and approved exercise of the talents lent to us by nature, as far as could consist with all our civil relations.

For my native city had in this a very peculiar position, and one which has not been enough considered. While of the free imperial cities the northern could boast of an extended commerce, but the southern, declining in commercial import. ance, cultivated the arts and manufactures with more success; Frankfort on the Main exhibited a somewhat mixed character, combining the results of trade, wealth, and capital, with the passion for learning, and its collection of works of art.

The Lutheran Confession controlled its government; the ancient lordship of the Gan, now bearing the name of the house of Limburg; the house of Frauenstein, originally only a club, but during the troubles occasioned by the lower classes, faithful to the side of intelligence; the jurist, and others well to do and well disposed-none was excluded from the magistracy; even those mechanics who had upheld the cause of order at a critical time, were eligible to the council, though they were only stationary in their place. The other constitutional counterpoises, formal institutions, and whatever else belongs to such a constitution, afforded employment to the activity of many persons; while trade and manufacture, in so favorable a situation, found no obstacle to their growth and prosperity.

The higher nobility kept to itself, unenvied and almost unnoticed; a second class pressing close upon it was forced to be more active; and resting upon old wealthy family foundations, sought to distinguish itself by political and legal learning.

The members of the so-called Reformed persuasion (Calvinists) composed, like the refugees in other places, a distinguished class, and when they rode out in fine equipages on Sundays to their service in Bockenheim, seemed almost to celebrate a sort of triumph over the citizen's party, who had the privilege of going to church on foot in good weather and in bad.

The Roman Catholics were scarcely noticed; but they also were aware of the advantages which the other two confessions had appropriated to themselves.

EIGHTEENTH BOOK.

RETURNING to literary matters, I must bring forward a circumstance which had great influence on the German poetry of this period, and which is especially worthy of remark, because this very influence has lasted through the history of our poetic art to the present day, and will not be lost even in the future.

From the earlier times, the Germans were accustomed to rhyme; it had this advantage in its favour, that one could proceed in a very naïve manner, scarcely doing more thar count the syllables. If with the progress of improvement attention began more or less instinctively to be paid also to the sense and signification of the syllables, this was highly praiseworthy, and a merit which many poets contrived to make their own. The rhyme was made to mark the close of the poetical proposition; the sinaller divisions were indicated by shorter lines, and a naturally refined ear began to make provision for variety and grace. But now all at once rhyme was rejected before it was considered that the value of the syllables had nct as yet been decided, indeed that it was a difficult thing to decide. Klopstock took the lead. How earnestly he toiled and what he has accomplished is well known. Every one felt the uncertainty of the matter, many did not like to run a risk, and stimulated by this natural tendency, they snatched at a poetic prose. Gessner's extremely charming Idylls opened an endless path. Klopstock wrote the dialogue of Hermann's Schlacht (Hermann's Battle) in prose, as well as Der Tod Adams (The Death of Adam). Through the domestic tragedies as well as the more classic dramas, a style more lofty and more impassioned gained possession of the theatre; while, on the other hand, the Iambic verse of five feet, which the example of the English had spread among us, was reducing poesy to prose. But in general the demand for rhythm and for rhyme could not be silenced. Ramler, though proceeding on vague principles (as he was always severe with respect to his own productions), could not help exercising the same severity upon those of

others. He transformed prose into verse, altered and improved the works of others, by which means he earned little thanks and only confused the matter still more. Those succeeded best who still conformed to the old custom of rhyme with a certain observance of syllabic quantity, and who, guided by a natural taste, observed laws though unexpressed and undetermined; as, for example, Wieland, who, although inimitable, for a long time served as a model to more moderate talents.

But still in any case the practice remained uncertain, and there was no one, even among the best, who might not for the moment have gone astray. Hence the misfortune, that this epoch of our poetic history, so peculiarly rich in genius, produced little which, in its kind, could be pronounced correct; for here also the time was stirring, advancing, active, and calling for improvement, but not reflective and satisfying its own requirements.

In order, however, to find a firm soil on which poetic genius might find a footing,-to discover an element in which they could breathe freely, they had gone back some centuries, where earnest talents were brilliantly prominent amid a chaotic state of things, and thus they made friends with the poetic art of those times. The Minnesingers lay too far from us; it would have been necessary first to study the language, and that was not our object, we wanted to live and not to learn.

Hans Sachs, the really masterly poet, was one whom we could more readily sympathise with. A man of true talent, not indeed like the Minnesinging knights and courtiers, but a plain citizen, such as we also boasted ourselves to be. A didactic realism suited us, and on many occasions we made use of the easy rhythm, of the readily occurring rhyme. His manner seemed so suitable to mere poems of the day, and to such occasional pieces as we were called upon to write at every hour.

If important works, which required the attention and labor of a year or a whole life, were built, more or less, upon such hazardous grounds on trivial occasions, it may be imagined how wantonly all other ephemeral productions took their rise and shape; for example, the poetical epistles, para

bles, and invectives of all forms, with which we went on making war within ourselves, and seeks squabbling abroad.

Of this kind, besides what has already been printed, something, though very little, survives; it may be laid up somewhere. Brief allusions will suffice to reveal to thinking men their origin and purposes. Persons of more than ordinary penetration, to whose sight these may hereafter be brought, will be ready to observe that an honest purpose lay at the bottom of all such eccentricities. An upright will revolts against presumption, nature against conventionalities, talent against forms, genius with itself, energy against indecision, undeveloped capacity against developed mediocrity; so that the whole proceeding may be regarded as a skirmish which follows a declaration of war, and gives promise of a violent contest. For, strictly considered, the contest is not yet fought out, in these fifty years; it is still going on, only in a higher region.

I had, in imitation of an old German puppet play, invented a wild extravaganza, which was to bear the title of Hanswurst's Hochzeit (Jack Pudding's Wedding).* The scheme was as follows:-Hanswurst, a rich young farmer and an orphan, has just come of age, and wishes to marry a rich maiden, named Ursel Blandine. His guardian, Kilian Brustflech (Leather apron), and her mother Ursel, are highly pleased with the purpose. Their long-cherished plans, their dearest wishes, are at last fulfilled and gratified. There is not the slightest obstacle, and properly the whole interest turns only upon this, that the young people's ardour for their union is delayed by the necessary arrangements and formalities of the occasion. As prologue, enters the inviter to the wedding festivities, who proclaims the banns after the traditional fashion, and ends with the rhymes:

The wedding feast is at the house

Of mine host of the Golden Louse.

To obviate the charge of violating the unity of place, the aforesaid tavern, with its glittering insignia, was placed in the background of the theatre; but so that all its four sides could

*Hanswurst is the old German buffoon, whose name answers to the English "Jack Pudding."-TR.

be presented to view, by being turned upon a peg; and as it was moved round, the front scenes of the stage had to undergo corresponding changes.

In the first act the front of the house facing the street was turned to the audience, with its golden sign magnified as it were by the solar microscope; in the second act, the side towards the garden. The third was towards a little wood; the fourth towards a neighboring lake; which gave rise to a prediction that in aftertimes the decorator would have little difficulty in carrying a wave over the whole stage up to the prompter's box.

But all this does not as yet reveal the peculiar interest of the piece. The principal joke which was carried out, even to an absurd length, arose from the fact that the whole dramatis persona consisted of mere traditional German nick-names, which at once brought out the characters of the individuals, and determined their relations to one another.

As we would fain hope that the present book will be read aloud in good society, and even in decent family circles, we cannot venture, after the custom of every play-bill, to name our persons here in order, nor to cite the passages in which they most clearly and prominently showed themselves in their true colours; although, in the simplest way possible, lively, roguish, broad allusions, and witty jokes, could not but arise. We add one leaf as a specimen, leaving our editors the liberty of deciding upon its admissibility.

Cousin Schuft (scamp), through his relationship to the family, was entitled to an invitation to the feast; no one had anything to say against it; for though he was a thoroughly good-for-nothing fellow, yet there he was, and since he was there, they could not with propriety leave him out; on such a feast-day, too, they were not to remember that they had occasionally been dissatisfied with him.

With Master Schurke (knave), it was a still more serious case; he had, indeed, been useful to the family, when it was to his own profit; on the other hand, again, he had injured it, perhaps, in this case, also with an eye to his own interests; perhaps, too, because he found an opportunity. Those who were any ways prudent voted for his admission; the few who would have excluded hini, were out-voted.

But there was a third person, about whom it was still more