impassioned and reserved." His cynicism was of the bitterest type, yet he sang so tender a song as: ance. E'en as a lovely flower, So fair, so pure thou art; My hands I fain had folded Upon thy soft brown hair, His life was sensuous, yet he was true to his wife and tenderly loved his old mother. He sneered at such things as hope and resignation, yet the history of his latter years is one of the most noble endurOut of so bewildering a complexity we can only gather probabilities. He was a Jew, he was essentially modern, he had the gift of imagination and passion and song, he was full of the love of life. These give the key-note of his strangely-wrought character. Fuller analysis we cannot attempt; it is enough to indicate the fact of the unique personality, which was not seldom coarse, blasphemous, but which nevertheless sang some of the sweetest lyric strains in the German or any language. The French Revolution of 1830 produced little effect in Germany. But it made men think. Then came the Revolution of 1848. The effect of this was much stronger. The liberal movement had assumed larger proportions. Successful experiments in popular government had been made in some of the small German States. Gradually the people had come to the point of forcible remonstrance against the despotism which every where obtained. The establishment of a republic in France by the Revolution of February put the match to the powder. The German people at once rose and demanded national representation, trial by jury, and freedom of the press. In Bavaria, in Austria, in Prussia, the people carried the day. And although for a time the old régime returned, yet ultimately the movement culminated in the National Union of 1871. These stirring events seem to have given a new stimulus to German literature. Especially is this true since the last mentioned date. It is not easy to touch on the writers since 1850, because the perspective becomes deceptive. They are too near. Following Heine came a group of litterateurs vaguely banded together under the name of "Young Germany "-though far truer upholders of what the name implies are found in the young generation of our own day. KARL GUTZKOW (1811-1879) should first be mentioned. He was a novelist and dramatist. But his novels are too long and too reflective and his dramas are sometimes overweighted with controversial matter. The Sorcerer of Rome, a nine-volume novel, appeared in 1859. Uriel Acosta (1846) is a powerful play founded on the story of a condemned heretic and contains some very marked political utterances-of course on the popular side. FERDINAND FREILIGRATH (1810-1876) was a poet of the common people. He identified himself with them and in return won their love. He was thoroughly in sympathy with the aspiration for better government, and he had the courage of his convictions; for he published a collection of poems setting forth his views in so unequivocal a manner that he was forced to seek safety in Switzerland. This Confession of Faith kept him an exile until 1848, when he returned and headed a small insurrection at Düsseldorf. Three years later he was again compelled to emigrate. He went to London and occupied himself by translating Longfellow, Tennyson and other English poets into German. And very excellent translations he made. In 1866 he returned to his native land, where he lived until his death. His later poems are of truer value than their youthful predecessors. Famous is The Dead to the Living, the cry of those slain by the Royal troops in Berlin in March, 1848. Incidentally, the authorities showed their lack of appreciation by imprisoning the poet. Part of his work deals with foreign subjects in a manner that is full of color. Another member of "Young Germany was HEINRICH LAUBE (1806-1884), an important poet and novelist. It is impossible to mention all the good names of recent years. Two or three only can be given as representative of the best that has been done. RICHARD WAGNER is one of the most remarkable figures during the century in German artistic life. Born at Leipzig in 1813 and dying in Venice in 1883, his life was devoted to the task of creating "genuine operas by writing both words and music." He was both a poet and musician of exceptional attainments. His aim was "to raise the strangely potent language of the orchestra to such a height, that at every instant it may plainly manifest to feeling the unspeakable of the dramatic situation." A famous yet unsympathetic fellow-countryman has called him the personification of the Degenerate; but, if the judgment of an ever-widening circle of admirers goes for anything, this opinion is beside the mark. His lifework may be described in the language of a recent critic: "What Wagner did, viewed from the standpoint of literature, was to create a national music drama, based upon ancient Germanic traditions and legends, about which he threw the gorgeous mantle of his harmonies. In addition to the beauty of the poetic conceptions, the literary artist appears in the perfect adaptation of each word and phrase and vowel, not only to the dramatic expression of the thought, but to the needs of the human voice as well. . . . In the midst of all the action the orchestra speaks an articulate language; suggests, warns, alarms, melts, threatens or moves to tears of sympathy or joy,-produces in short that 'demonic' emotion, . . . the effect of which Goethe considered the highest achievement of all art. Indeed, the music will not yield the whole secret of its charm until the words, the poetic thought, and the entire dramatic conception, have become completely a part of the hearers' mental equipment. To this quality of Wagner's work the art of the poet contributed as much as the genius of the composer." Wagner wrote striking prose as well as poetry. Some of his operas are: Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, The Niebelung's Ring (Rheingold, The Valkyrie, The Twilight of the Gods) and Parzifal. Some admirers consider him the greatest poet of the nineteenth century. Of quite recent years a new tendency has been exhibited in German literature. It appears most strongly in the works of the two dramatists, Sudermann and Gerhardt Hauptmann. And here again we must regret the limitations which preclude anything but a brief notice of these two writers. HERMANN SUDERMANN was born in 1857 at Matzicken in East Prussia. On the great plain which stretches thereabouts he places the scenes of many of his novels-for he is a novelist as well as a dramatist. His first novel was Dame Care (1886); his first drama Honour (1889). Both won him instant and enduring fame. Sudermann's greatest work so far is the play called in English Magda, from the name of its heroine. He deals with social problems, and with human nature at war with social conventions. Magda pictures the relations of parent and child under the stress of peculiarly modern conditions. GERHARDT HAUPTMANN (1861) has a greater love |