  was  a  Catholic,  but  he  had  drunk  at  the  sources  of  North  German  culture  and  conceived  his  vocation  in  a  wide  and  great  sense.  His  soul  was  filled  with  a  sacred  ambition,  and  he  prayed  :  "  May  est  Thou  make  this  heart  strive  ever  towards  divine  deeds,  great  in  humility  and  in  unending  love  towards  Thee."  German  painting  was  to  show  itself  at  once  ardent  and  severe,  after  the  manner  of  Diirer,  for  it  was  only  through  the  Germans  that  art  could  attain  to  a  new  tendency  ;  and  by  the  instrumentaUty  of  this  nation,  it  was  God's  will  to  diffuse  through  the  world  a  new  kingdom  of  His  power  and  glory.  The  travelUng  expenses  to  Rome  which  were  offered  him  by  the  Prince-Primate  Dalberg  were  bluntly  refused  by  the  young  artist,  because  it  was  suggested  to  him  that  he  should  follow  French  examples.  If  was  from  the  sagas  of  the  fatherland,  from  Faust  and  the  Nibelungen,  that  he  took  the  matter  for  his  first  great  works.  His  was  a  genuine  German  nature  ;  serious,  profound,  and  great,  inexhaustibly  rich  in  ideas  ;  but  hard  and  uncouth  in  form,  almost  more  a  poet's  than  a  painter's.  To  him  also  would  apply  the  name  poeta  tacente  with  which  the  peculiarities  of  Diirer  were  once  aptly  described.

When  CorneHus  at  length  reached  Rome,  he  soon  got  beyond  the  one-sided  Nazarene  views  of  Overbeck  and  the  brothers  of  San  Isidoro,  who  could  find  the  spirit  of  true  Christianity  in  the  work  of  the  northern  and  of  the  older  Italian  artists  alone.  In  his  spirit  there  was  room,  not  only  for  Siegfried  and  Faust,  but  also  for  the  figures  of  the  lUad  and  the  iEneid  ;  he  was  also  able  to  enjoy  with  a  profound  understanding  the  pagan  beauty  of  the  works  of  the  Renaissance.  Thus  it  was  that,  cultivating  his  powers  unceasingly,  and  growing  and  strengthening  with  every  new  phase  of  the  Nibelungen  cycle,  he  laid  the  foundation  for  the  monumental  style of  German  painting.  Just  as  in  former  days  in  the  case  of  our  classical  poetry,  so  now,  this  renascence  of  the  fine  arts  took  place  in  precious  freedom,  springing  directly  from  the  depths  of  the  folk  spirit,  without  any  co-operation  on  the  part  of  the  courts.  It  was  not  until  the  new  tendency  had  already  become  clear  as  to  its  own  nature  and  its  own  aims,  that  the  Maecenas  was  to  be  found  who  would  provide  the  means  for  extensive  artistic  creation.

Poetry and the fine arts

Even  in  the  serene  and  youthful  days  of  our  classical  literature,  unrestrained  criticism  had  frequently  hampered  the  free  natural  growth  of  poetry.  Now,  when  during  seventy  years  Germany  had  experimented  in  almost  all  conceivable  artistic  styles  and  had  made  trial  of  even  more  manifold  aesthetic  theories,  artistic  creation  showed  itself  to  be  affected  with  the  disease  of  learned  over-refinement.  No  branch  of  poetic  art  suffered  more  severely  in  this  respect  than  the  drama,  which  needs  popular  favour  as  flowers  need  the  sun.  Goethe  had  good  reason  for  calling  the  arrogant  spokesmen  of  romanticism  "  starveHngs  yearning  for  the  unattainable "  ;  notwithstanding  their  talented  flashes  of  thought  and  their  high  intentions,  they  completely  lacked  the  gift  of  architectonic,  the  constructive  and  convincing  energy  of  the  creative  genius.  Although  they  had  promised  themselves  to  oust  the  classical  ideal  by  a  popular  poetising,  their  works,  after  all,  remained  unknown  to  the  people,  and  were  the  property  of  no  more  than  a  small  circle  of  admiring  connoisseurs.  To  them,  art  was,  as  it  were,  a  magic  philtre,  one  which  the  philistine  was  incapable  of  enjoying,  and  which  was  intoxicating  to  those  alone  who  possessed  divine  grace  ;  under  its  influence  these  rare  spirits  forgot  reality  and  smiled  upon  Ufe  as  upon  a  foolish  masque.  This  sovereign  disdain  which  prided  itself  upon  "  pursuing  sport  as  earnest  and  treating  earnest  as  sport "  conflicted  with  the  healthy  sentiment  of  the  crowd.

Of  the  older  German  dramatists,  the  romanticist  art-critic  would  allow  a  high  rank  to  Goethe  alone,  and  Goethe  had  hardly  thought  of  writing  his  most  mature  works  for  presentation  on  the stage ;  the  peaceful  sensual  beauty  of  his  Iphigenia  and  of  his  Tasso  were  not  fully  conceivable  except  to  the  mind  of  the  reader.  Lessing  was  no  longer  counted  among  the  poets ;  Schiller's  tragic  passion  was  mocked  as  empty  rhetoric  ;  even  Heinrich  von  Kleist,  the  one  dramatist  of  genius  whose  outlook  was  closely  akin  to  that  of  the  romanticists,  remained  long  unnoticed  by  the  critics  of  this  school.  The  two  most  efficient  dramatists  of  the  period,  Iffiand  and  Kotzebue,  who  continued  to  dominate  the  stage  even  for  a  decade  after  their  death,  were  regarded  by  the  arrogance  of  the  romanticists  with  such  unjusti-  fied contempt  that  youthful  talent  was  necessarily  frightened  away  from  the  drama.  All  that  the  romanticists  could  see  in  one  of  these  writers  was  his  honourable  philistine  sensibiUty,  and  all  that  they  could  see  in  the  other  was  his  insipidity  and  the  commonness  of  his  thought ;  in  neither  could  they  recognise  the  exceptional  technical  talent,  nor  yet  the  fortunate  gift  of  ready  invention,  whereby  both  put  to  shame  their  obscure  critics.  Of  the  dramatic  endeavours  of  the  romanticists  themselves,  but  few  ever  appeared  before  the  foot-lights,  and  all  those  that  did  thus  appear  stood  the  test  badly.  The  leaders  of  the  school  soon  turned  their  backs  upon  the  stage,  speaking  with  scorn  of  the  common  prose  of  theatrical  success.  Utterly  regardless  of  the  vital  conditions  of  the  modern  theatre,  which  on  five  or  seven  nights  a  week  had  to  satisfy  an  audience  wearied  by  the  cares  of  every-day  Ufe,  dramatic  theory  constructed  its  stately  cloud-  pictures  and  made  excessive  demands,  for  which  not  even  the  splendid  stage  of  the  Hellenes  could  have  furnished  satisfaction.  The  heroes  of  our  classical  poetry  had  never  had  the  same  intimate  relationships  with  the  stage  as  in  earlier  days  Shakes-  peare or  Moliere.  Now,  however  personal  intercourse  between  dramatists  and  play-actors  became  ever  rarer.  Dramatic  art  forgot  that,  above  all  other  arts,  it  is  its  fine  destiny  to  constitute  a  bond  of  unity  between  the  higher  and  the  lower  strata  of  society.  There  gradually  came  to  exist  within  our  nation  a  momentous  cleavage  which  down  to  the  present  day  has  remained  a  grave  evil  of  German  civiHsation  :  the  reading  public  separated  itself  as  an  aristocracy  from  the  onlooking  and  listening  public.  A  large  proportion  of  the  daily  needs  of  the  theatre  came  to  be  supplied  by  literary  journeymen ;  spectacular  plays  and  bad  translations  from  the  French  appealed  to  the  sightseeing  spirit  of  the  crowd.  Whoever  esteemed  himself  one  of  the  select  circle  of  true  poets,   commonly  loaded  himself  too  heavily  with  the impedimenta  of  the  aesthetic  doctrine  to  be  able  to  act  with  that  boldness,  to  laugh  with  that  heartiness,  which  the  stage  demands  from  its  rulers  ;  and  such  writers  incorporated  their  dramatic  ideas  in  bookish  dramas.  That  mongrel  type  of  poetry  with  which  an  over-elaborated  modern  culture  cannot  completely  dispense,  exhibited  in  Germany  a  more  luxuriant  growth  than  elsewhere.  Here,  upon  the  patient  paper,  all  the  complicated  theorems  and  fantastical  ideas  of  the  wayward  German  intelligence  found  free  play  :  tragicomedies  and  plays for  jeunes  ftlles,  in  which  every  conceivable  metre  recurred  in  riotous  confusion ;  hidden  allusions  comprehensible  only  to  the  poet  himself  and  to  his  intimates ;  literary  satires  which  made  art  the  object  of  art ;  and,  finally,  exotic  poems  of  all  kinds,  which  had  to  be  read  as  if  they  were  translations.

Among  foreign  prototypes,  Calderon,  in  the  judgment  of  initiates,  occupied  the  first  place.  The  German  cosmopolitans  would  not  see  that  this  purely  national  poet  ranked  as  a  classic  writer  precisely  because  he  had  given  artistic  expression  to  the  ideals  of  his  epoch  and  of  his  nation ;  they  slavishly  imitated  his  southern  forms  which  in  our  northern  speech  sounded  operatic  and  simply  undramatic,  and  they  transported  into  the  free  Protestant  world  the  conventional  ideas  of  honour  of  the  CathoHc  knighthood.  Much  intelligence  and  much  energy  were  wasted  in  such  artifices ;  at  long  last  these  pretentious  activities  effected  nothing  more  than  the  destruction  of  all  tradi-  tional dramatic  art-forms.  But  the  poets  grew  accustomed  to  regard  an  ungrateful  world  with  proud  bitterness.  Germany  became  the  classic  land  of  talent  misunderstood.  The  excess  of  unsatisfied  authors  constituted  a  force  of  discontent  in  society,  nourishing  the  national  errors  of  fault-finding  and  hopeless  moroseness.  Subsequently,  when  political  passions  awakened,  this  contributed  greatly  to  the  embitterment  of  party  struggles. 

Pushed  to  the  grotesque  seemed  the  moral  and  aesthetic  weak-  nesses of  the  romanticist  epigones  as  displayed  in  the  unsettled  life  of  Zacharias  Werner ;  his  dramatic  talent  failed  to  procure  him  fame  because  the  virile  art  of  the  dramatist  demands  an  entire  man.  Throughout  life  he  vacillated  restlessly  to  and  fro  between  dissolute  sensual  desires  and  exaggerated  ecstasy,  between  cynical  commonness  and  lachrymose  sentimentality,  which  could  not  refrain  from  praying  beside  the  grave  of  a  dog  for  the  soul's  peace  of  the  deceased.  Since  his  distracted  spirit  could  find  no  consolation   in   "  God    and   St.    Rousseau,"    he  ultimately   took refuge  in  Rome,  in  the  bosom  of  the  ancient  church,  cHnging  in  convulsive  anxiety  to  the  rock  of  Peter.  Though  the  critical  understanding  of  the  East  Prussian  sometimes  awakened  in  him,  though  the  festival  of  the  liquefaction  of  the  blood  of  St.  Januarius  appeared  to  him  like  a  Peruvian  idolatrous  service,  he  deafened  his  doubts  with  the  turmoil  of  his  own  ecstatic  outcries.  Then  he  went  to  Vienna,  in  the  days  when  the  nimble-minded  Father  Hoffbauer  had  for  the  first  time  founded  a  strict  eccle-  siastical party  in  the  pleasure-loving  town,  and  had  collected  a  crowd  of  converts  around  himself.  Werner  joyfully  accepted  all  the  views  of  this  clerical  circle,  and  countered  the  songs  of  freedom  of  the  North  German  youth  with  the  song  "  Let  the  watch-cry  be,  the  old  time  becomes  new  !  "  During  the  days  of  the  Vienna  congress  he  was  the  favourite  preacher  of  the  fashion-  able world.  Half  repentant  and  half  diverted,  elegant  Vienna  listened  while  the  long,  lean  priest  with  the  sinister  dark  eyes  raised  his  powerful  bass  voice,  now  describing  in  glowing  colours  the  molten  sulphur  pool  of  eternal  damnation,  and  now  depicting,  with  a  thorough  personal  knowledge  and  with  hardly  concealed  satisfaction,  the  aberrations  of  sensuality.  Growth  and  nobility  were  lacking  in  his  poetic  creation  as  they  were  lacking  in  his  life.  His  youthful  dramas  displayed  strongly  realistic  talent  and  a  living  sense  of  historic  greatness ;  in  isolated  scenes  of  Die  Weihe  der  Kraft  the  mighty  figure  of  Martin  Luther,  and  the  high-spirited,  richly-coloured  Hfe  of  our  sixteenth  century,  are  vigorously  and  vividly  displayed.  Intermingled  therewith  was,  indeed,  a  morbid  delight  in  the  ghastly,  the  horrible,  and  the  savage  :  that  enigmatic  combination  of  fervour  and  belief,  voluptuousness  and  bloodthirst,  which  repels  us  in  the  natural  religions  of  immature  peoples,  seemed  to  come  to  life  once  more  in  this  unhappy  man.  After  his  conversion,  with  the  zeal  of  the  penitent,  he  recanted  his  finest  drama,  and  wrote  a  pitiable  work  entitled  Die  Weihe  der  Unkraft.  In  his  last  play.  Die  Mutter  der  Makkahder,  he  already  displayed  the  lack  of  principle  of  a  partially  deranged  mind,  endeavouring  to  conceal  the  poverty  of  his  religious  sentiments  behind  turgid  hymns  and  horrible  images  of  martyrs.

More  effective  than  Werner's  historical  tragedies,  was  his  "fate-tragedy,"  published  in  1815,  Der  vierundzwanzigste  Februar,  a  master-work  of  its  kind,  aiming  at  the  production  of  physical  horror.  The  tragical  destiny  did  not  here  arise  by  internal  necessity  out  of   the   character   of   the   actors,    but   out   of   the enigmatical  sorcery  of  a  momentous  anniversary,  and  the  astonished  reader,  notwithstanding  the  subHme  insight  afforded  into  the  rationahty  of  the  moral  world,  bore  away  nothing  but  an  impression  of  unaccountable  horror.  Since  the  novelty  of  this  extravagant  conceit  attracted  attention,  and  since  in  any  case  the  romantic  world  was  inclined  to  seek  profound  significance  in  mania,  it  was  natural  that  an  adroit  producer  should  soon  be  found  to  elevate  the  whimsy  into  a  system,  with  characteristic  German  wrongheadedness.  Adolf  Milliner,  the  lawyer  of  Weissenfels,  composed  a  drama.  Die  Schuld,  and  subsequently  in  innumerable  critical  writings  developed  the  theory  of  the  new  fate-tragedy.  According  to  this  theory,  a  higher  world-order,  more  mysterious  even  than  the  bhnd  destiny  of  the  ancients,  intervened  in  earthly  life ;  and  by  some  foolish  chance,  by  a  broken  string,  by  some  sinister  place  or  day,  overwhelmed  unsus-  pecting mortals  with  destruction.  In  this  way,  everything  which  the  Protestant  world  had  ever  conceived  regarding  tragical  blame  and  responsibility  was  once  more  placed  in  question  by  the  unbridled  love  of  innovation  of  the  romanticist  doctrine,  and  it  seemed  as  if  our  art  of  tragedy  was  to  end  in  self-annihilation.  Milliner  made  himself  at  home  in  three  literary  periodicals  at  once,  loudly  trumpeted  the  long  series  of  his  own  works,  and  alarmed  his  opponents  by  his  filthy  coarseness.  For  some  years  the  fundamentally  prosaic  man  continued  to  occupy  the  throne  he  had  usurped,  and  the  repute  of  German  poetry  was  now  so  firmly  established  throughout  the  world  that  even  foreign  periodicals  spoke  with  credulity  of  the  new  dramatic  revelation.  Then  the  fate-tragedy  suffered  the  inevitable  destiny  of  stilted  nonentity :  the  public  began  to  weary  of  it  and  turned  to  other  fashions.

The  art  of  dramatic  presentation  also  suffered  from  the  decline  in  dramatic  poetry.  How  many  talented  monographs  upon  the  theatre  as  a  means  of  national  education  had  already  been  pubhshed,  and  yet,  among  all  German  statesmen,  Stein  alone  had  made  this  idea  his  own,  and  had  drawn  the  conclusion  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  state  to  care  for  the  stage.  When,  on  his  retirement,  he  sketched  the  plans  of  Prussian  governmental  reorganisation,  he  placed  the  theatre,  as  well  as  the  academy  of  arts,  under  the  control  of  the  department  of  public  instruction  ;  yet,  barely  two  years  later,  they  were  by  Hardenberg  brought  back  into  the  domain  of  public  amusement,  and,  with  the  exception  of  the  court  theatre,  were  subjected  to  police  supervision. In  the  royal  capitals,  the  support  of  the  court  theatres  was  generally  held  to  be  a  personal  duty  of  the  sovereign,  and  it  soon  became  manifest  that  such  theatres  had  more  to  expect  from  the  free-handedness  of  artistically  disposed  princes  than  from  the  frugal  petty-bourgeois  sentiments  of  the  new  diets.  Hardly  had  the  Stuttgart  stage,  in  the  year  1816,  been  elevated  to  the  position  of  a  national  theatre  and  had  been  nationally  financed,  when  the  diet  began  to  complain  of  extravagance,  and  cheerfully  acquiesced,  three  years  later,  when  the  king  declared  himself  prepared  to  strike  the  maintenance  of  the  court  theatre  out  of  the  civil  list.  For  the  most  part  the  monarchs  cared  with  commend-  able zeal  for  the  external  equipment  of  their  theatres,  as  well  as  for  the  employment  of  notable  individual  talent ;  the  old  social  prejudice  against  actors  soon  became  mitigated  when  the  stage  was  seen  to  be  in  such  close  association  with  the  court.

None  the  less,  the  histrionic  art  gained  little  through  the  court  theatres.  After  the  death  of  Iffland,  Frederick  William  entrusted  Count  Briihl  with  the  management  of  the  court  theatre  of  Berlin.  Briihl  was  an  amiable  and  highly-cultured  man,  but  neither  dramatic  poet  nor  actor,  and  he  had  merely  assimilated,  with  the  zeal  of  a  talented  connoisseur,  the  strict  classical  principles  of  the  theatrical  school  of  Weimar.  The  dangerous  example  was  quickly  followed;  soon  at  all  the  courts  the  office  of  theatre-  intendant  was  reckoned  among  the  high  court  dignities,  the  control  of  the  greatest  German  theatres  was  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  skilled  experts  and  placed  in  those  of  high-bom  dilettantes.

Yet  the  good  traditions  of  earlier  days  still  persisted  for  a  time.  The  lack  of  fine  new  pieces  was  not  yet  too  plainly  percep-  tible, for  the  dramas  of  the  classical  epoch  could  still  count  upon  general  acceptance,  and  the  works  of  Shakespeare  now  for  the  first  time  became  fully  estabhshed  upon  the  German  stage.  The  court  theatres  of  Berlin,  Munich,  Carlsruhe,  and  Brunswick,  were  distinguished  by  many  excellent  performances,  and  the  same  was  true  of  the  long  celebrated  theatre  of  Hamburg  and  of  the  new  municipal  theatre  of  Leipzig.  In  BerUn,  the  realist  tendency,  which  had  here  in  former  days  gained  dominion  through  the  work  of  Fleck,  found  a  talented  representative  in  Ludwig  Devrient.  What  sinister  and  diabolic  energy  was  dis-  played in  his  Richard  III,  what  an  extravagance  of  exuberant  humour  in  his  Falstaff !  Almost  more  astonishing  was  the  abiUty  with  which  he  played  minor  parts  ;  his  Knecht  Gotts-  chalk,  in  Kdthchen  von  Heilhronn,  so  admirably  presented  simple loyalty  and  truthfulness  that  in  the  souls  of  the  audience  there  was  awakened  in  a  moment  an  understanding  of  the  pristine  energy  and  greatness  of  old  German  life.  None  the  less,  the  firm  artistic  discipline  of  the  stage  became  gradually  more  and  more  relaxed.  The  new  romanticist  ethics  encouraged  every  man  of  talent  to  press  recklessly  towards  the  front,  and  to  emphasise  his  own  pecuKarities ;  while  the  distinguished  intendants  had  neither  the  technical  knowledge  which  might  have  empowered  them  by  their  own  example  to  maintain  in  the  company  a  unity  of  style,  nor  yet  had  they  sufficient  prestige  to  enable  them  to  keep  the  individual  members  within  bounds.  The  brilliant  new  court  theatres  were  no  longer  able  to  display  such  equably  cultured  and  harmonious  performances  as  had  formerly  produced  delight  in  Hamburg  in  the  days  of  Ekhof ,  and  in  Berlin  in  the  days  of  Iffland.  Moreover,  dramatic  criticism  had  for  some  time  estabUshed  itself  like  a  noxious  fungus  upon  the  healthy  tree  of  dramatic  art.  It  had  already  become  the  rule  that  every  aspiring  senior  school-boy  or  university  student  should  win  his  literary  spurs  by  dramatic  criticism  ;  almost  every  man  of  culture  occa-  sionally exercised  his  powers  in  the  tragical  handicraft  of  the  critical  spoil-sport.  By  far  the  majority  of  these  notices  had  the  sole  aim  of  winning  renown  for  the  writer  by  arrogant  distribu-  tion of  blame ;  or  else  of  giving  rise  to  party  struggles  in  theatrical  spheres,  struggles  in  which  the  populace  in  the  small  towns  took  part  with  passionate  zeal.  The  trouble  became  still  greater  when  the  political  prosecutions  began.  Thenceforward  theatrical  criticism  remained  the  only  domain  in  which  the  pens  of  the  newspaper  writers  could  run  freely,  for  Count  Bemstorff,  the  minister  of  state,  said  "the  snappish  dogs  must  be  left  at  least  one  bone  to  worry!"

There  were  but  two  poets  of  this  epoch  who  succeeded  in  enriching  the  theatre  with  works  at  once  suitable  for  the  stage  and  possessed  of  permanent  artistic  value.  These  were  the  first  two  Austrians  since  the  Thirty  Years'  War  to  win  for  themselves  an  honourable  place  in  the  history  of  German  poesy.  Just  as,  long  ago  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the  remote  lands  of  the  Danube  had  fortunately  preserved  the  ancient  German  national  epic,  when  the  rest  of  Germany  had  long  turned  already  to  knightly  poetry,  so  now  these  same  regions  had  remained  almost  untouched  by  the  wealth  of  thought,  but  untouched  also  by  the  errors  of  the  doctrinaire  over-refinement  of  our  literary  revolution.     When    now   at    length   a   few  fine   intelligences   in Austria  became  aware  of  the  worid  of  new  ideas  which  had  been  opened  up  in  Germany,  they  occupied  a  position  of  fortunate  freedom  in  relation  to  the  catchwords  of  our  Hterary  parties.  From  a  distance,  more  unrestrainedly  than  the  Germans  in  the  German  realm,  they  could  discover  that  which  was  genuine  and  great  in  the  powerful  movement.  Their  public  was  one  which  loved  spectacles  and  was  gratefully  receptive,  a  public  whose  naive  and  vigorous  sensuality  had  not  yet  been  corrupted  by  learned  criticism.  They  had  also  before  their  eyes  the  fine  example  of  the  great  musicians  of  Austria,  who  all  held  in  honour  the  golden  soil  of  handicraft,  and  who  did  not  think  themselves  too  good  to  work  straightforwardly  for  the  stage.

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  the  Burgtheater,  under  the  skilful  management  of  Schreyvogel,  began  to  outsoar  all  the  theatres  of  Germany.  Here  the  Viennese  learned  to  know  the  finest  dramas  of  Germany,  presented  artistically  and  yet  simply ;  the  admirable  dramaturge  knew  so  well  how  to  bring  even  foreign  works  near  to  the  German  spirit  by  clever  adaptation,  that  such  a  play  as  Moreto's  Donna  Diana  seemed  almost  as  homeUke  to  the  audience  as  a  native  comedy.  Here  there  was  no  field  for  subtle  artificiality.  The  result  was  that  even  Franz  Grillparzer  was  infected,  on  one  occasion  only,  by  the  theoretical  priggishness  of  German  romanticism.  His  first  work.  Die  Ahnfrau,  was  a  fate-tragedy ;  the  tragical  issue  arose,  not  out  of  the  free  activity  of  the  hero,  but  from  "  intimately  concealed  and  obscure  powers."  But  the  beauty  of  the  language  and  the  ardour  of  the  passion,  the  stormy  progress  of  the  action,  and  the  remarkable  and  precocious  security  of  the  technique,  make  us  almost  forget  the  perversity  of  the  fundamental  idea.  Soon,  too,  the  sound  sense  of  the  poet  broke  completely  loose  from  the  fetters  of  the  artistic  theories  of  Milliner.  In  his  tragedies  Sappho  and  Das  goldene  Vliess  there  were  displayed  purity  of  form,  precision  of  character-  drawing,  German  seriousness,  and  the  fine  and  truthful  sensuality  of  the  old  Austrians — a  happy  fusion  of  classic  and  of  romantic  ideals.  To  him,  henceforward,  Goethe  remained  the  master  beloved  with  childish  veneration,  and  Weimar  the  consecrated  focus  of  German  Ufe.  In  the  historical  dramas  of  a  later  period  of  his  activity,  Grillparzer  created  nothing  greater  than  the  elemental  character  of  Medea  in  Das  goldene  Vliess  ;  notwith-  standing his  high  artistic  diligence  he  was  denied  continuous  development.  Not  his  one  of  those  mighty  spirits  which  in  irresistible  progress  gradually  come  to  illumine  wider  and  ever wider  circles  of  the  world  with  the  light  of  their  ideas ;  but  his  was  an  amiable  and  modest  artist's  nature,  he  was  a  true  poet,  who,  even  in  the  days  of  the  decadence,  preserved  with  invaluable  loyalty  the  traditional  ancient  principles  of  dramatic  idealism,  and  was  the  worthy  herald  of  the  new  German  poetry  in  Austria.  Soon  afterwards  another  Austrian,  Ferdinand  Raimund,  conquered  a  new  domain  for  German  dramatic  art.  For  years,  upon  the  boards  of  the  Leopoldstadt  theatre,  he  had  delighted  the  audience  by  his  masterly  acting  as  a  comedian  ;  and  when  now  in  all  modesty  he  devoted  himself  to  providing  his  little  stage  with  new  matter  elaborated  by  himself,  he  did  not  produce,  as  have  done  the  majority  of  actor-playwrights,  pieces  carefully  designed  to  draw  a  full  house  and  possessing  grateful  roles,  but  created  works  of  national  art.  He  was  the  originator  of  the  new  fairy  extravaganza,  and  since  the  days  of  Hans  Sachs  was  the  first  German  poet  who  really  understood  how  to  enthral  the  whole  population  with  the  stage,  and  who  delighted  the  masses  by  poetic  works  in  which  even  cultured  persons  could  take  cordial  pleasure  for  a  time.  In  this  child  of  Vienna,  the  delight  in  telling  stories  was  inborn ;  from  the  medley  of  folk-life  he  drew  his  merry  figures,  having  an  inexhaustible  supply  of  those  genial  jests  and  foolish  conceits  which  the  Austrians  and  the  Upper  Saxons  are  accustomed  to  greet  with  the  delighted  exclamation, "Look  here,  that  is  really  too  absurd  !  "  But  behind  the  unre-  strained and  sportive  action,  there  was  the  half-hidden  humour  of  a  profound  disposition  smiling  through  tears.  How  firmly,  too,  was  the  ancient  German  moral  idealism  still  established  in  those  blameless  days  of  social  peace !  Raimund  continually  returned  to  the  question  of  what  is  the  true  happiness  of  life,  which  to  the  oppressed  man  of  the  common  people  remains  the  highest  of  all  moral  problems ;  and  ever  and  again,  whether  he  was  representing  the  spendthrift,  the  misanthrope,  or  the  peasant  as  millionaire,  he  allowed  the  audience  to  perceive  that  happiness  is  to  be  found  only  in  peace  of  the  soul.  The  masses  believed  him ;  the  old  German  folk-songs  extolling  cheerful  poverty  had  not  yet  been  forgotten.  Among  the  numerous  imitators  of  the  unpretentious  folk-poet  none  came  near  to  the  master.  The  folk-  comedy  rapidly  became  brutaHsed ;  pithy  bluntness  degenerated  into  slovenliness,  kindly  wit  became  tedious  punning,  ingenuous  simpUcity  sank  to  dulness.  It  was  not  until  a  much  later  period,  during  an  epoch  of  embittered  poHtical  and  social  struggles,  that  in  North  Germany  a  new  form  of  farce  came  into  existence, which  in  wit  and  incisiveness  excelled  these  innocent  fairy-tales  just  as  much  as  it  was  inferior  to  them  in  humour  and  poetic  content.

As  far  as  narrative  poetry  was  concerned,  the  insatiable  passion  for  writing  and  reading  characteristic  of  the  epoch  became  a  source  of  severe  temptation.  Never  before  had  so  vast  a  number  of  busy  pens  been  simultaneously  at  work  in  all  branches  of  literature.  The  catalogue  of  the  books  which  the  Leipzig  booksellers  had  on  sale  at  the  fair,  swelled  to  become  a  volume  of  inconvenient  size.  In  every  town  a  lending  library  provided  for  the  needs  of  the  reading  public.  The  customs  characteristic  of  an  old-established  prosperity  could  not  yet  become  developed  in  this  impoverished  land ;  the  Germans  found  no  shame  in  the  fact  that  they  read  more  and  bought  fewer  books  than  any  other  people.  Nevertheless  certain  works  already  secured  a  sale  which  was  unheard-of  according  to  the  ideas  of  the  old  times :  for  instance,  Rotteck's  Allgemeine  Weltgeschichte,  Zschokke's  Stunden  der  Andacht,  and  the  translations  of  Walter  Scott's  novels.  In  the  year  1817,  Friedrich  Konig,  the  inventor  of  the  cylinder-press,  returned  home,  and  at  Oberzell  near  Wiirzburg  founded  his  great  printing  estabHshment  which  ren-  dered it  possible  for  the  book-trade  to  work  for  the  needs  of  the  masses.  Since  people  gradually  became  accustomed  to  accept  greedily  every  novelty  in  the  domain  of  science  and  art,  discontent  was  soon  felt  with  the  simple  classical  education  upon  whose  fruitful  soil  the  new  German  civiHsation  had  flourished.  No  longer  did  it  suffice  to  give  the  mind  a  strictly  formal  culture,  rendering  it  possible,  starting  from  a  narrow  circle  of  well-secured  knowledge,  to  develop  gradually,  but  freely  and  continuously,  and  to  acquire  new  knowledge  through  independent  work.  Under  the  high-sounding  name  of  "realistic  culture,"  there  was  now  demanded  a  variegated  abundance  of  disconnected  memo-  randa, which  might  enable  everyone  to  converse  about  everything.  People  were  ashamed  of  the  frank  admission  of  ignorance ;  no  one  wished  to  remain  in  the  background  when  conversation  flitted  rapidly  from  the  fate-tragedy  to  the  Spanish  constitution  or  from  phrenology  to  the  new  English  steam-engine.

The  alert  F.  A.  Brockhaus,  with  the  secure  insight  of  the  experienced  bookseller,  noted  this  powerful  impulse  of  the  time,  and  from  the  year  1818  onwards  engaged  in  the  elaboration  of  an  older  and  hitherto  little  noticed  compilation,  to  constitute  a great  encyclopaedia  which,  in   a  convenient   alphabetic  arrange-  ment, placed  at  the  disposal  of  cultured  Germans  "  all  that  it  was  desirable   to  know."      This  was  the  beginning   of   that   gigantic  pons    asinorum    literature    which    distinguished    the    nineteenth  century,  by  no  means  to  its  advantage.     The  imdertaking,  which  was  as  un -German  as  its  name  (Konversationslexikon) ,  none  the  less  found  acceptance  in  wide  circles,  and  there  speedily  followed  numerous  imitations  ;    this  generation,  burdened  with  the  heri-  tage of  so   many  centuries,  could  no  longer  get  along  without  such  crutches.     Neibuhr  watched  with  unconcealed  disgust  the  transformation   which   was    gradually   taking   place    in   national  customs  ;    he  foresaw  how  uneasy,  empty-headed,  and  desultory,  how  dependent  in  its  modes  of  thought,  the  modern  world  must  become,  if  the  empty  arrogance  of  half  knowledge  and  of  poly-  mathy,  if  the  desire  for  continually  changing  impressions,  should  get  the  upper  hand.     In  a  world  so  fond  of  reading,  a  refined  sense  of  form  speedily  became  blunted.     What  was  desired  above  all   was   material   stimulation,    and   since   every   epoch   has   the  authors  which  it  demands  and  deserves,  there  was  to  be  found  an  army  of  busy  romance  writers  satisfied  to  provide  for  the  needs  of  the  moment,  and  to  have  their  names  current  for  a  few  years   in   the   critical   periodicals.     It   remained   henceforward   a  distinctive  characteristic  of  the  new  century  that  works  of  true  poetry  lay,  like  isolated  nuggets,  dispersed  throughout  a  colossal  rubbish-heap   of  worthless  light  literature,   and  that   they  were  discovered  only  after  a  considerable  time   amid   the  masses   of  inferior  matter.     In  those  unpretentious  days,  however,  it  was  not,  as  in  our  own  time,  the  money-making  impulse  which  led  so  many  interlopers  to  the   German  Parnassus ;    it  was  as  a  rule  vanity  and  Hterary  fashion.     Just  as  in  the  drama,  so  also  in  the  field  of  romance  and  novel-writing,  those  of  a  truly  poetic  nature  seldom    displayed   a  talent   for  composition,   whilst   the  virtuosi   of  absorbing   and  fascinating   narrative   just   as   rarely  exhibited  the  formative  energy  of  the  poet.

In  consequence  of  the  stern  realism  of  the  war,  that  lachry-  mose sentimentaUty  which  had  before  been  chiefly  nourished  by  the  writings  of  Jean  Paul,  had  for  a  brief  period  been  forced  into  the  background.  Now,  however,  it  regained  its  sway ;  in  many  of  the  houses  of  North  Germany  there  prevailed  a  tasteless,  sickly-sweet  tone.  Many  vigorous  men  of  the  present  generation  who  grew  up  in  this  sentimental  atmosphere  were  filled  thereby  with  such  loathing  that  throughout  life  they  earnestly  avoided every  expression  of  aroused  sensibilities.  The  insipid  scribbler  H.  Clauren  was  the  writer  best  suited  to  the  taste  of  the  great  reading  public.  Fashionable  ladies^_^  delighted  in  the  heavenly  steel  engravings  and  the  moving  novelettes  of  the  pocket-  companions  which  were  then  in  fashion  :  "  Urania,"  "  Aurora,"  "  Alpine  Roses,"  "  Forget-me-Not,"  or  "  Evergreen,"  stood  upon  the  title-page  of  the  elegant  gilt-edged  volumes.  Upper  Saxony,  which  in  former  days  had  so  often  intervened  decisively  in  the  mental  development  of  the  nation  through  the  activities  of  vigorous  reforming  spirits,  was  for  some  decades  the  principal  seat  of  this  light  literature ;  it  was  as  if  the  "  Gottshed-Weisse-  Gellert  flood "  once  mocked  at  by  the  young  Goethe,  had  again  broken  over  the  beautiful  country.  In  Dresden,  Friedrich  Kind  and  Theodor  Hell,  with  a  few  other  equally  meek  and  gentle  poets,  met  weekly  at  a  "  poets'  tea,"  displaying  for  mutual  admiration  and  regarding  with  invincible  mutual  politeness  their  dull  novels,  which  were  worthy  of  the  Chinese  beverage — novels  that  were  then  published  in  the  widely-read  Abendzeitung.  Carl  Bottiger,  most  prolific  of  critics,  then  hastened,  as  Goethe  said,  "  to  hail  as  masterpieces  the  pap  of  these  bunglers  and  scrawlers."  Ludwig  Tieck,  who  had  also  removed  to  the  charming  town  on  the  Elbe,  distinguished  himself  by  holding  aloof  from  this  void  activity.  It  was  plain  to  him  that  the  mysterious  "  poesy  of  poesy,"  upon  which  the  romanticists  prided  themselves,  was  essentially  nothing  more  than  ingenious  connoisseurship.  Although  his  admirers  ranked  him  immediately  after  Goethe,  he  was  numbered  among  those  who  are  rather  than  do.  Since  in  these  days  he  was  but  rarely  seized  with  the  overwhelming  creative  impulse  of  the  poet,  he  threw  himself  with  a  fine  zeal,  and  with  his  highly-praised  "  powers  of  rapid  perception,"  into  the  study  of  the  Shakespearian  drama.  What  he  effected  by  word  of  mouth,  and  by  his  pen,  in  the  elucidation  and  imitation  of  the  great  Englishman,  was  in  reality  more  fruitful  for  German  life  than  were  the  shapeless  romances  and  the  literary-satirical  dramatised  tales  of  his  youth,  which  failed  to  appear  as  the  ingenuous  children  of  fancy,  precisely  because  they  themselves  declared  with  conscious  intention  that  "  they  were  completely  unreasonable."  How  many  youthful  poets  and  dramatists  gained  their  first  inkhng  of  the  true  nature  of  art  in  the  old  house  in  the  Altmarkt,  when  the  poet,  in  his  celebrated  evening  read-  ings, displayed  to  his  hearers,  with  a  truly  sympathetic  energy,  the  whole  world  of  Shakespeare's  figures  in  all  their  abundant vitality.  Tieck  early  attained  celebrity,  and  while  still  in  his  prime  was  regarded  as  a  patriarch  of  German  poetry.  The  paralytic  man  with  the  clear  eyes  of  the  poet  received  good-  naturedly  and  with  sympathetic  understanding  the  young  men  who  came  to  him  on  pilgrimage,  and  although  his  inspired  words  now  and  again  conveyed  strange  impressions,  his  gaze  remained  ever  directed  towards  the  altitudes  of  humanity ;  again  and  again  he  referred  his  young  admirers  to  the  sacred  four,  the  masters  of  the  new  art — Dante,  Cervantes,  Shakespeare,  and  Goethe.  It  was  not  until  after  many  years  that  he  himself  resumed  the  writing  of  poetry.  Even  more  than  Tieck  had  the  brothers  Schlegel  become  estranged  from  poetic  creation.  Friedrich  Schlegel  was  completely  immersed  in  the  intrigues  of  ultramontane  policy.  August  Wilhelm  Schlegel  pursued  his  historical  and  philological  studies  in  Bonn,  an  ornament  of  the  new  Rhenish  university  ;  the  small  foppish  old  gentleman  was  always  venerated  by  the  students  as  the  representative  of  a  prolific  epoch  which  had  given  birth  to  the  new  science.

It  was  only  in  the  young  poets  who  had  formerly  assembled  in  Heidelberg  that  the  poetic  vein  did  not  run  dry.  No  one  had  wandered  farther  into  the  labyrinths  of  the  romantic  dream-life  than  had  Clemens  Brentano.  Half  rogue,  half  enthusiast,  to-day  high-spirited  to  the  verge  of  insanity,  to-morrow  crushed  and  contrite,  a  riddle  to  himself  and  to  the  world,  the  restless  man  now  wandered  from  one  town  to  another  in  the  Catholic  south,  and  now  turned  up  in  Beriin  in  order  to  read  to  the  brothers  Gerlach  and  to  the  other  Christo-Germanic  members  of  the  Maikdfer-Gesellschaft  his  essay  upon  the  philis tines,  the  audacious  declaration  of  war  of  the  romanticists  against  the  world  of  reality.  He  greeted  the  War  of  Liberation  with  loud  rejoicing,  but  just  as  little  as  Zacharias  Werner  could  he  accommodate  himself  to  the  North  German  Protestant  tone  of  the  movement ;  how  strangely  forced  and  artificial  seemed  his  war  poems,  mostly  written  for  the  glorification  of  Austria:

Through  God  and  thee,  Francis,  'tis  shown.

What  Austria  wills,  she  can  do.

Subsequently  his  mystical  tendency  led  him  into  vulgar  supersti-  tion ;  he  spent  several  years  by  the  sick-bed  of  the  stigmatised  nun  of  Dulmen,  and  recorded  his  observations  upon  the  miraculous  woman  in  ecstatic  writings.     And  yet  the  serene,  heavenly  light of  poetry  again  and  again  made  its  way  through  the  mists  in  which  his  sick  spirit  was  enveloped.  Hardly  had  he  finished  giving  free  rein  to  his  distorted  fancy  in  the  wild  fantasia  of  Die  Griindung  Prags,  an  unhappy  imitation  of  Kleist's  Penthe-  silea,  when  he  pulled  himself  together,  and  actually  succeeded  in  doing  that  which  men  of  learning  had  hitherto  vainly  demanded  of  romanticism — in  producing  popular  matter  in  a  popular  form.  He  created  his  masterpiece,  Geschichte  vom  hraven  Kaspar  und  dent  schonen  Annerl,  the  prototype  of  German  village  stories.  With  perfect  justice  Freiligrath  subsequently  praised  him  in  the  following  words  :  "  Well  did  Brentano  know  the  feelings  of  the  lowly.  No  other  writer  has  described  so  frankly  and  faithfully  that  which  gives  its  simple  greatness  to  the  mental  life  of  the  common  people — the  pent-up  energy  of  untutored  passion,  vainly  strugghng  for  expression  and  then  suddenly  breaking  out  into  consuming  flame."  No  less  unequal  remained  Brentano's  activi-  ties in  subsequent  years.  The  romanticist  epicures  admired  his  story  of  the  barn-door  fowls,  Gockel,  Hinkel,  and  Gackeleia ;  they  could  not  prize  enough  the  way  in  which  here  an  artificial  conceit  was  hunted  to  death,  the  way  in  which  the  life  of  fowls  and  the  life  of  human  beings  were  confused  one  with  another  in  childish  sportiveness.  Meanwhile,  in  his  better  hours,  he  wrote  his  Mdrchen,  valuable  stories  of  Father  Rhine ;  of  the  nixies,  and  of  the  crystal  castle  down  beneath  the  green  waters,  pictures  displaying  roguish  charm,  as  dreamily  lovable  as  the  Rhenish  summer  night.

The  far  stronger  and  clearer  spirit  of  his  friend  Achim  von  Arnim  found  no  satisfaction  in  the  world  of  fable.  At  an  eariier  date,  in  Grdfin  Dolores,  Arnim  had  manifested  high  realistic  talent ;  now,  in  his  romance  Die  Kronenwdchter,  he  ventured  on  to  the  high  seas  of  historic  life,  vigorously  incorporating  with  his  energetic  and  invincible  realism  the  figures  of  German  antiquity,  displaying  all  the  racy  frankness,  the  rough  sensuality  of  old  Germany,  the  uncultivated  rudeness  of  its  camp  morals,  and  the  disputatiously  defiant  spirit  of  the  burghers  of  its  imperial  towns,  showing  these  to  his  readers  sharply  and  clearly,  like  the  figures  of  Diirer's  wood-cuts.  Yet  even  to  this  favoured  disciple  of  the  romanticist  school  there  was  denied  that  orderly  artist-sense  which  controls  the  abundance  of  the  matter.  In  his  romances,  the  simple  and  the  rare  pass  immediately  into  one  another  without  transition,  as  in  life ;  the  narrative  is  choked  by  a  thick  brambly  growth  of  episodes ;   sometimes  the  writer  loses all  interest,  and  sweeps  the  figures  from  the  board  like  an  impatient  chess-player.  Despite  all  its  greatness  of  thought  and  all  its  depth  of  feeling,  his  work  lacks  the  balance  and  the  unity  of  the  highest  art.

Far  greater  approval  was  secured  among  the  mass  of  the  reading  world  by  Amadeus  Hoffmann,  the  only  novel  writer  who  in  fertility  and  resource  could  compete  with  the  busy  little  writers  of  the  pocket-companions.  In  his  extraordinary  double  life  was  incorporated  the  contradictory  romanticist  morality,  which  wantonly  broke  down  every  bridge  between  the  ideal  and  the  real,  and  disdained  on  principle  the  use  of  art  to  glorify  Ufe.  When  he  had  spent  the  day  in  cross-examining  the  arrested  demagogues  and  in  the  conscientious  and  thorough  study  of  the  criminal  records  of  the  Court  of  Appeal,  the  time  came  with  the  evening  for  the  sun  of  his  dream-world  to  rise.  Not  a  word  then  must  any  longer  remind  him  of  the  phantasmagoria  of  life,  then  he  passed  his  time  carousing  with  merry  intimates  or  extempo-  rising with  musical  friends.  Thus  inspired,  he  wrote  fantasies  after  the  manner  of  Callot,  such  as  Die  Elixiere  des  Teufels,  and  Die  Nachtstiicke,  weird  stories  of  demons  and  spectres,  of  dreams  and  wonders,  of  madness  and  crime — the  most  uncanny  ever  produced  by  an  over-wrought  imagination.  It  was  as  if  the  devil-faced  gargoyles  had  descended  from  the  gutters  of  our  ancient  cathedrals.  The  hideous  spectre  came  so  threateningly  close,  was  so  plainly  perceptible  to  the  senses,  that  the  reader,  as  if  paralysed  by  a  nightmare,  was  spellbound,  accepting  every-  thing presented  by  the  bold  humour  and  the  diabolical  charm  of  the  masterly  story-teller.  Yet  ultimately  of  the  crazy  sport  nothing  remained  but  the  dull  numbness  of  physical  terror.

Whilst  in  the  fields  of  drama  and  romance  so  much  that  was  impish  was  pursuing  its  restless  activities,  the  lyrical  poetry  of  romanticism  attained  perfection  in  Ludwig  Uhland.  When  his  poems  were  published  in  the  year  1814,  the  matter-of-fact  man  was  ignored  by  the  critics  of  this  school.  This  worthy  petty-  bourgeois  seemed  the  very  antithesis  of  the  romanticist  itch  for  genius.  In  Paris  he  passed  his  days  in  diligent  study  of  the  manuscripts  of  old  French  poetry,  spending  his  evenings  silently  pacing  the  boulevards  in  the  company  of  the  no  less  silent  Immanuel  Bekker,  mouth  open  and  eyes  closed,  quite  unaffected  by  the  alluring  brilliancy  and  the  temptations  by  which  he  was  surrounded.      Subsequently  leading    a    simple    and    well    ordered life  in  his  native  town  on  the  Neckar,  he  did  not  think  himself  too  good  to  participate  in  word  and  action  in  the  prosaic  consti-  tutional struggles  of  Wiirtemberg.  Yet  it  was  precisely  this  healthy  naturalness  and  bourgeois  efficiency  which  enabled  the  Swabian  poet  to  keep  wisely  within  the  hmits  of  artistic  form,  and  to  provide  for  romanticist  ideals  a  lively  configuration  which  was  in  harmony  with  the  consciousness  of  the  age.  A  thoughtful  artist,  he  remained  completely  indifferent  to  the  literary  disputes  and  aesthetic  doctrines  of  the  schools,  waiting  patiently  for  the  coming  of  the  time  of  poetic  ecstasy  which  brought  to  him  the  blessing  of  song.  He  then  applied  inexor-  ably to  his  own  works  the  critical  acumen  which  other  poets  dissipated  in  the  literary  newspapers ;  alone  among  German  writers  he  exhibited  an  inflexible  artist's  pride  in  retaining  in  his  desk  all  that  was  half  finished  or  half  successful.  His  poetic  energies  were  first  awakened  by  the  heroic  figures  of  our  ancient  poetry,  by  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide,  and  by  those  in  the  Nihelungenlied.  In  the  poems  of  antiquity  he  deplored  the  absence  of  the  profound  background  which  allures  the  fancy  into  the  distances,  but  an  inborn  and  strictly  schooled  sense  of  form  preserved  him  from  the  obscure  exuberance  of  mediaeval  poetry.  This  classicist  of  romanticism  presents  his  figures  to  our  minds  in  firm  and  secure  lineaments.

Whereas  the  earlier  romanticists  were  for  the  most  part  attracted  to  the  German  primaeval  age  by  the  fantastic  stimulus  of  the  strange  and  of  the  antique,  what  Uhland  sought  in  the  past  was  the  purely  human,  that  which  was  ever  living,  and  above  all  that  which  was  homely — the  simple  energy  and  cordiality  of  the  uncultured  Teutonic  nature.  To  him  the  study  of  the  sagas  and  songs  of  old  Germany  seemed  "  a  real  migra-  tion into  the  profounder  nature  of  German  folk-life."  He  felt  that  the  poet,  when  dealing  with  matter  belonging  to  a  remote  period,  must  give  expression  to  such  sensations  only  as  will  find  an  echo  in  the  souls  of  his  contemporaries,  and  he  remained  ever  clearly  conscious  of  the  wide  separation  between  the  ages.  Never  did  his  deHght  in  the  multi-coloured  beauties  of  the  middle  ages  estrange  him  from  the  Protestant  and  democratic  ideas  of  the  new  century.  The  same  poet  who  sang  so  movingly  of  the  heroes  of  the  crusades,  sang  also  with  enthusiasm  of  the  Tree  of  Wittenberg,  which,  with  giant  branches  thrusting  upward  towards  the  light,  grew  through  the  roof  of  the  monk's  cell ;  he  gladly  associated  himself,  too,  with  the  martial  singers  of  the War  of  Liberation,  and  bowed  himself  humbly  before  the  heroic  greatness  of  the  new-risen  fatherland:

"After  such  heroic  sacrifices

What  are  these  songs  worth  to  thee?"

With  vigorous  scorn  he  turned  his  back  upon  the  pseudo-  muse  of  the  sugary  romanticist  masters,  of  the  tricksters  with  assonance,  and  of  the  sonneteers,  holding  firmly  to  the  saying  of  the  earliest  writers,  "  Plain  speaking  and  good  feeling  make  the  true  German  song."  Vivid  popular  expressions  streamed  spontaneously  forth  from  this  master  of  vigorous  language.  So  easily  did  his  unaffected  verses  seem  to  run,  so  freshly  and  serenely  did  his  figures  move,  that  readers  failed  to  notice  how  much  artist's  dihgence  was  concealed  behind  the  purity  of  these  simple  forms,  how  deeply  the  poet  had  had  to  explore  the  wells  of  knowledge  before  Roland  and  Taillefer,  Eberhard  der  Rauschebart,  and  Schenk  von  Limburg  could  be  presented  in  so  famihar  and  convincing  a  manner.  He  chose  by  preference  for  his  narratives  the  form  of  the  dramatic  ballad,  so  well  suited  to  the  passionate  Teuton  temperament;  on  rare  occasions,  where  the  nature  of  the  matter  demanded  it,  he  employed  the  quietly-record-  ing minutely-descriptive  southland  romance  form.  It  was  not  detail  which  seemed  to  him  important,  but  its  reflection  in  the  aroused  human  heart.  The  most  intimate  recesses  of  the  German  temperament  lay  open  to  him,  and  with  extraordinary  success  at  times,  in  a  few  unpretentious  words,  he  was  able  to  disclose  some  intimate  secret  of  our  people.  More  simply  than  in  the  poem  of  Der  gufe  Kamarad  there  has  never  been  given  an  account  of  the  way  in  which  the  contentious  Teutons  have  always  been  ready  for  the  fray,  from  the  days  of  the  Cimbri  to  the  days  of  the  French  wars — eager  for  battle  and  devotedly  pious,  so  kind  hearted  and  so  loyal.

Even  in  his  narrative  verses  the  power  of  sentiment  was  so  strongly  displayed  that  many  poems  which  he  himself  termed  ballads  soon  became  popular  as  songs.  It  was  on  account  of  his  songs  in  especial  that  he  was  beloved  of  the  people,  who  hailed  him  joyfully,  at  first  in  his  Swabian  home,  and  afterwards  throughout  Germany,  so  that  he  ultimately  became  the  most  popular  of  all  our  great  poets.  In  the  straightforward,  pro-  foundly felt  words  describing  the  joys  and  the  sorrows'^of  love,  the   happiness    of   the   wanderer   and   the   pain   of   parting,    the pleasures  of  wine  and  of  arms,  everyone,  whether  gentle  or  simple,  rediscovered  memories  of  his  own  life.  The  High  Germans,  more  particularly,  were  reminded  of  home  when  from  between  the  Unes  of  the  poems  there  always  seemed  to  greet  them  the  Swabian  land  with  its  vine-clad  hills  and  sunny  rivers,  with  its  cheerful  and  song-loving  inhabitants.  The  simple  strains,  resembling  those  of  folk-songs,  involuntarily  challenged  the  reader  to  sing  them  ;  before  long,  composers  rivalled  one  another  in  setting  them  to  music.  All  the  youth  of  the  land  followed  suit.  Uhland's  songs  were  heard  wherever  German  soldiers  were  marching,  wherever  students,  singers,  and  gymnasts,  assembled  in  happy  festival ;  they  became  a  power  of  blessing  in  the  freshly  blossoming  and  vigorous  folk-life  of  the  new  century.  The  younger  generation,  steeled  in  war,  pressed  forth  from  the  imprisoned  chamber  air  of  the  good  old  time,  forth  into  freedom ;  the  German  wanderlust  demanded  its  rights ;  old  and  half  forgotten  popular  festivals  were  once  again  honoured.  The  new  folk-songs  threw  a  bridge  across  the  deep  chasm  which  separated  the  cultured  from  the  uncultured,  and  led  the  masses,  who  read  nothing,  for  the  first  time  to  an  appreciation  of  the  poetry  of  their  own  day.  Even  though  that  priceless  unbroken  unity  of  national  civiUsation  which  had  once  existed  in  the  days  of  the  Hohenstaufen  remained  ever  unattainable  to  the  learned  culture  of  the  modern  world,  there  nevertheless  ensued  a  wholesome  return  to  nature,  so  that  by  degrees  a  portion  at  least  of  the  finest  German  poems  became  dear  to  the  whole  nation  and  comprehensible  to  all.  How  fast  beat  the  heart  of  the  Swabian  poet  when  he  saw  the  joy  of  song  newly  awakening  among  his  people ;  full  of  confidence  he  issued  to  his  comrades  the  spirited  exhortation :

"Sing  who  can,  your  song  forth-giving

In  German  poets'  forest-ground!

Rejoicing  all  and  truly  living,

When  songs  from  every  twig  resound!"

The  homely  man  could  never  have  too  much  of  the  noisy  thronging  of  popular  festivals,  and  he  secured  at  times  the  highest  reward  of  the  poet  when  upon  a  journey  in  the  Rhine-  land  he  came  by  chance  in  the  forest  upon  young  people  singing  his  own  songs  with  their  clear  voices ;  or  when  a  senior  student  of  Tiibingen  was  taking  ceremonial  departure  across  the  Neckar  bridge,  and  the  parting  song  Es  ziehet  der  Bursch  in die  Weite  reverberated  as  far  as  the  vineyard  of  the  poet's  house  on  the  Oesterberg.

It  is  true  that  his  poems  embraced  a  comparatively  narrow  circle  of  ideas  ;  he  sang,  as  had  formerly  sung  the  knightly  poet  with  the  golden  harp,  almost  exclusively  of  "God's  love,  of  the  hero's  courage,  of  the  gentleness  of  love,  of  the  sweet  may-  blossom."  In  his  tragedies,  too,  he  preferred  to  extol  the  tenacious  loyalty  of  ancient  German  friendship  ;  his  plays  lack  the  compelling  force  of  dramatic  passion.  His  patriotic  poems  do  not  attain  to  the  vigorous  political  emotion  of  his  favourite  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide  ;  the  fine  Promethean  impulse  to  fathom  the  highest  problem  of  existence,  the  whence  and  whither  of  mankind,  rarely  touched  his  peaceful  imagination.  For  this  reason,  Goethe  would  hear  nothing  of  the  roses  and  the  wall-  flowers, the  blond  maidens  and  mournful  knights,  of  the  Swabian  singer ;  he  failed  to  recognise  that  in  the  writing  of  songs  and  ballads  no  one  rivalled  him  so  nearly  as  did  Uhland,  and  he  expressed  the  acrimonious  view  that  in  all  this  there  was  nothing  which  went  to  the  fashioning  of  human  destiny.  The  Germans,  however,  had  long  before  tacitly  conspired  to  follow  the  old  master's  own  precepts,  saying  to  themselves,  if  I  love  you  that  is  my  own  affair.  The  faithful  Swabian  knew  how  impossible  it  is  to  convince  a  master  of  his  error.  His  own  love  was  unaf  ected  by  the  old  man's  injustice.  He  was  never  weary  of  sending  Goethe  his  poet's  greeting,  and  of  telHng  the  nation  how,  long  ago,  in  the  golden  springtime  this  king's  son  had  awakened  the  sleeping  princess  of  German  poesy,  and  how  the  sculptured  foHage  of  Strasburg  cathedral  once  rustled  when  the  young  poet  mounted  the  winding  stair  of  the  tower — "  the  poet  who  now  for  half  a  century  has  been  singing  the  world  of  the  beautiful."

Although  after  the  age  of  thirty  the  taciturn  man  published  few  and  isolated  poems,  and  was  content  as  a  talented  investi-  gator and  collector  to  participate  in  the  great  work  of  the  rediscovery  of  our  primaeval  age,  his  reputation  as  a  poet  never-  theless continued  to  increase  from  year  to  year.  The  songs  of  his  youth  could  never  grow  old.  Highly  cultured  and  yet  inconspicuous ;  an  enthusiast  for  the  ancient  glories  of  the  empire  and  of  the  Austrian  imperial  race,  and  yet  a  democrat,  to  whom  "  the  princes'  counsellors  and  court  chamberlains  decorated  with  dull  stars  upon  their  cold  bosoms "  always  remained  objects  of  suspicion ;    in  the  political  struggle  fearless and  loyal,  as  the  motto  on  the  national  coat-of-arms  demands,  to  the  point  of  defiant  obstinacy — he  seemed  to  the  Swabians  the  typical  representative  of  his  country,  the  best  of  the  tribal  fellowship.  They  revered  him,  declaring:  "Every  word  which  Uhland  has  spoken  has  been  justified  by  the  event."

A  crowd  of  young  poets  followed  in  the  master's  footsteps,  and  soon  came  to  speak  of  itself  as  the  Swabian  school  of  poets.  Here  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  modern  German  poetry  was  the  attempt  ventured  at  the  foundation  of  a  separate  terri-  torial culture,  taking,  however,  the  form  of  a  perfectly  harmless  particularism.  Nothing  was  further  from  the  mind  of  these  poets  than  the  intention  to  cut  themselves  adrift  from  the  common  work  of  the  nation  ;  they  merely  felt  cordially  happy  and  proud  because  they  belonged  to  this  cheerful  land  of  wine  and  song,  to  this  stock  which  had  once  borne  the  war-standard  of  the  Holy  Empire,  and  which  was  more  intimately  associated  than  any  other  with  the  great  memories  of  our  middle  age.  Amiable  serenity  and  natural  freshness  were  characteristic  of  the  countless  ballads  and  songs  of  these  poets,  they  remained  German  and  chaste,  and  continued  to  preserve  the  pure  forms  of  lyrical  poetry  even  at  a  later  date  when  the  new  cosmopolitan  revolutionary  spirit,  disturbing  nobility  of  artistic  form  and  innocence  of  mind,  invaded  German  poetry.  Yet  the  marvellous  poetical  mood  of  the  songs  of  Uhland  was  as  inimitable  as  was  the  roguish  humour  which  enabled  him  to  depict  so  happily  the  valiant  spirit  of  the  German  heroic  age.  Many  of  the  Swabian  ballad-singers  gradually  lapsed  into  the  rhymed  prose  of  the  meistersingers ;  their  dull  amiability  could  offer  no  ideas  to  the  new  century.

By  far  the  most  distinguished  spirit  in  this  circle  was  Justinus  Kerner,  a  man  of  thoroughly  poetic  nature,  full  of  droll  humour  and  profound  sensibility.  His  hospitable  home  among  the  vineyards  close  by  the  ancient  castle  of  Weibertreu  near  Weinsberg,  celebrated  in  song  and  story,  remained  for  years  the  meeting  place  of  all  fine  intelligences  from  the  highlands.  Whoever  had  been  cordially  received  there  by  the  poet  and  his  wife  "  Rickele,"  whoever  had  heard  him  over  his  Neckar  wines  telling  extravagant  anecdotes,  or  had  Hstened  to  him  reciting  his  brilliant  and  intensely  felt  songs,  was  hardly  surprised  to  learn  that  even  this  thoroughly  Protestant  and  modem  man  did  not  remain  untouched  by  the  mystical  tendency  of  romanti-  cism.    Just  as   Brentano  revered  the  wonder-worker  Katherina Emmerich,  so  Kerner  honoured  the  prophetess  of  Prevorst,  a  sick  peasant  woman  of  the  neighbourhood,  believing  that  through  her  instrumentahty  he  could  overhear  the  harmonies  of  two  worlds.  That  which  drove  him  into  these  obscure  regions  was  not  the  anxiety  of  conscience  of  an  enchained  and  unstable  soul,  but  the  poetical  enthusiasm  of  a  childlike  temperament  which  could  find  no  peace  in  the  dry  rationalism  of  the  Enlightenment.

Meanwhile  the  nation  first  began  fully  to  understand  what  it  possessed  in  its  greatest  poet.  Ever  more  powerfully  and  commandingly  did  the  figure  of  Goethe  rise  before  their  eyes,  as  the  excitement  of  the  war  time  passed  away,  and  as  the  three  first  parts  of  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit,  which  were  published  during  the  years  of  1811  to  1814,  gradually  made  their  way  through  wider  circles.  Among  the  autobiographies  of  notable  men,  this  book  occupies  as  isolated  a  position  as  does  Faust  in  the  realm  of  poetry.  Since  St.  Augustine's  Confessions,  no  auto-  biographical work  had  described  so  profoundly,  so  truthfully,  and  so  powerfully  the  most  beautiful  secret  of  human  life,  the  growth  of  genius.  To  the  severe  saint,  the  forms  of  the  life  of  this  world  seemed  to  disappear  completely  in  face  of  the  crushing  thought  of  the  sinfulness  of  all  creatures,  and  in  face  of  the  yearning  after  the  Hving  God ;  but  through  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit  there  breathes  the  spirit  of  a  poet  who  finds  joy  in  this  world,  who  endeavours  to  contemplate  eternal  love  in  the  abundant  life  of  creation,  and  who  from  the  highest  flights  of  thought  returns  ever  to  the  simple  faith  of  the  artist  :  "  What  can  be  the  use  of  all  this  array  of  suns  and  planets  and  moons,  of  stars  and  milky  ways,  of  comets  and  nebulae,  of  worlds  that  have  been  and  worlds  that  are  yet  to  be,  if  in  the  end  a  happy  man  is  not  instinctively  to  rejoice  in  its  existence  ?  "  As  honestly  as  had  Rousseau,  Goethe  recognised  the  faults  and  errors  of  his  youth  ;  but  his  secure  sense  of  style  preserved  him  from  Rousseau's  forced  and  artificial  outspokenness  which  led  the  Genevese  author  into  shamelessness.  Goethe  did  not,  like  Rousseau,  lay  bare  even  those  half-unconscious  and  contradictory  surgings  of  sentiment  which  are  endurable  only  because  they  are  fugitive,  and  which  when  subjected  to  detailed  analysis  appear  grotesque,  but  gave  merely  the  important  essentials  of  his  life,  relating  how  he  had  become  a  poet.

Whilst  of  Rousseau's  Confessions  there  remains  in  the  end  nothing  more  than  the  painful  recognition  of  the  sinfulness  of  man,  who  oscillates  unsupported  between  his  archetype  and  his caricature,  between  God  and  beast,  the  readers  of  Dichtung  uud  Wahrheit  attain  to  the  happy  feeUng  that  the  German  writer  has  in  a  twofold  sense  succeeded  in  doing  what  Milton  once  demanded  of  the  poet,  namely,  in  transfiguring  his  own  life  to  make  it  a  true  work  of  art.  Just  as  he  had  inherited  talent  from  his  mother  and  character  from  his  father,  and  now  little  by  little,  but  with  unequalled  steadfastness,  diffused  his  energies  throughout  the  entire  domain  of  human  contemplation,  imagination,  and  cognition,  so  at  each  stage  of  his  development,  did  his  spirit  appear  healthy,  exemplary,  accordant  with  nature,  and  therewith  extraordinarily  simple  in  all  its  wonderful  transformations.  The  talented  Fanny  Mendelssohn  expressed  the  feeling  of  all  readers  when  she  prophesied :  "  God  will  not  summon  this  man  home  prematurely ;  he  must  remain  on  earth  until  he  has  attained  an  advanced  age,  and  must  show  his  people  what  living  means."  Reverence  for  Goethe  was  a  bond  of  unity  between  the  best  men  of  this  distracted  nation  ;  the  higher  the  culture  of  any  German,  the  more  profoundly  did  he  venerate  the  poet.  The  tone  of  the  book  manifested  the  feeling  which  Goethe  had  once  expressed  in  youth :  that  he  would  not  have  been  astonished  if  people  had  placed  a  crown  upon  his  head.  Yet  he  stood  far  too  high  to  be  tainted  by  those  involuntary  tendencies  to  self-conceit  which  are  found  in  almost  all  confessions.  The  mighty  self-consciousness  which  found  expression  in  these  memoirs  was  the  serene  repose  of  a  spirit  perfectly  at  one  with  itself,  the  happy  frankness  of  a  poet  who  all  his  life  had  been  engaged  in  writing  nothing  but  confessions,  and  who  had  long  been  accustomed  to  answer  censorious  and  envious  spirits  by  saying  :   "I  did  not  make  myself."

Whenever  he  had  intervened  in  German  life  he  had  furnished  the  highest.  Now,  too,  the  figures  which  he  conjured  out  of  memory  were  illuminated  by  a  spiritual  warmth  which  can  be  paralleled  only  by  that  of  the  finest  of  his  own  free  imaginary  figures.  From  the  parsonage  of  Sesenheim  there  shone  a  ray  of  love  penetrating  the  youthful  dreams  of  every  German  heart,  and  whoever  recalled  the  happy  days  of  his  own  childhood,  instantly  pictured  the  rambling  old  house  in  the  Hirschgraben,  the  fountain  in  the  courtyard,  saw  and  looked  into  the  deep  laughing  eyes  of  Goethe's  joyous  mother.  The  poet  said  in  the  words  of  his  own  old  man :  "  We  wander  among  the  shades  in  the  form  in  which  we  have  left  earth."  To  him    another   destiny  was    allotted,    for   so   enthralling   was   the charm  of  this  book  that  even  to-day  when  Goethe  is  named  almost  everyone  thinks  first  of  the  kingly  youth ;  his  years  of  manhood,  which  he  did  not  himself  describe  for  us,  are  in  the  shade  when  contrasted  with  the  sunshine  of  these  early  days  of  his  history.

Just  as  Rousseau  intertwined  contemporary  history  with  the  narrative  of  his  life,  so  Goethe,  with  incomparably  greater  profundity  and  thoroughness,  gave  a  comprehensive  historical  picture  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  Frederician  age.  Flaming  up  once  more  in  youthful  fire,  the  old  man  described  the  springtime  of  German  art,  filled  with  joyful  hopes,  described  how  everything  was  germinating  and  pressing  upward,  how  the  fresh  aroma  of  the  soil  filled  the  atmosphere  as  it  arose  from  the  freshly  tilled  fields,  how  one  tree  stood  bare  beside  another  which  had  already  burst  forth  into  leaf.  How  often  had  Niebuhr  and  other  contemporaries  of  Goethe  refused  to  admit  that  the  poet  possessed  the  historic  sense,  taking  this  view  because  he  was  so  fond  of  immersing  himself  in  nature.  Now,  however,  he  performed  the  two  highest  tasks  of  the  historian,  the  artistic  and  the  scientific,  showing  by  his  work  that  the  two  are  one.  So  vividly  did  he  recall  the  past  for  his  readers  that  they  all  felt  as  if  they  were  themselves  living  among  the  events  described,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  he  enabled  them  to  understand  what  had  happened,  to  recognise  the  necessary  sequence  of  events.  The  work  was  composed  in  the  days  of  the  Napoleonic  world-  dominion,  at  a  time  when  the  writer  seemed  to  despair  of  the  political  re-estabUshment  of  the  fatherland ;  and  yet  from  every  sentence  there  spoke  the  confident  and  hopeful  mood  of  the  Frederician  epoch.  Not  a  word  showed  that  after  the  recent  defeats  the  poet  had  abandoned  faith  in  Germany's  great  future.  Even  now,  when  all  the  world  gave  up  the  Prussian  state  for  lost,  and  when  even  the  Teutonising  enthusiasts  turned  away  with  indifference  from  the  image  of  Frederick,  Goethe  showed  for  the  first  time  in  stirring  words  how  intimately  the  new  art  was  associated  with  the  heroic  glories  of  Prussia :  in  Germany  there  had  never  been  a  lack  of  talented  men,  but  a  national  strength,  a  veritable  content,  was  first  given  to  our  imaginative  life  by  the  deeds  of  Frederick.  Thus  the  poet  had  never  inwardly  become  unfaithful  to  his  nation.  He  said  once  in  those  weary  days  that  there  now  remained  only  one  sacred  duty,  to  maintain  spiritual  mastery,  and  amid  the  general  ruin  to  preserve  the  palladium  of  our  literature!

It  was  a  terrible  misfortune  that  Goethe  had  absolutely  no  confidence  in  the  awakening  political  life  of  the  nation.  Pain-  fully enough  did  he  experience  the  truth  of  his  own  saying,  that  the  poet  is  by  nature  unpartisan,  and  therefore  in  times  of  political  passion  can  hardly  escape  a  tragical  fate.  At  times,  indeed,  he  had  intimations  of  a  happier  future.  When  the  grande  armee  passed  through  on  the  way  to  Russia,  and  those  who  were  disheartened  expressed  the  opinion  that  now  the  world-  empire  had  gained  completion,  he  rejoined,  "  Wait  a  while,  and  see  how  many  of  them  will  return !  "  Yet  when  there  did  indeed  return  no  more  than  pitiable  remnants  of  the  innumerable  host,  and  when  the  Prussian  nation  arose  like  one  man,  the  poet  shuddered  at  the  rough  enthusiasms  of  the  "  undis-  cipHned  volunteers."  He  never  forgot  how  Httle  the  Germans  had  in  former  days  understood  the  lofty  patriotic  sentiments  of  Hermann  und  Dorothea,  and  he  did  not  believe  that  his  fellow-  countrymen  possessed  the  enduring  energy  of  poUtical  will.  From  the  first  he  had  exchanged  ideas  with  the  ancient  civihsation  of  the  west,  and  now  contemplated  with  sinister  forebodings  the  passage  of  the  peoples  of  the  east  across  the  peaceful  land  of  Central  Germany,  the  coming  of  the  "  Cossacks,  Croats,  Cassubians,  and  Samlanders,  brown  and  other  hussars."  He  strictly  forbade  his  son  to  join  the  army  of  the  allies,  and  had  then  to  suffer  the  experience  of  seeing  the  passionate  youth,  ashamed  and  desperate,  undergo  a  sudden  change  of  sentiments  which  led  him  to  display  in  his  father's  house  an  idolatrous  veneration  for  Napoleon.

It  was  the  news  of  peace  which  first  delivered  the  poet  from  his  mood  of  dull  depression.  He  breathed  more  freely,  and  wrote  for  the  peace  festival  Das  Epimenides  Erwachen,  in  order,  after  his  manner,  to  unburden  himself  by  a  poetical  confession.  The  masses,  who  on  such  an  occasion  had  rightly  expected  a  popular  and  generally  comprehensible  work,  did  not  know  what  to  make  of  this  allegorical  figure  ;  yet  anyone  who  was  capable  of  unriddling  the  meaning  of  the  fable  was  profoundly  moved  to  hear  how  the  wise  dreamer,  "  who  had  slept  through  this  night  of  horror,"  greeted  the  victorious  fighters,  and  expressed  shame  for  his  long  slumber,  *'  for  by  the  sufferings  you  have  endured  you  have  become  greater  than  I."  This  was  an  admission  which  put  criticism  to  shame :  but  it  was  by  no  means  an  abasement,  for  at  the  same  time  Epimenides  thanked  the  gods  who  during  these  stormy  years  had  preserved  for  him the  purity  of  his  feehngs.  Henceforward  Goethe  looked  back  upon  the  War  of  Liberation  with  a  freer  and  serener  glance,  and  for  the  statue  which  the  estates  of  Mecklenburg  erected  to  Blucher  in  Rostock  he  wrote  the  verses:

"In  tarrying  and  in  war.

In  defeat  and  in  victory,

Self-contained  and  great,

He  delivered  us

From  our  foes!"

As  soon  as  arms  had  been  laid  down  he  went  **  to  the  Rhine's  long  lines  of  hills  and  favoured  plains."  Two  happy  summers,  that  of  1 8 14  and  that  of  181 5,  were  spent  by  him  in  the  liberated  Rhineland  whose  sunny  life  made  it  seem  more  homelike  to  him  than  any  other  region  of  Germany.  His  heart  leapt  when  he  saw  everywhere  reawakening  the  old  Rhenish  cheerfulness  of  spirit,  and  the  old  friendly  intercourse  between  the  two  banks,  and  when  upon  the  Rochusberg  at  Bingen,  where  the  French  outposts  had  so  long  kept  watch,  he  saw  the  people  assembHng  once  more  in  a  cheerful  church-festival.  In  the  pages  he  penned  in  commemoration  of  these  happy  days,  the  old  man  seemed  to  regain  the  joie  de  vivre  which  had  formerly  characterised  him  as  a  Strasburg  student.  Reminiscences  of  his  Strasburg  studies  were  regained,  too,  in  friendly  intercourse  with  Bertram  and  the  brothers  Boisseree.  He  delighted  in  visiting  the  cathedral  of  Cologne,  went  to  see  all  the  ancient  buildings  on  the  Main  and  the  Rhine,  and  spent  a  long  time  in  Heidelberg.  Here  was  now  to  be  seen  the  collection  of  ancient  German  paintings  which  had  been  made  by  the  brothers  Boisseree,  with  the  altar-piece  of  St.  Bartholomew  and  the  great  St.  Christopher — this  was  a  shrine  of  pilgrimage  for  all  youthful  Teutons  and  the  cradle  of  our  new  artistic  research.  The  figures  drawn  by  Diirer,  "  their  vigorous  life  and  virility,  their  inner  energy  and  steadfastness,"  had  powerfully  attracted  the  poet  in  youth  ;  what  pleasure  it  now  gave  him  to  be  able  to  admire  in  the  works  of  the  old  Dutch  painters  and  of  those  of  the  school  of  Cologne,  the  industry,  the  rich  significance,  and  the  simplicity  of  our  German  forefathers.  "  How  stupid  we  are,"  he  exclaimed ;  "we  actually  imagine  that  our  grandmothers  were  not  beautiful  like  ourselves !  "  He  made  a  point,  too,  of  his  admiration  for  the  Nibelungenlied,  in  opposition  to  Kotzebue  and  the  other  dullards  who  cracked  jokes  about  the  heroic  greatness  of  Teutonic  antiquity.    To  his three  friends  in  Cologne,  Bertram  and  the  two  Boisserees,  "  who  turned  back  courageously  to  the  past,"  he  sent  his  portrait  with  friendly  verses.  The  Christo-Germanic  enthusiasts  exulted,  for  now  the  mountain  had  come  down  into  the  valley,  now  the  old  pagan  king  had  paid  homage  to  the  cathedral  of  Cologne  ;  they  already  regarded  the  poet  as  one  of  themselves,  and  hoped  for  the  speedy  appearance  of  a  Christian  Iphigenia.

How  Httle  did  they  know  the  many-sided  spirit  of  the  man  who  at  this  very  moment  was  saying  with  quiet  self-confidence:

"Who  knows  not  how  for  years  three  thousand

To  himself  account  to  give,

May  remain  in  darkness  unenlightened.

May  from  day  to  day  still  live!"

When  Goethe  frankly  recognised  the  sound  nucleus  of  German  romanticism,  it  was  far  from  his  intention  in  advanced  age  to  return  to  the  circle  of  ideas  of  his  Goetz  von  Berlichingen.  He  remained  the  classicist,  the  man  who  had  translated  Benvenuto  Cellini,  and  who  in  his  work  on  Winckelmann  had  announced  the  evangel  of  the  German  renaissance.  Diirer  was  so  dear  to  him  precisely  because  this  brilliant  spirit  resembled  himself  in  the  combination  of  Teutonic  wealth  of  ideas  with  southern  beauty  of  form.  The  experienced  man,  who  had  often  humbly  described  himself  as  "  a  man  of  narrow  views,"  knew  only  too  well  how  readily  the  claims  of  life  mislead  into  an  involuntary  one-  sidedness,  and  saw  therefore  with  disapproval  how  the  conscious  and  deUberate  one-sidedness  of  the  Teutonist  movement  threatened  to  atrophy  in  the  Germans  their  best  good,  their  free  outlook  on  the  world,  their  frank  receptivity.  When  the  younger  generation  actually  undertook  to  spoil  his  beloved  language  by  an  arrogant  process  of  purification,  to  rob  it  of  fertilising  intercourse  with  foreign  civilisation,  he  broke  forth  into  titanic  wrath.  The  "  discontented,  opinionated,  and  rough-shod "  methods  of  the  new  generation  repelled  him — these  clumsy  unkempt  characteristics,  this  strangely  composed  and  shapeless  amalgam  of  natural  Teutonic  roughness  and  artificial  Jacobin  insolence.  It  was  especially  in  the  young  painters  who  had  estabHshed  their  studio  in  the  monastery  on  the  Quirinal,  that  Goethe  speedily  noted  that  inadequacy  which  is  ever  characteristic  of  fanaticism.  The  fruitful  early  years  of  mediaeval  enthusiasm  were  over.  Now  the  watchword  was  "  piety  and  genius !  "  Diligence  was  despised,  and  many  of  the  works  of  the  Nazarene school  seemed  as  bald  and  empty  as  were  the  monastery  cells  of  San  Isidoro.  This  tendency  was  strongly  opposed  by  the  poet.  He  did  not  even  grant  a  word  of  acknowledgment  for  the  illustrations  to  Faust  by  Peter  von  Cornelius,  for  he  felt  that  the  great  painter  had  understood  but  one  side  of  his  poem,  and  had  hardly  noticed  the  classic  ideas  which  were  subsequently  to  be  more  fully  developed  in  the  second  part  of  the  work.

Above  all,  the  free  spirit  of  the  old  classicist  was  repelled  by  what  he  termed  "  the  baby's  pap,"  by  the  artificial  neo-Catholic  characteristics  of  romanticism  in  its  decay.  A  momentous  influence  upon  the  whole  later  course  of  German  civilisation  down  to  our  own  day  was  exercised  by  the  fact  that  Goethe  never  came  into  contact  with  a  free  and  spiritual  form  of  the  positive  Christian  faith.  In  his  youth  he  had  associated  for  a  time  with  the  fine  spirits  of  the  pietist  movement,  but  their  narrow  outlook  was  one  which  could  not  enthral  the  man  of  genius.  In  old  age  he  never  came  into  close  association  with  the  adherents  of  that  profound,  broad-minded,  and  highly  cultured  Christianity  which  had  gradually  ripened  during  the  terrible  years  of  suffering  and  of  battle.  Had  he  done  so,  it  would  hardly  have  escaped  his  keen  insight  that  such  men  as  Stein  and  Arndt  derived  their  imperturbable  hopefulness,  their  moral  superiority,  when  compared  with  Hardenberg  or  Gentz,  chiefly  from  the  energy  of  living  faith.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  the  last  and  greatest  representative  of  our  classic  age  noticed  little  of  the  reawakening  religious  life  of  the  nation,  and  for  several  decades  a  contempt  for  rehgion  was  in  the  circles  of  highest  culture  regarded  as  an  almost  essential  index  of  the  Hberal  mind.  The  lath-hke  figures  of  the  painters  of  the  Nazarene  school,  with  their  strained  simplicity,  and  the  now  sugary  and  now  extravagant  utterances  of  the  romanticist  apostates,  necessarily  aroused  Goethe's  anger  ;  and  when  he  saw  the  elderly  Frau  von  Kriidener  pla5dng  the  part  of  the  illuminate,  of  the  God-inspired  prophetess,  his  Protestant  blood  boiled  over.  The  falsification  of  science  by  religious  sentiments  and  mystical  leanings  always  remained  an  offence  to  him,  and  he  hailed  with  delight  Gottfried  Hermann's  "  critical,  hellenistic,  and  patriotic  "  campaigns  against  Creuzer's  symbolism.  He  felt  strongly  that  all  our  German  characteristics  would  perish  should  we  ever  completely  abandon  our  cosmo-  politan sense  ;  he  was  never  weary  of  speaking  of  the  necessity  for  a  world-literature,  never  weary  of  commending  all  that  was  genuine  and  good  in  the  works  of  the  neighbour  nations ;    and he  even  found  words  of  approval  when  Uvaroff,  the  talented  Russian,  proposed  that  every  science  should  be  represented  only  in  a  congenial  tongue,  and  archaeology  therefore  in  German  alone.

The  new  constitutional  doctrines  met  with  Goethe's  approval  just  as  little  as  did  exaggerated  Teutonism.  In  the  simple  and  genial  relationships  of  life  he  ever  preserved  a  touching  kindness  and  consideration  for  the  common  man,  and  had  a  profound  veneration  for  the  strong  and  secure  instincts  of  popular  senti-  ment. He  often  repeated  that  those  whom  we  speak  of  as  the  lower  classes  are  unquestionably  the  highest  classes  to  God.  While  actually  engaged  in  writing  his  Iphigenia,  his  kindly  heart  was  continually  disturbed  by  the  thought  of  the  hungry  hosiery  workers  of  Apolda.  But  in  the  state,  in  art,  and  in  science,  he  displayed  the  aristocratic  disposition  characteristic  of  every  notable  intelligence,  and  vigorously  defended  the  natural  privileges  of  culture.  In  the  popular  scenes  of  his  Egmont  he  had  long  before  plainly  expressed  his  views  regarding  the  political  capacity  of  the  masses.  "  It  brings  disorder  if  we  listen  to  the  crowd,"  such  was  his  answer  when  the  spokesmen  of  liberalism  confidently  declared  that  the  infallible  wisdom  of  the  people  would  know  how  to  heal  all  the  troubles  of  German  political  life.  The  un-German  characteristics  of  the  liberal  journalists,  their  dependence  on  the  doctrines  of  the  French,  seemed  contemptible  to  his  German  sentiments ;  their  rationalist  lucidity  reminded  him  of  Christoph  Friedrich  Nicolai,  and  at  the  same  time  filled  him  with  concern,  for  he  lived  in  the  belief  that  a  culture  based  upon  pure  reason  must  lead  to  anarchy,  since  reason  possesses  no  authority.  Soon,  too,  he  observed  with  disgust  how  the  young  liberals  became  infected  with  the  same  intolerant  spirit  as  had  formerly  been  exhibited  by  the  heretic  hunters  of  the  Berlinese  Enlightenment,  and  how  they  despised  all  who  held  other  opinions,  regarding  them  as  serfs  of  princes  or  of  priests.  In  opposition  to  these  slaves  of  faction,  he  maintained  that  there  existed  but  one  true  liberalism,  that  of  the  sentiments,  of  the  living  emotion. 

The  growth  of  journalism  filled  him  with  unconquerable  disgust.  He  saw  how  superficialising  and  stifling  was  the  influence  exercised  upon  general  culture  by  this  itch  for  the  news  of  the  day,  this  unwholesome  mingling  of  idle  gossip  with  political  information,  how  much  effrontery  and  futility  would  flourish  luxuriantly  beneath  the  irresponsible  anonymity  of  all  those  who  sat  here  in  judgment  over  men  and  things.  "  A  profound  scorn  for  public  opinion  "  seemed  to  him  the  only  outcome  of  the highly  prized  freedom  of  the  press.  Shrugging  his  shoulders  he  turned  his  back  upon  the  idols  of  the  day :  "  Should  one  who  lives  in  world  history  concern  himself  about  the  passing  moment  ?  "  How  solitary,  too,  had  the  old  man  become.  Herder  and  Wieland  had  passed  away,  and  an  ignoble  humiliation  had  disturbed  the  fine  relationship  between  him  and  his  friend  the  grand  duke.  The  poet  could  not  endure  that  a  trained  dog  should  show  off  his  tricks  "  where  the  crowned  darling  of  the  Muses  had  poured  forth  the  consecrated  fire  of  the  inner  world."  The  grand  duke,  however,  held  fast  to  his  whim  ;  Goethe  had  to  give  way  before  Aubry's  dog,  and  withdrew  from  the  direction  of  the  Weimar  theatre.

Yet  nothing  disturbed  the  free  serenity  of  his  nature.  With  youthful  zeal,  in  his  new  periodical  Kunst  und  Altertum,  he  defended  the  classical  ideals  as  he  had  formerly  defended  them  in  the  Propylden.  In  this  campaign  against  what  he  termed  "  the  new  cant  of  non-art "  (die  neue  frommelnde  Unkunst)  he  was  supported  by  many  of  his  artist  friends  at  Weimar.  It  is  true  that  the  poet  stood  on  the  dividing  line  between  two  epochs,  and  the  proud  and  confident  tone  of  his  polemic  concealed  at  times  a  sense  of  insecurity.  Just  as  formerly  Winckelmann  had  simultaneously  exhibited  an  enthusiasm  for  the  classical  sculptures  in  the  Villa  Albani  and  for  the  frosty  elegance  of  a  Raphael  Mengs,  so  also  Goethe  did  not  break  entirely  with  his  old  comrade  Tischbein,  and  adorned  a  stiff  painting  by  his  friend,  which  displayed  little  or  no  natural  truth,  with  commendatory  verses  of  his  own !  Yet  he  remained  in  touch  with  all  the  freely  aspiring  talents  of  German  art,  and  greeted  with  warm  praise  the  first  bold  efforts  of  Christian  Ranch.

More  effective  than  this  critical  activity  was  the  appearance  of  Die  Italienische  Reise  in  1817,  For  a  long  time  these  memorials  of  his  Italian  journey  had  been  circulated  by  the  poet  among  his  friends  ;  now,  collected  and  revised,  they  were  published  with  the  deliberate  intention  of  throwing  light  upon  Rome,  upon  the  works  of  classical  antiquity,  and  upon  those  of  the  Renaissance.  The  Germans  were  to  be  brought  to  share  the  feeling,  the  uncon-  querable yearnings,  which  had  once  driven  him  to  the  Eternal  City,  were  to  learn  that  he  could  not  tarry  even  in  Florence,  how  in  Assisi  he  had  eyes  only  for  the  slender  columns  of  the  temple  of  Minerva,  and  could  not  vouchsafe  a  glance  at  the  "  gloomy  dome  "  of  St.  Francis,  the  consecrated  spot  where  Giotto's  art  had   once   awakened,   and  how   finally   beneath   the   Porta  del Popolo  he  at  length  felt  secure  of  Rome.  Then  readers  had  to  follow  him  through  all  those  rich  days,  the  most  beautiful  and  most  fertile  of  his  life  :  when  in  the  morning  the  sun  rose  over  the  jagged  summits  of  the  Sabine  hills,  and  the  poet  walked  alone  along  the  Tiber  to  the  springs  of  the  Campagna  ;  when  amid  the  vestiges  of  the  Forum,  as  a  partner  in  the  councils  of  destiny,  he  learned  to  know  history  from  within  outwards  ;  when  in  cool  and  solitary  halls  he  was  inspired  with  the  joys  of  artistic  creation,  when  his  imagination  was  impressed  with  the  figures  of  Iphigenia,  Egmont,  Tasso,  and  Wilhelm  Meister  ;  when  at  length,  beneath  the  orange  trees  on  the  sunny  strand  of  Taormina,  he  seemed  to  see  vividly  wandering  before  him  the  figures  of  Nausicaa  and  the  much  enduring  Odysseus.  Again  and  again  recurs  a  humble  admission  from  the  man  who  had  long  before  written  Goetz  and  Werther  that  here  he  was  reborn,  that  here  for  the  first  time  he  attained  to  the  clarity  of  vision  and  the  repose  of  the  artist,  that  here  he  first  learned  to  work  on  the  grand  scale.  The  ancient  Teutonic  yearning  for  the  south,  the  gratitude  of  the  men  of  the  north  to  the  beautiful  homeland  of  all  civilisation,  had  never  found  warmer  expression.  The  impression  was  deep  and  enduring.  The  poet  had  the  joy  of  knowing  that  several  of  the  most  talented  among  the  younger  artists  devoted  themselves  soon  afterwards  to  the  study  of  the  antique.  It  was  not  the  Nazarenes  alone,  however,  who  resented  the  pagan  book ;  Niebuhr  himself  and  many  other  men  of  a  worldly  and  liberal  intelligence  were  estranged  by  it.  This  purely  aesthetic  view  of  the  world-order,  one  which  on  principle  turned  away  from  political  life,  expressed  the  sentiments  of  the  eighties.  Notwithstanding  the  recent  powerful  revival  of  Hterary  tendencies,  such  an  outlook  could  no  longer  suffice  for  the  generation  which  had  fought  at  Leipzig  and  Belle  Alliance.

It  was  only  a  few  years  before  that  Goethe  had  written  some  of  his  most  youthful  convivial  lays,  such  as  the  merry  student  song  Ergo  bibamus.  Gradually,  however,  as  he  approached  the  seventies,  there  became  active  in  him  the  sentiments  of  age,  mild  contemplativeness,  calm  resignation,  an  incHnation  to  the  didactic,  the  symbolic,  and  the  mystical ;  and  according  to  his  custom  he  let  nature  have  free  play.  It  was  in  such  a  mood  that  he  read  Hammer's  translation  of  Hafiz.  The  impulse  towards  the  remote  which  the  world-voyages  of  romanticism  had  awakened  among  the  Germans,  seized  him  also ;  he  felt  how  the  quiet  and  serene  wisdom  of  the  east  corresponded  to  his  age, and  how  the  natural  religion  of  Persia  harmonised  with  his  own  love  of  earth.  Yet  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  "  adopt  anything  immediate  "  into  his  works  ;  he  would  not  and  could  not,  like  Schiller,  forcibly  take  possession  of  foreign  matter  in  order  to  refashion  it.  Easily  and  gradually  he  familiarised  himself  with  the  forms  and  images  of  Persian  poetry,  until  his  own  ideas  came  involuntarily  to  assume  something  of  the  aroma  of  the  land  of  the  morning.

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  a  friendly  destiny  brought  him  into  contact  with  Marianne  von  Willemer,  during  his  journey  to  his  Rhenish  home.  It  seemed  as  if  to  him  alone  the  sad  words  were  not  to  apply  which  he  had  written  two  years  before.  "  For  a  man  must  know,  be  he  who  he  may,  a  final  pleasure,  and  a  last  day."  His  youth  revived  in  those  sunny  autumn  days  when  he  wandered  with  the  beautiful  young  woman  through  the  avenues  along  the  terraces  of  the  castle  of  Heidelberg,  and  scratched  the  Arabic  signature  of  his  Suleika  on  the  basin  of  the  fountain  :  "  Once  again  does  Goethe  feel  the  breath  of  springtime  and  the  sunshine's  warmth."  What  now  filled  him  with  happiness  was  not  such  an  overpowering  passion  as  he  had  once  felt  for  Frau  von  Stein,  but  a  warm  and  deep  inclination  of  the  heart  for  a  charming  woman,  who  through  the  love  of  the  poet  became  herself  an  artist.  Docilely  she  entered  into  the  orientalist  conceits  of  her  friend  ;  in  an  interchange  of  songs  with  Hatem,  Suleika  wrote  those  melodious  poems  full  of  sweet  yearning  and  yielding  humility  which  for  half  a  century  were  regarded  as  Goethe's  finest  work.  His  answers  were  now  full  of  the  play  of  intellect,  now  lighted  up  with  passion.  In  glowing  and  mystical  verses  he  sang  the  most  delightful  of  all  God's  thoughts,  the  power  of  that  love  moving  between  two  worlds,  and  bringing  together  those  who  belong  to  one  another:

"Allah  need  create  no  longer,

We  ourselves  create  his  world!"

Thus  there  gradually  came  into  existence  the  poet's  last  great  lyrical  work,  Westostliche  Divan,  a  posy  of  love-songs  and  drinking  songs,  of  sayings  and  observations,  of  old  and  new  confessions,  held  together  merely  by  the  bond  of  their  oriental  form.  Contentious  words  are  not  lacking,  for,  as  the  master  himself  declared :  "I  have  been  a  man,  and  that  means  a  fighter."  Unsparingly  he  described  the  power  of  the  base  among  men,  and  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  unrestrained  love  of  song  of the  Swabian  poets  he  foresaw  that  the  excessive  yearning  for  song  would  ultimately  disillusionise  German  life  :  "  Who  drives  the  art  of  poetry  from  the  world  ?  The  poets  !  "  The  key-note  of  the  collection  is,  however,  constituted  by  a  quiet  serenity,  freely  contemplating  earthly  activity :  "  Enough  remains,  remains  still  thought  and  love."  The  artistic  prosody  of  the  Divan,  in  which  freedoms  hitherto  unprecedented  were  allowed,  served  as  an  example  for  the  more  thoughtful  among  the  lyrical  writers  of  the  succeeding  generation.  Here  and  there,  it  is  true,  there  was  lacking  that  charm  of  direct  inspiration  which  gave  all  the  youthful  works  of  Goethe  their  compelling  force ;  certain  stiff  and  affected  turns  of  phrase  appeared  elaborately  thought  out  rather  than  truthfully  felt,  and  many  artificial  arabesques  seemed  to  be  introduced  merely  to  increase  the  exotic  stimulus  of  the  general  picture.  Nevertheless  in  the  Divan,  in  Commentar  iiher  die  Orphischen  Urworten,  and  in  the  countless  sayings  of  his  last  years,  Goethe  unlocked  a  treasure-house  of  wisdom  which  yielded  the  apt  word  for  almost  every  vital  problem  of  the  emotional  life  and  of  culture,  a  treasure-house  which  only  the  present  generation  has  learned  to  appreciate.  Many  of  the  poems  of  his  old  age  recalled  the  cryptic  runes  of  Teutonic  antiquity  over  which  the  heroes  might  reflect  and  dream  throughout  life.  At  times  he  ventured  into  the  ultimate  mysterious  profound  of  existence,  up  to  the  very  limits  of  the  expressible,  where  the  articulate  word  becomes  dumb  and  music  takes  its  place — as  for  instance  in  that  marvellous  song  which  ever  resounds  softly  through  the  soul  when  a  ray  of  heavenly  happiness  falls  into  our  poor  life:

"Until  thou  too  canst  pass  this  test,

Dying,  live  again:

Art  thou  but  a  gloomy  guest

On  this  earth  of  pain."

Thus  he  lived  on  in  solitary  greatness,  unceasingly  contem-  plating, collecting,  investigating,  writing,  advancing  through  the  finite  in  all  directions  in  order  to  plumb  the  infinite,  rejoicing  in  every  bright  day  of  the  springtime  and  in  every  gift  of  the  fruitful  autumn,  and  rejoicing  no  less  in  every  fresh  work  of  art  and  in  every  new  discovery  in  the  wide  domain  of  human  knowledge.  Schiller's  more  deUcate  frame  had  been  prematurely  worn  out  in  the  hard  service  of  the  Kantian  conception  of  duty  ;  to  the  fortunate  and  thoroughly  healthy  nature  of    Goethe,  his    titanic and  many-sided  activities  seemed  merely  the  natural  and  easy  unfolding  of  inborn  energies.  Those  who  were  not  in  contact  with  him,  hardly  suspected  how  earnestly  he  had  taken  to  heart  his  own  severe  words :  "  He  only  can  work  who  always  works  ;  soon  comes  the  night  wherein  no  one  can  work  !  "  Still  less  did  they  imagine  what  a  firm  faith  in  God  sustained  the  notorious  pagan  throughout  his  old  age,  how  carefully  he  guarded  himself  against  forestalling  Providence,  and  how  in  every  chance  occurrence  of  the  day  he  recognised  the  immediate  intervention  of  God — for  thus  only  to  the  artist  was  the  divine  governance  of  the  world  conceivable.  And  since  he  himself  continued  to  grow  day  by  day,  as  if  this  life  were  never  to  come  to  an  end,  youth  always  remained  especially  dear  to  him.  Even  though  the  arrogant  roughness  of  the  younger  generation  was  at  times  an  offence  to  him,  in  the  end  he  could  not  be  angry  when  he  looked  into  the  ardent  eyes  of  the  inspired  hotheads;  and  he  expressed  the  kindly  sentiment  that  it  would  be  foolish  to  demand  of  them,  "  Come,  be  an  old  man  with  me."  To  young  poets  he  knew  how  to  hand  on  the  counsel  which  he  had  himself  received  from  nature ;  they  should  strive  in  the  first  place  to  become  men  rich  alike  in  heart  and  in  head,  and  should  keep  their  minds  open  to  every  breath  of  the  times.  "  The  content  of  poetry  is  the  content  of  one's  own  Hfe ;  we  must  advance  continually  with  advancing  years,  and  must  examine  ourselves  from  time  to  time  to  make  sure  that  we  are  really  alive!"

Certain  zealous  renegades,  such  as  Friedrich  Schlegel,  ven-  tured to  speak  of  the  overthrown  old  god,  but  men  of  nobler  nature  knew  that  to  attack  this  man  was  to  abuse  the  nation  itself.  When  Baron  von  Stein  complained  of  Goethe's  holding  back  in  the  Napoleonic  days,  he  added  modestly,  "  But  after  all  the  man  is  too  great  to  find  fault  with."  Nowhere  had  the  poet  warmer  admirers  than  among  intelligent  circles  in  Berlin.  Here  the  veneration  of  Goethe  became  a  cult ;  the  ever-enthusiastic  high-priestess  Rahel  Varnhagen  continually  announced  in  oracular  speeches  the  fame  of  the  divine  poet.  The  old  man  regarded  from  a  distance,  and  with  equanimity,  the  clouds  of  incense  which  arose  before  his  altar  on  the  Spree,  and  from  time  to  time,  in  his  formal,  privy  councillor's  style  vouchsafed  a  civil  answer.  But  he  would  not  permit  these  worshippers  to  draw  nearer  to  his  person  ;  he  felt  that  they  were  making  a  pretentious  doctrine  of  that  which  nature  had  granted  to  him  in  the  cradle.  In  the  bosom  of  the  elvish  Uttle  Rahel  there  beat  a  grateful,  pious,  and  kindly heart ;  amid  the  artificial  ecstasy  of  this  dilettantist  adept  and  demi-artist  there  was  still  preserved  a  woman's  secure  sense  of  what  is  great  and  strong  ;  at  one  time,  and  for  many  years,  Fichte  had  been  her  idol  as  well  as  Goethe.  But  side  by  side  with  such  amiable  characteristics  she  exhibited  a  half  unconscious  and  for  that  very  reason  immeasurable  vanity,  so  that  her  admiration  for  the  greatest  of  German  poets  was  in  effect  no  more  than  a  source  of  egoistic  personal  gratification  ;  she  consoled  herself  for  her  secret  sense  of  barrenness  with  the  sublime  thought  that  the  great  spirit  of  Goethe,  reaching  out  towards  the  infinite,  had  scorned  to  confine  its  energies  within  the  domain  of  philology  !  "  Why  should  I  not  be  natural,"  she  asked  naively,  **  I  could  gain  nothing  better  or  more  manifold  by  affectation  ?  "  Yet  how  little  real  content  was  there  in  all  the  cultured  conversation  of  this  aesthetic  tea-drinking  circle.  Much  which  was  there  spoken  of  as  talent  depended  in  essentials  upon  nothing  more  than  the  misuse  of  the  German  speech,  upon  the  preposterous  apposition  of  unsuitable  words.  When  Rahel  spoke  of  a  nobly  conceived  and  ardently  executed  piece  of  music  as  "  ein  gebildeter  Sturm  wind,"  the  circle  of  priests  of  the  higher  culture  shouted  with  delight,  and  her  husband  inscribed  the  fooUsh  phrase  in  his  diary  in  his  most  beautiful  script.  But  the  old  hero  in  Weimar  knew  the  great  gulf  that  is  fixed  between  knowing  and  doing.  Where  among  his  admirers  he  encountered  creative  faculty,  he  was  not  slow  to  thaw.  How  fatherly  was  his  attitude  towards  the  wonder-child  Felix  Mendelssohn-  Bartholdy ;  he  rejoiced  with  the  happy  parents  over  the  magnificent  combination   of  refined  culture  and  genuine  talent.

Whilst  poetry  had  entered  the  season  of  autumn,  for  the  fine  arts  there  now  came  the  time  of  blossoming.  As  long  as  the  enthusiasm  of  the  years  of  war  lasted,  Gothic  art  was  generally  esteemed  the  only  veritable  German  art.  Our  youth  seemed  to  have  turned  away  for  ever  from  classical  ideals,  and  Schenkendorf  exclaimed  commandingly :  "No  more  on  any  German  wall  must  pagan  images  be  seen  !  "  Many  of  the  volunteers  from  the  east  first  learned  upon  the  march  to  the  Rhine  to  know  the  wealth  of  form  characteristic  of  our  earlier  history.  It  seemed  to  them  that  these  ancient  cathedrals  were  the  only  valid  examples  for  the  art  of  the  fatherland,  and  they  hardly  noticed  that  in  the  churches  of  detested  France  they  everywhere  encountered  the  same  "  Old  German  "  style.     When  they  gazed  up  at  the  old  crane upon  the  unfinished  spire  of  the  cathedral  of  Cologne,  they  thought  with  the  knightly  singer,  "  that  the  conclusion  of  the  work  had  been  postponed  until  the  coming  of  the  right  masters  !  "  The  crown  prince  was  utterly  overcome  at  the  sight  of  the  majestic  pile  that  was  faUing  into  decay  ;  at  his  instigation  Schinkel  was  sent  to  Cologne,  and  declared  that  to  preserve  such  a  building  meant  to  complete  it.

King  Frederick  William  was  also  touched  by  this  mood  of  the  time  when,  after  the  first  peace  of  Paris,  he  determined  to  com-  memorate the  German  victories  by  the  construction  of  a  magnificent  Old  German  cathedral  in  BerHn.  Soon  afterwards,  in  Old  Prussia,  the  demand  was  heard  on  all  sides  that  the  beautiful  grand  master's  castle  of  Marienburg  which  had  been  so  shamefully  mutilated  by  the  rough  hands  of  the  Poles  and  by  the  prosaic  coldness  of  the  Frederician  officials,  should  be  restored  in  its  antique  glories  as  a  monument  of  victory  for  the  ancient  Ordensland  which  prided  itself  on  having  aroused  the  other  Germans  to  the  holy  war.  Schon,  the  zealous  representative  of  Old  Prussian  local  pride,  was  the  leader  in  this  undertaking  ;  it  was  his  hope  that  this  finest  of  the  secular  buildings  of  our  middle  ages  could  be  made  a  Prussian  Westminster,  and  that  every  member  of  the  nation  should  take  his  share  in  the  work.  The  king  accepted  the  idea  of  restoration  ;  the  thin  partition  walls  which  a  Philistine  generation  had  erected  across  the  gigantic  halls  were  removed  ;  above  the  slender  pillars  of  the  refectory  there  could  be  once  more  seen  rising  Hghtly  and  freely  the  palm- like  tracery  of  the  ancient  Gothic  arches.  The  decoration  of  the  castle  was  left  to  the  nation.  No  money  was  accepted  ;  whoever  wished  to  help  must  himself  co-operate  in  the  artistic  treatment  of  a  portion  of  the  building.  The  nobility,  the  towns,  and  the  corporations  of  the  impoverished  province,  rivalled  one  another  in  gifts,  and  patriots  from  all  the  territories  of  the  state  participated.  Soon  the  stained  glass  windows  displayed  pictures  from  Prussia's  older  and  more  recent  history,  for  during  these  years  was  revived  the  art  of  glass-staining  which,  with  so  many  other  acquirements  of  civilisation,  had  perished  amid  the  storms  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War.  There,  beneath  the  black  and  white  banner,  were  figured  the  knight  of  the  Teutonic  order  and  the  soldier  of  the  War  of  Liberation  ;  the  schools  of  the  frontier-land  presented  a  window  showing  David's  sword  and  harp  and  bearing  the  inscription,  "  He  who  is  no  warrior  can  be  no  shepherd."     All   the   most   intimate   secrets   of   the   romantic generation  came  to  light  in  these  activities  ;  how  happy  did  the  Germans  feel  that  they  were  once  more  entitled  to  look  the  heroes  of  their  great  past  in  the  face.  It  was  amid  universal  rejoicing  that  the  young  crown  prince  held  high  festival  in  the  great  halls  of  the  old  fortress,  and,  after  his  enthusiastic  manner,  proposed  the  toast:  "May  all  that  is  great  and  worthy  rise  up  like  this  building!"

Nevertheless  the  Gothic  tendency  in  art  was  just  as  little  able  to  gain  the  upper  hand  as  were  the  Swabian  poets  in  the  field  of  poetry.  The  ideas  of  Winckelmann  and  Goethe  still  held  sway,  and  nowhere  more  than  in  Berlin.  Here  the  best  works  of  the  German  late  renaissance,  the  palace,  the  arsenal,  and  the  Elector's  monument  by  Schliiter,  the  memorials  of  a  classically  cultured  and  yet  national  art,  were  more  comprehensible  to  modern  sentiment  than  were  the  buildings  of  the  middle  ages.  At  this  central  point  of  a  great  but  recent  history,  the  return  to  the  architectural  forms  of  the  fourteenth  century  necessarily  appeared  arbitrary  and  artificial.  Now,  too,  for  the  first  time  did  people  begin  to  become  familiar  with  the  genuine  works  of  the  Hellenes.  Winckelmann  had  formerly  learned  to  know  almost  exclusively  the  Roman  imitations  of  Greek  art,  and  had  failed  to  observe  what  a  wide  course  had  been  run  in  antiquity  from  the  Dorian  age  and  the  golden  days  of  Pericles  down  to  the  second  blossoming  of  the  epoch  of  Hadrian.  Since  the  opening  of  the  new  century,  the  treasures  of  ancient  Greece  had  been  unearthed  ;  the  Elgin  marbles  found  their  way  to  London  in  1816,  and  in  the  same  year  the  ^Eginetan  sculptures  were  transferred  to  Munich.  Admiration  grew  concurrently  with  the  understanding  for  the  antique.  At  this  time  too  was  working  in  Rome  that  late-born  Hellene  who  lived  as  did  no  other  modem  in  the  world  of  classical  forms,  and  who  seemed  to  have  been  transferred  into  this  new  century  by  the  enigmatical  sport  of  destiny.  Yet  through  Thorwaldsen's  mighty  spirit  ran  a  strong  Teutonic  vein.  To  the  hearts  of  the  Germans  his  art  made  a  direct  appeal;  they  counted  the  Icelander  as  half  their  own ;  he  had  been  greatly  influenced  by  the  German,  Asmus  Carstens,  the  bold  rebel  against  academic  art,  and  from  him  had  learned  what  was  truly  living  and  of  permanent  value  in  the  works  of  classical  antiquity. 

While  the  Old  German  and  the  classical  tendencies  were  thus  still  engaged  in  an  undecided  struggle,  a  change  weighty  with     consequence     occurred     in     Berlin.      During    the    difficult years  in  which  the  Prussian  state  was  on  the  verge  of  bank-  ruptcy, the  construction  of  monumental  works  of  art  was  obviously  impossible.  There  was  only  one  artistic  plan  which  the  king  could  not  relinquish.  He  desired  to  erect  a  worthy  monument  to  his  wife,  and  his  sound  natural  feeling  led  him  here  also  in  the  right  path,  although  he  was  modestly  accus-  tomed to  speak  of  himself  as  no  more  than  a  layman  in  matters  of  art.  He  longed  for  an  appropriate  memorial  of  his  beloved ;  and  since  he  felt  obscurely  that  Gothic,  which  in  any  case  to  his  sober  sense  seemed  unduly  fantastical,  did  not  do  full  justice  to  the  majesty  of  the  human  form,  he  would  not  hear  of  an  Old  German  mortuary  chapel.  Schinkel,  who  during  the  years  of  war  was  still  completely  absorbed  by  Teutonising  views,  vainly  assured  him  that  the  architecture  of  paganism  was  cold,  and  that  the  hard  religion  of  destiny  of  the  ancients  could  not  possibly  represent  the  idea  of  death  with  the  loving  and  consoling  serenity  of  Christianity.  Frederick  William  had  a  small  Doric  temple  built  amid  the  sombre  pines  of  the  Charlottenburg  park,  to  constitute  a  simple  and  serious  setting  for  the  queen's  tomb.  Christian  Ranch  was  entrusted  with  the  execution  of  the  actual  monument,  Ranch  who  had  once  been  in  the  queen's  service,  had  been  introduced  by  her  to  art,  and  who  undertook  the  work  with  the  enthusiasm  of  artistic  inspiration  and  of  personal  regard.  Thousands  assembled  when  this  mausoleum  was  opened  in  the  spring  of  1815,  most  of  them  at  first  coming  only  to  gaze  once  more  upon  the  countenance  of  the  beloved  princess.  But  when  they  saw  the  recumbent  figure,  the  charming  form  in  its  peaceful  grandeur,  so  life-like  that  it  almost  seemed  to  breathe,  beautiful  as  a  woman  of  ancient  Greece,  but  pious  and  peaceful  as  a  Christian,  every  vein  in  the  hands  and  every  fold  of  the  white  marble  vesture  treated  with  the  highest  technical  certainty  and  accuracy,  even  these  northerners,  to  whom  of  all  the  arts  sculpture  seems  most  remote,  were  inspired  by  a  breath  from  the  spirit  of  the  antique.  Year  by  year  pilgrims  continued  to  flock  to  this  shrine.  Everyone  felt  that  German  art  had  taken  one  of  its  great  steps  forward.  The  classically  trained  and  strictly  formal  realism  of  Ranch  gained  a  decisive  success.  The  enthusiasm  for  Gothic  disappeared  from  Berlin  society;  even  the  romanticist  crown  prince  gradually  turned  towards   classical  ideals.

Meanwhile     the     statesmen     had     returned     from     Paris,  Hardenberg    greatly    influenced    by    the    powerful    impressions received  at  the  Louvre,  while  Altenstein  and  Eichhorn  had  on  the  return  journey  visited  the  Boisserees'   collection  at  Heidel-  berg.     All  frankly  expressed  their  feeUng  that  the  artistic  life  of  Beriin  seemed  extremely  poor  when  compared  with  the  wealth  of  the  west,  and  were  at  one  with  the  king  in  the  determination  that  the  state  must  never  relapse  into  the  banality  of  the   past  century.      When  Altenstein  soon  afterwards  became  chief  of  the  educational  system  he  proposed  to  continue  the  work  which  had  been  begun  by  Wilhelm  Humboldt  with  the  foundation  of  the  Beriin    University,  and   to   make    the    Prussian   capital  a  centre  of    German    art.      Frederick    I,    inspired    with    the    spirit   of  a  Maecenas,  had    always  thought  first  of  the  glory  of   the  court  ;  now,  when  the  Prussian  crown  devoted  itself  zealously  for  the  second  time  to  the  advance  of  the  fine  arts,  it  had  at  length  become  conscious  of  the  great  civilising  duties  of  the  state.      It  was  now  recognised  that  the  cultivation  of  art  was  a  necessary  part  of  national  education  ;    a  lofty  idea  was  held  regarding  the  artist's  freedom,  and  it  was  considered  enough  to  provide  worthy  tasks  for  men  of  creative  intelligence  without  endeavouring  to  control  them  in  the  exercise   of    their  peculiar  gifts.      But  the  king's    admirable    sentiments    in    this    respect     by     no    means  corresponded    with    the    resources  of    the    exhausted  exchequer.  Once  again,  as  so  often  before,   Prussia  was  forced  to  attempt  great  things  with  insufficient  means,  and  at  the  right  moment  the  right  man  was  forthcoming.

A  universal  genius  such  as  German  art  had  not  known  since  the  days  of  Diirer,  at  once  architect,  sculptor,  painter,  musician,  and  when  he  took  up  the  pen  always  sure  to  use  the  noblest  and  most  efficient  words,  Carl  Friedrich  Schinkel  kept  his  gaze  steadfastly  directed  towards  the  loftiest  aims  :  to  him  a  work  of  art  was  "  an  image  of  the  moral  ideals  of  the  time."  Continually  engaged  in  active  creation,  despising  sloth,  he  spoke  of  indolence  as  sinful  in  times  of  culture,  and  bestial  in  times  of  barbarism.  He  was  whole-heartedly  devoted  to  his  Brandenburg  home.  When  he  saw  this  state  resplendent  in  the  pride  of  victorious  arms,  and  when  there  came  a  glorious  end  to  the  struggle  of  light  against  darkness  which  had  so  often  occupied  his  own  artist's  dreams,  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  time  had  arrived  for  the  introduction  into  Prussian  life  of  the  charm  and  fulness  of  a  ripe  civilisation,  and  for  the  transformation  of  Beriin  into  a  splendid  seat  of  the  muses.  It  was  his  idea  that  as  Palladio  had  once  stamped  his  genius   upon   Vicenza,   so   might   he   stamp    his    own   upon    the Prussian  capital.  In  the  centre  of  the  town  should  be  the  palace,  the  university,  the  theatre,  and  the  museums  ;  round  about  these,  instead  of  the  monotonous  lines  of  lowly  houses,  there  should  be  grouped  stately  mansions  and  charming  villas,  interspersed  with  fountains  and  amid  abundant  foHage  ;  magnificent  gates  in  the  town  wall,  and  in  front  of  the  Leipziger  Platz  a  great  Gothic  cathedral,  a  monument  of  victory  of  the  War  of  Liberation.  But  whereas  the  fortunate  Palladio  was  furnished  with  inex-  haustible means  by  a  race  of  wealthy  seigneurs,  and  while  his  native  city  was  placed  in  his  hands  Uke  a  lump  of  potter's  clay  to  be  moulded  according  to  his  will,  the  Prussian  artist  had  all  through  Hfe  to  contend  with  the  enforced  economy  of  the  monarch  and  his  officials.  "  We  must  put  a  bridle  on  him  !  "  said  the  king  with  a  smile  whenever  the  indefatigable  man  came  forward  with  fresh  proposals.  Hardly  the  twentieth  part  of  his  bold  designs  were  carried  into  effect.  What  a  struggle  he  had  merely  to  save  the  dilapidated  statues  on  the  roof  of  the  palace  which  the  officials  wished  to  clear  away.  Instead  of  the  noble  freestone  which  had  dehghted  him  in  Italy,  he  was  forced  for  the  most  part  to  content  himself  with  glazed  brick,  and  in  place  of  bronze  he  had  to  use  zinc  castings.  None  the  less  this  poor  fraction  of  his  scheme,  together  with  the  works  of  the  epoch  of  Schliiter,  served  to  imprint  permanent  characteristics  upon  the  architecture  of  Berlin.

Schinkel  soon  freed  his  mind  from  the  Teutonist  intoxication  of  the  years  of  war.  He  recognised  that  the  multiform  culture  of  our  day  cannot  be  restricted  to  a  single  style  of  architecture,  and  was  wilHng  to  employ  the  artistic  forms  of  the  middle  ages  when  their  use  seemed  demanded  by  the  position  and  significance  of  the  edifice.  But  for  his  own  intimate  ideals  he  found  true  expression  in  a  new  form  of  renaissance,  which  adhered  more  closely  to  the  works  of  classical  antiquity  and  above  all  to  those  of  Greece  than  had  done  the  art  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  and  yet  always  understood  how  to  do  justice  to  the  sense  and  purpose  of  modern  buildings.  In  his  first  great  work,  the  new  main  guardhouse,  the  warlike  function  of  the  building  was  so  vigorously  and  defiantly  expressed  by  the  severe,  compact,  Doric  forms,  that  the  beholder  almost  forgot  the  extremely  modest  proportions,  and  was  involuntarily  reminded  of  Sanmicheli's  majestic  fortifications.  When,  soon  afterwards,  in  the  year  1817,  the  theatre  was  burned,  and  the  frugal  officials  insisted  that  the  old  walls  of  the  building  should  be  utilised  in the  reconstruction,  he  knew  once  more  how  to  make  a  virtue  of  necessity,  and  soon  there  arose  between  the  two  charming  cupolas  of  the  Gendarmenkirche,  above  a  tall  perron,  a  calm  and  formal  Ionic  temple,  the  stonework  adorned  with  rich  carving  (for  Schinkel's  designs  involved  the  co-operation  of  all  the  arts) — the  entire  structure  a  faithful  image  of  this  epoch,  so  rich  in  intellect,  but  so  poor  in  financial  resources,  inspired  with  brilliant  designs,  but  perforce  in  many  cases  narrow  and  inadequate in  execution.

Henceforward  Schinkel  was  firmly  established  in  the  king's  favour,  and  he  assumed  the  leadership  of  artistic  activity  in  Prussia,  although  the  wings  of  his  genius  were  continually  clipped  by  lack  of  means.  Throughout  North  Germany  and  as  far  as  Scandinavia  his  classical  tendency  prevailed.  The  designs  for  the  Berlin  cathedral  had  to  be  abandoned,  since  funds  were  lacking.  His  fine  monument  of  victory  was  however  erected  on  the  Kreuzberg.  This  was  conceived  by  Schinkel  in  those  Gothic  forms  which  were  still  regarded  as  characteristically  national ;  it  was  only  in  the  sculptures  with  which  Ranch  and  Tieck  adorned  the  columns  that  the  new  classic  style  was  given  free  play.  But  on  all  the  battle-fields  where  the  Prussian  army  had  fought,  upon  the  windmill  hill  at  Grossbeeren  as  upon  the  high  tumulus  at  Planchenoit  in  the  plain  of  Brabant,  everywhere  the  impover-  ished state  erected  the  same  miserable  Gothic  columns  with  the  inscription :  "  The  fallen  heroes  are  held  in  grateful  memory  by  king  and  fatherland.  They  rest  in  peace.'*  Schinkel  knew  that  monumental  art  leads  a  hothouse  existence  as  long  as  the  daily  life  of  the  people  remains  unadorned  and  ugly.  He  contemplated  with  pain  the  bald,  barrack  style  of  the  dwelling-houses,  the  wretched  furnishing  of  the  narrow  rooms.  In  what  a  deplorable  condition  was  the  craftsmanship  of  German  art,  which  had  once  gloriously  rivalled  that  of  the  Italians  ;  for  every  great  artistic  undertaking  it  was  necessary  to  summon  workmen  from  abroad,  stonemasons  from  Carrara,  engravers  on  copper  from  Milan,  bronze-founders  from  France.  But  he  was  proud  to  be  the  apostle  of  beauty  among  the  northern  nations,  and  therefore,  when  in  the  year  1821  the  industrial  institute  of  Beriin  had  been  founded,  he  issued,  in  conjunction  with  the  talented  technician  Beuth,  Vorbilder  fur  Fabrikanten  und  Handwerker,  a  collection  of  standard  types  for  domestic  furnishing,  which,  in  numberless  imitations,  gradually  found  its  way  into  every  workshop  and  served  to   reawaken   the  sense   of  form  in  German  handicraft, even  though  some  of  the  designs  may  to  the  modern  artistic  sense  appear  unduly  poor  and  simple.

Meanwhile  Ranch  had  established  his  studio  in  the  Lagerhaus,  the  old  margravial  castle,  and  there,  a  strict  teacher,  trained  a  succession  of  devoted  pupils  and  skilled  handicraftsmen,  so  that  German  art  gradually  learned  how  to  dispense  with  foreign  aid.  Just  as  he  himself,  without  prehminary  scientific  training,  had  first  become  f amiUar  with  the  world  of  ideas  through  the  work  of  artistic  creation,  so  in  the  case  of  his  pupils  he  looked  only  to  their  capabilities ;  efficient  tinsmiths,  stone-  masons, woodworkers,  steady  of  eye  and  adroit  of  hand,  were  more  welcome  to  him  than  young  men  of  learning.  Thus  sculpture  was  preserved  from  that  overculture  which  not  infrequently  led  our  poets  into  aberrant  paths.

Ranch  advanced  with  a  firm  and  steady  pace  in  the  course  he  had  begun ;  Teutonist  dreams  never  led  him  astray.  He  felt  at  one  with  the  Prussian  state  and  its  ruUng  house,  and  it  was  his  rare  good  fortune  to  be  able  to  incorporate  in  his  poUtical  ideals  everything  that  was  dear  to  him  in  his  works  of  art.  How  splendid  that  the  whole  nation  could  once  again  unite  in  rejoicing  over  a  great  achievement.  Whereas  in  former  days  it  was  the  rulers  only  who  had  from  time  to  time  erected  a  memorial,  there  now  awakened  among  the  people  the  desire  to  honour  the  heroes  of  the  nation.  First  of  all,  the  Mecklenburgers  combined,  and  made  Gottfried  Schadow  execute  a  statue  of  their  countryman  Blucher,  the  first  great  work  of  the  revived  Ger-  man art  of  bronze-founding.  Subsequently  money  was  raised  in  Silesia,  and  Ranch  was  commissioned  to  design  a  monument  to  the  commander  of  the  Silesian  army,  to  be  erected  close  by  the  Ring  of  Breslau  where  the  volunteers  had  once  assembled.  Then  the  king  also  demanded  monuments  for  his  generals,  first  of  all  for  Scharnhorst  and  Biilow,  dead  before  their  time.  A  wide  field  of  great  and  fruitful  tasks  opened  to  the  artist,  who  had  simultaneously  to  contribute  to  the  ornamentation  of  Schinkel's  architectural  works,  and  to  produce  statues  in  bronze  and  in  marble,  materials  he  knew  so  well  how  to  use  to  the  best  advantage.  His  statues  of  the  heroes  were  serious,  virile,  and  noble,  at  once  true  to  nature  and  conceived  in  the  grand  style ;  even  that  slight  tendency  to  stiffness  characteristic  of  Ranch  is  not  open  to  serious  criticism,  for  it  corresponded  to  the  character  of  the  Prussian  army.  In  his  most  power-  ful   works,  the   reliefs    for   the    monuments  of  Scharnhorst  and Bulow,  Rauch  attained  to  a  heroic  height  which  our  sculp-  ture has  never  since  excelled,  displaying  with  the  simplest  means  and  in  a  few  majestic  lineaments  the  whole  course  of  the  struggle  from  the  days  when  the  youths  of  Prussia  cut  their  lances  from  the  stems  of  pine  trees,  down  to  the  proud  and  victorious  flight  of  their  eagle  over  the  fortresses  of  the  Nether-  lands and  France.  Rauch  became  the  historian  of  the  German  War  of  Liberation,  just  as  in  former  days  Rembrandt  and  Bol,  Van  der  Heist  and  Flinck,  had  handed  down  to  posterity  the  spirit  and  meaning  of  the  eighty  years'  war  of  the  Netherlanders.

Now  also  the  first  steps  were  taken  to  realise  the  design  of  founding  a  great  museum  in  the  capital.  The  idea  had  been  conceived  in  the  first  years  of  the  reign  of  Frederick  William,  and  had  subsequently  been  considered  more  seriously  when  W.  Humboldt  was  minister  of  education.  The  king,  in  order  to  spare  the  state  treasury,  bought  from  his  private  purse  Giusti-  niani's  and  Solly's  great  collections  of  paintings,  and  presented  them  to  the  state.  He  instructed  the  officials  to  conduct  the  negotiations  for  the  purchase  in  strict  secrecy,  for  the  designs  of  his  government  to  encourage  the  arts  at  first  secured  approval  only  from  a  small  circle  of  connoisseurs,  and  it  was  feared  that  in  the  depressed  mood  of  the  public,  which  was  inclined  to  take  a  pessimistic  pleasure  in  depicting  the  condition  of  the  state  in  the  gloomiest  colours,  the  monarch  would  be  blamed  for  extrava-  gance instead  of  being  thanked  for  generosity.  It  had  also  been  proposed  to  purchase  the  Boisserees'  collection,  but  this  could  not  now  be  effected,  for  the  rebuilding  of  the  theatre  after  its  destruction  by  fire  monopolised  all  available  means.  But  the  best  pieces  of  the  collection  were  reproduced  by  the  new  art  of  lithography,  recently  discovered  by  Senefelder,  and  were  widely  diffused  ;  they  constituted  the  first  artistic  adornments  of  the  impoverished  German  households.

In  Rome,  meanwhile,  the  German  painters  had  found  an  enterprising  patron  in  Bartholdy,  a  relative  of  the  gifted  house  of  Mendelssohn.  He  placed  at  their  disposal  the  walls  of  his  palace  in  the  Via  Sistina,  for  experiments  in  the  art  of  fresco,  which  had  completely  passed  into  disuse  since  the  time  of  Raphael  Mengs.  Cornelius,  Overbeck,  Veit,  and  Wilhelm  Schadow,  encouraged  by  Niebuhr's  approbation,  now  rivalled  one  another  in  the  production  of  finely  conceived  pictures  from  the  story  of  Joseph.  Cornelius  joyfully  hailed  fresco-painting  as  "  a   beacon  upon   the   mountains   announcing   a  new  and  noble awakening  of  art,"  because  it  once  more  offered  painters  a  field  for  monumental  works,  and  because  its  harsh  strength  was  absolutely  incompatible  with  poverty  of  spirit  or  bungling  execution.  "Art,"  he  exclaimed  in  the  terrorist  tone  charac-  teristic of  the  young  Teutonisers,  "art  must  at  length  cease  to  be  a  lazy  handmaiden  of  luxurious  grandees,  must  cease  to  be  a  trader  and  base  fashion-monger."  Like  Schinkel  he  foresaw  the  day  when  art,  adorning  the  walls  of  our  towns  and  decorating  our  houses  within  and  without,  would  transform  and  consecrate  the  whole  life  of  the  nation.  With  the  assured  pride  of  a  reformer  of  national  civilisation,  he  took  his  way  homeward  over  the  Alps  when  summoned  to  Munich  by  the  young  crown  prince,  Louis  of  Bavaria.

The  heir  of  the  wealthy  Wittelsbachs,  a  race  ever  fond  of  architectural  exploits,  believed  himself  foreordained  to  estabUsh  a  brilliant  court  of  the  muses  in  Bavaria,  which  had  so  recently  re-entered  the  intellectual  Hfe  of  the  nation.  A  pure  enthusiasm  for  art  and  for  the  glory  of  his  idolised  German  fatherland  inspired  the  talented  but  visionary  prince.  The  diplomatic  world  related  with  much  headshaking  how  in  Rome  he  had  visited  the  museums  and  the  churches  arm  in  arm  with  the  dangerous  demagogue,  the  poet  Friedrich  Riickert ;  how  he  had  famiUarly  hailed  the  German  painters  in  his  own  uncouth  verses,  and  how  at  their  artists'  festivals  he  had  noisily  joined  in  acclaiming  the  annihilation  of  philistinism  and  the  unity  of  Germany.  In  all  his  artistic  plans  there  co-operated  an  unstable  dynastic  ambition  :  he  hoped  to  outbid  the  Prussian  starvelings  and  parvenus  whom  he  so  heartily  despised,  and  by  a  grandly  conceived  system  of  artistic  patronage  to  secure  for  the  Bavarian  house  the  leading  position  in  Germany.  What  a  contrast  to  the  artistic  activity  in  Berlin  !  There,  what  was  done  was  no  more  than  the  inevitable  outcome  of  the  history  and  the  vital  needs  of  a  powerful  state  richly  endowed  with  spiritual  forces ;  the  works  created  by  great  artists  in  undisturbed  freedom  all  displayed  the  characteristic  of  inevitability.  In  Munich,  they  built  simply  for  the  sake  of  building,  upon  a  soil  that  offered  little  in  the  way  of  great  memories  ;  the  artists  summoned  from  abroad  enjoyed  the  fruits  of  a  royal  freehandedness  which  contrasted  briUiantly  with  Prussian  thrift,  but  they  felt  them-  selves to  be  in  a  foreign  land  and  had  long  to  endure  the  mistrust  of  the  native  population  ;  they  were  controlled  by  the  capricious  and  incalculable  will  of  a  single  individual,  who  leapt impatiently  from  scheme  to  scheme,  and  who  naively  regarded  what  he  had  bought  and  paid  for  as  his  own  work.  The  peaceful  rivalry  of  the  two  towns  favoured  the  many-sided  development  of  German  art.  It  ultimately  led  to  the  natural  result  that  the  chiefly  monumental  arts  of  architecture  and  sculpture  attained  their  greatest  successes  upon  the  historic  soil  of  Berlin  ;  whilst  painting,  freer  and  less  dependent  upon  the  favour  of  the  environment,  found  its  home  in  Munich.

The  crown  prince  had  for  years  been  undertaking  excava-  tions in  Greece,  and  in  Italy  he  had  purchased  everything  that  could  be  bought  of  the  best  works  of  antique  sculpture.  Now,  for  his  collection,  which  was  the  finest  on  this  side  of  the  Alps,  he  had  a  worthy  temple  built  by  Klenze  just  outside  the  gates  of  Old  Munich,  the  Glyptotek,  constructed  entirely  of  marble,  and  exhibiting  the  massive  beauty  of  southern  architecture.  The  building  as  a  whole  cannot  rival  the  briUiant  individuality  of  Schinkel's  work,  but  on  the  walls  and  ceilings  of  the  magnifi-  cent halls,  Cornelius  for  the  first  time  displayed  the  whole  wealth  of  his  talent.  Here,  writing  an  epic  in  colour,  he  pro-  duced the  first  of  those  great  picture-cycles  in  which  the  wealth  of  his  restlessly  probing  spirit  could  alone  find  adequate  scope —  grandly  conceived  images  from  the  world  of  Hellenic  saga.  The  mass  of  the  Munichers  mocked  at  the  crazy  building  of  the  crown  prince  ;  they  did  not  know  what  to  make  of  the  pro-  foundly conceived  symbolism  of  this  artistry  of  ideas,  which  for  the  most  part  completed  its  work  in  cartoon,  and  almost  com-  pletely renounced  the  stimulus  of  colour.  Men  of  more  serious  mind  admired  the  way  in  which  the  bold  ideaUst  had  so  faith-  fully reproduced  the  chaste  loftiness  of  the  antique,  and  who  yet  conveyed  in  his  pictures  a  power  of  passion  inconceivable  to  the  ancients  ;  for  never  had  an  artist  of  antiquity  created  any  form  so  utterly  transfigured  with  misery  as  was  that  of  the  mourning  Hecuba.  The  Christo-Germanic  hotspurs  of  the  circle  of  artists  at  Rome  observed  with  disgust  that  their  leading  representative  was  approximating  in  his  work  to  the  detested  pagans  Winckel-  mann  and  Goethe,  and  that  the  neo-classicist  tendency  which  had  originated  in  Beriin  was  everywhere  gaining  the  victory.  The  school  of  San  Isidoro,  once  so  fruitful,  gradually  broke  up ;  its  members  returned  home,  most  to  devote  themselves  to  a  purely  ecclesiastical  art  which  lived  only  in  anachronisms.  Of  the  notable  men  among  them,  Overbeck  alone  remained  on  the  Tiber,  continuing  faithfully  to  observe  the  old  Nazarene  principles. So  well,  however,  was  he  able  to  illuminate  by  the  depth  and  the  warmth  of  his  faith  the  narrow  world  of  Christian  figures  which  to  him  was  the  only  world  of  real  existence,  that  even  the  ItaUans  ultimately  came  to  honour  him  as  a  new  Fra  Angelico,  and  it  was  a  delight  to  the  pious  convert  to  adorn  with  his  grave  pictures  the  oratory  of  St.  Francis  in  the  Portiuncula  at  Assisi.  Munich,  like  Berlin,  must  have  its  great  gallery  of  paintings.  The  Boisserees'  collection,  which  was  too  costly  for  the  Prussians,  was  at  length  acquired  for  Bavaria.  Its  principal  works,  together  with  those  of  the  Diisseldorf  gallery,  which  during  the  revolutionary  years  had  been  illegally  removed  to  Munich,  constituted  the  groundwork  of  the  collection  of  the  Munich Pinakothek.

Thus  within  a  few  years  a  multiform  new  life  awakened  in  the  domain  of  the  fine  arts,  and  almost  all  the  German  courts  gradually  began  to  cherish  these  youthful  energies  ;  it  was  felt  to  be  a  duty  to  compensate  the  nation  in  any  way  that  was  possible  for  the  painful  failure  of  its  political  hopes.  Even  the  venerable  remnants  of  ancient  German  art,  which  had  suffered  so  terribly  during  the  Enlightenment  mania  of  the  previous  century,  now  found  faithful  guardians  on  all  hands,  and  when  in  the  year  1820  the  town  of  Goslar  had  its  cathedral,  the  richest  in  memories  of  all  the  Saxon  land,  pulled  down,  this  was  every-  where considered  a  piece  of  almost  incredible  vandalism.

During  the  period  of  German  romanticism  no  other  art  bore  such  ripe  and  thoroughly  sound  fruits  as  music,  which  had  ever  been  the  most  closely  akin  to  the  German  genius.  In  music  the  sense  of  form  of  the  Teutons  always  displayed  its  activity  with  a  frank  primitiveness,  altogether  undisturbed  by  the  hostile  criticism  which  in  other  departments  so  often  interfered  with  the  freedom  of  creation.  Music  remained  faithful  to  the  Germans  even  at  a  time  when  our  intellectual  life  seemed  almost  defunct ;  even  the  arid  century  which  preceded  the  peace  of  Westphalia  enheartened  itself  by  the  thrilling  strains  of  Luther's  hymnal.  At  a  later  date,  when  the  new  national  culture  had  as  yet  hardly  begun,  Handel  and  Bach  composed  their  classic  works ;  until  at  length  during  the  blossoming  time  of  our  poetry,  through  the  labours  of  Gluck,  Haydn,  and  Mozart,  music  was  in  Germany  raised  to  a  height  which  that  of  no  other  nation  has  ever  attained.  The  most  many-sided  of  all  composers  came  to  stand  by  the  side  of  the  most  many-sided  of  the  poets.    Both  owed to  the  mysterious  energy  of  immediate  environment  a  wonderful  ease  of  creation  ;  but  how  far  simpler  and  more  natural  was  the  lot  of  Mozart.  He  produced  for  an  audience  which  followed  him  with  grateful  receptivity,  and  lived  in  confidential  inter-  course with  the  singers  and  other  musicians  whose  parts  he  wrote  expressly  for  them.  In  this  way  every  one  of  his  works  became  a  well-rounded  whole  ;  he  was  spared  all  the  fragmen-  tary attempts  and  false  starts  which  Goethe  in  his  loneliness  was  unable  to  avoid.  Music  united  even  more  than  literature  all  of  German  blood  in  a  common  joy ;  the  majority  of  the  great  composers  belonged  by  birth  or  by  long  residence  to  those  Austrian  lands  which  had  so  little  share  in  the  work  of  our  poesy,  and  found  there,  above  all,  the  most  happy  understanding.

Even  during  Mozart's  lifetime  there  became  manifest  that  opposition  between  the  naive  and  the  sentimental  which,  based  upon  the  very  nature  of  all  the  arts,  must  inevitably  manifest  itself  in  their  periods  of  richest  development.  Like,  Michel-  angelo beside  Raphael,  like  Schiller  beside  Goethe,  Beethoven  appeared  beside  Mozart,  an  emotional  genius  who  with  elemental  energy  pressed  forward  towards  the  infinite  almost  beyond  the  Umits  of  his  art,  a  singer  of  freedom,  of  virile  pride,  filled  with  ideas  of  the  rights  of  man.  His  Eroica  had  been  dedicated  to  Bonaparte,  the  heir  of  the  Revolution,  but  he  tore  up  this  dedication  and  trampled  it  under  foot  when  he  heard  of  the  arbitrary  acts  of  the  despot.  Never  did  he  compose  more  greatly  than  when  he  was  describing  the  anciently  cherished  idea  of  the  free  Teutons,  the  victory  of  the  serene  spirit  over  the  obscurity  of  destiny,  as  in  the  Symphony  in  C  minor.  The  composer  himself,  the  deaf  master  of  sound,  was  a  living  witness  to  the  miraculous  energy  of  the  god-inspired  will.  He  was  able  to  move  even  the  blase  society  of  the  Vienna  congress  by  his  lofty  song  of  faithfulness,  Fidelio ;  but  the  ability  to  follow  in  its  entirety  the  bold  flight  of  his  Symphonies  was  reserved  for  a  later  generation.

From  the  very  first,  the  development  of  our  music  exhibited  a  purely  national  character,  and  it  was  therefore  impossible  that  it  could  remain  untouched  by  the  romantic  moods  and  great  events  of  the  age.  Immediately  after  the  war,  Carl  Maria  von  Weber  composed  music  for  the  Sword  Song,  Liitzows  wilder  Jagd,  and  other  poems  of  Korner  whose  musical  setting  first  assured  their  imperishability,  and  kept  alive  in  thousands  of  youthful  hearts  the  enthusiasm  of  the  War  of  Liberation.     A  deliberate advocate  of  patriotic  sentiment  and  culture,  he  then  undertook  the  leadership  of  the  newly  estabHshed  German  Operatic  Society  in  Dresden,  and  succeeded  in  throwing  altogether  into  the  shade  Italian  opera,  which  the  court,  after  the  custom  of  the  previous  century,  still  favoured  as  the  more  genteel ;  he  even  summoned  the  press  to  his  aid  in  order  to  initiate  his  countrymen  into  the  the  understanding  of  German  art.  Bom  in  Holstein  but  by  blood  and  temperament  a  genuine  Austrian,  he  became  during  his  extensive  wanderings  intimately  acquainted  with  the  land  and  the  people  of  almost  every  corner  of  German  soil ;  it  was  from  the  very  heart  of  the  nation  that  he  created  the  first  German  romantic  opera,  Der  Freischiltz,  a  work  of  youthful  freshness,  describing  so  ingenuously  and  faithfully  all  the  atmos-  phere and  all  the  haunting  charm  of  the  German  forest,  that  we  of  a  later  generation  find  it  difficult  to  realise  that  a  time  ever  existed  when  the  German  woodman  did  not  sing  to  the  strains  of  the  French  horn,  "  What  is  there  on  earth  like  the  hunter's  dehght  ?  "  At  the  same  time  German  song  attained  its  highest  development  through  the  work  of  a  pious  and  modest  Viennese  composer,  Franz  Schubert ;  the  entire  gamut  of  the  most  secret  moods  of  the  soul  was  at  his  command,  and  above  all  he  was  attracted  by  the  gentle  beauty  of  Goethe's  verse.  Soon  afterwards,  Uhland's  songs  found  a  congenial  composer  in  the  Swabian  Conradin   Kreutzer.

Romanticist  music  remained  completely  free  from  the  catholicising  tendency  by  which  so  many  of  the  poets  of  the  romantic  school  were  affected,  and  this  despite  the  fact  that  most  of  our  notable  composers  were  members  of  the  Catholic  church.  It  expressed  plainly  and  straightforwardly  that  which  was  common  to  all ;  it  realised  the  ideal  of  popular  art  so  often  praised  by  the  romanticist  poets,  but  truly  attained  among  them  by  Uhland  alone  ;  and  since  in  no  art  has  dilet-  tantism so  good  a  right  as  in  music  it  soon  drew  the  people  also  into  free  co-operation.  Already  in  the  seventeen-nineties,  lovers  of  music  had  assembled  in  the  singing  academy  of  Berlin  to  act  as  choir  in  the  performance  of  Handel's  splendid  oratorios  and  similar  works.  Zelter,  Goethe's  unpoHshed  and  warm-hearted  friend,  founded  in  Berlin  in  the  year  1808  the  first  German  choral  society,  a  small  circle  of  poets,  singers,  and  composers,  to  cultivate  the  art  of  song.  Several  other  North  German  states  followed  this  example.  In  the  Prussian  national  army   there   was   no   end   to   cheerful   singing  during   the  war ; Luetzow's  volunteers  had  a  trained  choir,  and  their  example  was,  after  the  peace,  imitated  by  many  of  the  Prussian  regiments.

Then,  at  the  right  moment  (1817),  NageH,  the  Swiss  musician,  published  his  Gesangbilderngslehre  fiir  Mdnnerchor ;  he  spoke  of  choral  singing  as  "  the  one  kind  of  national  life  of  common  interest  to  all  that  is  possible  in  the  realm  of  the  higher  art,"  and  summoned  the  whole  nation  to  participate  in  it.  Seven  years  later  originated  the  Stuttgart  choral  society,  the  prototype  of  the  numerous  choral  societies  of  South  and  Central  Germany.  In  accordance  with  the  free  democratic  methods  of  the  highlands,  they  counted  from  the  first  upon  a  greater  membership  than  did  the  comparatively  domestic  choral  societies  of  the  north,  and  did  not  hesitate  to  give  public  per-  formances and  to  appear  in  choral  festivals.  Music  became  the  social  art  of  the  new  century,  became  what  oratory  had  been  in  the  days  of  the  Cinquecento,  an  indispensable  ornament  of  every  German  festival,  a  genuine  pride  of  the  nation.  The  love  of  song  awakened  in  every  district  to  a  degree  which  had  never  been  known  since  the  days  of  the  meistersingers.  There  was  a  vivid  sense  that  with  this  new  and  nobler  form  of  sociability  a  breath  of  freer  air  entered  the  national  life,  and  the  boast  was  gladly  made  that  "  before  the  power  of  song  the  ridiculous  limitations  of  class  fall  to  the  ground."  It  was  through  song  alone  that  countless  members  of  the  common  people  received  an  intimation  of  a  pure  and  subhme  world,  upUfted  above  the  dust  and  sweat  of  daily  life  ;  and  when  this  valuable  gift  is  taken  into  consideration  it  seems  of  comparatively  little  account  that  the  vague  enthusiasm  which  characterless  music  awakens,  confirmed  many  a  German  dreamer  in  the  disordered  enthusiasm  of  his  sentimental  political  ideas.

Yet  it  was  not  in  vain  that  the  new  generation  had  steeled  its  energies  in  a  national  war,  nor  was  it  in  vain  that  subse-  quently, at  every  stage  in  the  development  of  the  new  poesy,  the  return  to  nature  was  preached,  the  return  to  the  simply  human.  On  all  sides,  the  national  customs  became  more  manly,  more  vigorous,  and  more  natural,  and  ever3^where,  too,  they  became  unconsciously  more  democratic  ;  the  epoch  of  excessive  domesticity,  of  carefully  closed  clubs  and  private  circles,  was  drawing  to  an  end.  Since  the  peace,  it  had  become  possible  to  resume  the  long  interrupted  practice  of  travelling.  Whilst  rich  foreigners  undertook  the  grand  tour  through  Europe,  whose principal  romantic  attractions  had  been  indicated  by  Lord  Byron  in  Childe  Harold,  the  easily  contented  Germans  preferred  to  visit  the  modest  charms  of  their  native  central  mountains.  The  crags  of  the  Meissener  highlands,  which  pastor  Gotzinger  had  recently  made  accessible,  became  esteemed  under  the  name  of  the  Saxon  Switzerland.  Gottschalck's  guidebook  to  the  Hartz  mountains  was  the  first  to  give  advice  to  mountaineers,  and  after  Reichard  had  published  his  Passagier,  the  number  of  guide-books  for  travellers  continued  gradually  to  increase.  The  travellers  of  the  two  preceding  centuries  had  sought  out  the  works  of  man,  everything  that  was  rare  and  remarkable  ;  the  new  age  preferred  the  romantic  charms  of  picturesque  landscape  and  regions  memorable  in  the  history  of  the  fatherland.  Travelling  on  horseback,  which  had  formerly  been  so  greatly  preferred,  became  rare,  owing  to  the  general  impoverishment.  When  Amdt  in  youth  wandered  through  Germany  on  foot  he  found  for  the  most  part  only  journeymen  as  companions  on  the  road  ;  now  the  poesy  of  foot-travel  had  become  a  dehght  to  cultured  youth  as  well,  and  the  true  gymnast  must  be  a  hardy  pedestrian.  A  new  world  of  blameless  joys  was  opened  to  the  young  men  of  Germany  when  throughout  Thuringia  and  Franconia,  and  on  the  Rhine,  happy  troops  of  students  or  artists  went  singing  on  their  way  through  the  summer  time.  Every  ruined  fortress  and  every  mountain  top  commanding  a  fine  view  was  visited  ;  at  night  the  jolly  comrades  settled  down  cheerfully  in  the  straw  in  peasants'  inns,  or  they  quartered  themselves  on  a  hospitable  pastor.  Guitar  slung  over  his  shoulder,  August  von  Binzer,  the  pride  of  the  Jena  Burschen-  schaft,  wandered  happily  all  over  Germany,  and  the  young  people  flocked  together  in  all  the  villages  in  order  to  Hsten  to  the  playing  and  singing   of  the  new  troubadour.

The  poUtical  sentiments  of  the  rising  generation  were  gradually  transformed  by  this  joyous  life  of  wandering.  The  young  men  became  familiar  with  the  thought  of  national  unity,  feeling  at  home  everywhere  upon  German  soil,  they  learned  that  the  kernel  of  our  nationaUty  is  the  same  throughout  Germany,  notwithstanding  the  multiplicity  of  the  forms  of  life  ;  and  they  looked  with  increasing  hostility  upon  the  artificial  barriers  which  political  forms  had  established  amid  this  single  people.  Unfortunately  the  recognition  was  made  almost  exclu-  sively by  the  North  Germans.  Since  North  Germany  had  Uttle  to  offer  in  the  way  of  the  romantic  glories  which  to  this  generation seemed  alone  worthy  of  regard,  the  South  Germans  seldom  left  their  beautiful  native  mountains.  Whereas  in  the  north  it  was  soon  hardly  possible  to  find  a  man  of  culture  who  had  seen  nothing  of  the  land  and  people  of  the  south,  in  the  highlands  particularist  self-satisfaction,  the  child  of  ignorance,  continued  to  flourish.  For  a  long  time  to  come  South  Germany  remained  the  Acropolis  of  hateful  tribal  prejudices.  In  the  north  there  were  now  to  be  found,  outside  Berlin,  no  more  than  a  few  isolated  fools  who  denied  understanding  and  culture  to  the  South  Germans.  Far  more  often  in  the  south  was  to  be  heard  the  accusation  that  the  North  Germans  were  lacking  in  kindliness  ;  many  an  excellent  highlander  beheved  that  the  lands  northward  of  the  Main  were  an  interminable  dreary  plain,  and  was  of  opinion  that  under  this  wintry  sky  the  only  things  that  could  continue  to  thrive  were  sand  and  aesthetic  tea,  criticism  and  Junkerdom.