contemporary, with regard to delicacy of touch, is not to be taken as indicating that the German has not the power of compressing what he has to say into a moderate compass. Far from it; very often he crowds a great deal of meaning into a few lines, which cover the whole ground in a very satisfactory way. They lack Sainte-Beuve's easy grace, but they have their own solid merit. Such, for example, may be seen in the following accurate and thorough characterization of Ranke, which we translate from the third volume of the Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur seit Lessing's Tod. He says, speaking of his History of the Popes:

"There was perhaps a hidden charm for him in the fact that the renaissance of the church, unlike its first struggle for recognition, was not due to efforts of great men, but to a universal tendency which carried every one along with it, whether willing or unwilling. For drawing a Gregory VII., an Innocent III., an Alexander III., a broad stroke is needed; they require to be painted in bold colors; there are few delicate, subtle qualities to be found in them. But to paint the transition from a Leo X. to a Pius V., a Sixtus V., to catch the delicate shades in which the imperceptible but ever active ecclesiastical mind is expressed on these insignificant but attractive physiognomies, is a pleasant task for a diplomat who hides gentle irony beneath courteous reverence, where apparent simplicity is the best protection. What a rich gallery, and yet what artistic moderation! The Popes appear in a threefold relation: as rulers with an enormous power stretching over the whole world; as local magnates interested in petty questions of government and local politics; last of all, as belonging to the most refined nation in respect to science and art, as protectors of the great city which has not yet forgotten that it was once the head-quarters of culture. We are made at home in the narrow chambers of the conclave, we are introduced to every interesting face; we go about in the city, we see new Rome arise, its palaces,

its streets, its citizens; we learn the origin of every family, of every class; the pictures and statues are brought before our eyes, we see the obelisk set up, St. Peter's built. Then we follow those sent by the nepotism of the Popes to their estates as they go forth to take possession of their grants; then we become acquainted with their neighbors, with the country-people; we take a personal interest in the political complications. Imperceptibly the stage widens. We travel to different courts in company with well-known legates. The religious and political relations of nations are set before us one after another; we take an interest in the learned and cultivated men of the neighborhood; we examine the paintings and antiquities; we even, like true men of the world, pay some attention to what is doing in philosophy, but without too intricate a study of single points; and at the same time through the Propaganda, which embraces the whole world, we receive the fullest information from distant parts. Being made thus personally familiar with the great circle of the activity of the Popes, we can, when weary, return to the capitol without losing a single side of the great picture.

"In general cultivation Ranke has a great advantage over active politicians; he is at home everywhere, in literature and art, in the by-ways of religious development and philosophy. For individuals he has the sharp eye which generally only intelligent women have. We miss, however, the manly seriousness which neither æsthetical satisfaction nor personal sympathy can divert when it is necessary to be impartial. In the criticism of facts he is severe; in his judgment of moral questions, however, he shows a certain timidity in his effort to treat them impersonally. . . . Ranke has a delicate appreciation of what is agreeable and important, but this sensitiveness is somewhat that of a dilettante; he knows neither wrath nor hate, and he has to bring himself artificially to enthusiasm and belief. The moral feeling, the historic power which calls forth great deeds, is with him only an object,

it is not within him. He stands outside of events like a diplomat, his sympathy does not come from the heart. This sort of sympathy limits his power of observation, by confining it to single points and to externals. A cultivated man will not confine himself to the rough outline; he will take great pleasure in following up hidden motives, he will examine with impartial benevolence every appearance of intelligence; but this benevolence is not the living, animating sympathy, the pure enthusiasm, without which we can have no really comprehensive treatment, and which alone makes possible a true appreciation of the subject."

This is not describing a man with a single word, but those men who can be described with one word are not the most interesting in the world; and this extract, to our thinking, contains a very well-balanced estimate of an important writer. It shows the author's deliberateness and care; at other times he is less majestic, and he sweeps away cobwebs without reading the riot-act.

Throughout the whole of his criticism of German authors Schmidt retains his coolness. As is natural, he does not see them or judge them as a foreigner would. He accepts them, as it were, with more readiness than might seem desirable to those who forget that he is not giving us a list of his likes and dislikes, but a history of what has occurred. To all but the most zealous students of German literature, and its most ardent admirers, his books will seem disproportionate to the subject. When one compares German literature with that of the French, or, more especially, of the English, it is easy to see that what in our language we have almost forgotten outweighs all save a very few masterpieces of the Germans. There is a certain pride of conquest which renders us very lenient critics of what we acquire in a foreign tongue. There are certain peculiarities of the German nature, which at one time or another of their lives almost all human beings share; many of them are observable in early youth, and the reader of course rejoices at finding

them in resounding verse, especially when he has worked his way to translating them fluently by many hours' hard work with grammar and dictionary. Then the unfailing respect with which German critics treat every man, who claims to have filled a want in their literature, imposes on the rest of mankind. Not that we would brand the Germans as outside barbarians, nor yet deny them the gratitude they deserve for those few masterpieces which stand out alone, or for those poems of theirs which so well and easily express a love of nature and at the same time sympathy with man; but we would merely ask if it is not possible that their literature has been, on the whole, overrated.

It certainly affords the student a wonderful example of sudden and great success; it flashed with unexpected brilliancy from a land where old-fashioned rules and hindrances would have seemed to lay the heaviest weights on intellectual movement, and no one can fairly refuse his admiration. But, it may be asked, does not the position of the Germans towards it in some ways remind the observer of that of a selfmade man towards those conventional laws which carefully educated people are taught from the cradle to respect? The graceless manner of German writers is doubtless due partly to their cumbersome language, which, as Mr. Lowell says in his essay on Lessing, in Among my Books, "has a fatal genius for going stern foremost, for yawing, and for not minding the helm without some ten minutes' notice in advance;" their education, too, renders them fonder of thoroughness than of elegance: but besides all these influences there seems to be on their part a sort of willful clinging to uncouthness out of mistaken patriotism, the same feeling, by the way, that is successfully appealed to by those lovers of their country among the Germans who are averse to the abandonment of their sight-destroying text. The awkwardness with which even Goethe used German prose has probably had some effect in making his successors indifferent to the qualities of grace and ease,

which other nations consider of great importance. His example has always been of great weight, and could easily turn the balance against those softer charms which delighted foreigners. This peculiarity of his fellow-countrymen does not strike Mr. Schmidt so strongly as many others. It is not, to be sure, the most important point in the examination of a literature, but it has almost certainly the mischievous effect of making what is dull impose on the reader by its airs of wisdom. Ease suggests falseness, and clumsiness profundity; just as in social life the man who is negligent of his attire is commonly held to have a deeper character than his welldressed neighbor.

With regard to the weightier matters of the law, Mr. Schmidt is a most observant critic. Through all the vagaries of the German writers as they have been affected by the different waves of thought and feeling during the last hundred years, he maintains the same tone of impartiality. He is always cool, but it is against pretense, and the efforts of would-be great men to let their genius apologize for offenses against good taste, that he is more especially severe. Everything he brings to the test of common-sense, by which we mean the fair average opinion of educated people.

This quality of his intelligence is perhaps even more clearly marked in his history of French literature during the last hundred years. It is curious to observe the different ways in which we outsiders approach French literature. Some, descended in a straight line from those who always spoke of that people as eaters of frogs, have no patience with their ways, and while they may be induced against their will to allow that sometimes they possess not wholly unamusing qualities, the general tone of their minds is one of contempt for them. On the other hand, there are those who are ready and anxious to forget all those prejudices and deeply settled opinions which are pretty sure to grow about a man who is a father of a family and in active business, on the subjects of morality, the respect due one's neighbor's

wife, the spotlessness of the professionally vicious, and such matters, on which the verdict of society is brief but impressive. The laws of right-doing seem to affect their judgments as much as do the shifting rules of fashion about the buttons on their coat-sleeves. Propriety seems like a thin web spun in the empty air. Any attempt to apply those tests which we bring to bear in real life is denounced as prudery. Such are two extremes as we all see them among our friends. Doubtless the intolerance of each side has had its effect in deafening the ears of the other, thereby complicating a question which it is by no means easy to settle. Mr. Schmidt writes with no malevolent desire of showing any inferiority of the French, nor yet does he start with the condition that in their favor the world is to be looked at upside down.

He interweaves the history of the time with that of the literature from the year 1774 down to the accession of the late emperor. This includes the premonitions of the Revolution as they are to be seen in Beaumarchais, and in the lives of those young Frenchmen who fought in this country; it begins with the time when their literature was in an artificial state, and follows it through its various forms down very nearly to the present time. This period, which includes such interesting names, to mention some of the most prominent, as Madame de Staël, Chateaubriand, Beranger, H. Beyle, Guizot, St. Simon, Mérimée, Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Dumas, and Lamartine, he discusses with his usual candor, clear-sightedness, and thoroughness. With regard to the externals, he sets the history and the politics before us, and the author's relations to his surroundings; to aid us in comprehending his writings, he describes his method, and furnishes us with plenty of examples of the points he is desirous of making clear. He makes his way through all the winding paths French literature has followed, without undue admiration, as well as without the contempt which is often the nearest approach one makes

to impartiality. It is this quality of observing dispassionately which makes Mr. Schmidt so valuable a guide. If in treating of German books his patience is mainly shown by the enormous mass of dullness through which he has gone, it is otherwise here; there is the same equanimity, but we see it in his treatment of those manifestations of modern literature which are clearly enough described by their proper title, French. Not that we are ever left in doubt as to the opinions he holds of any writer, far from it, but he utters them with deliberation and with a fair statement of the other side. For example, speaking of George Sand's earlier novels, those which have given her her notoriety: —

"George Sand had the art of a real poet, that of touching the most powerful chords of the heart and setting them in motion. Her warm feeling for nature lent a rich color to her figures. Her enthusiasm was not artificial; in the more passionate moments it lent life and fire to the characters, which for a time gave them an air of reality. Besides, she was not overpowered by her fancy; she had a cool eye and was able to distinguish between dream and reality. Hence those surprising touches of truth to nature, which make us imagine for a time that she has a power of analysis which does not belong to her; when she fails to see anything immediately, no reflection will give it to her. There is a certain monotony in her thoughts, and this often tempts her to affectations, intended to dazzle and surprise us. Her knowledge of the world is limited; her main types of character often reappear in a different dress.

"There is a radical unsoundness in all she writes; it is flattering to weakness, it idealizes common yearnings, and

persuades weak natures that they on that very account are noble. Almost invariably a false notion of greatness is inculcated."

Speaking of the coldness of some of the characters: -

"They never are wholly under the influence of a feeling, they gaze at themselves in a mirror and worship their image. Some fanciful, romantic notion has given them their rôle, and their pride sustains them in it. In their coldness they show nothing of the innocence of a maidenly heart, nor in their passion any of the forgetfulness of self which atones for the sin."

For an accurate and interesting account of the French literature of the last hundred years we know no book to compare with this. It is one to be studied carefully, and then taken up and read at odd moments; it is so full of wisdom and intelligence that no student of literature can afford to neglect it.1

His three volumes of essays, Bilder aus dem geistigen Leben unserer Zeit, admirably supplement his longer works. The subjects treated are various, some referring to German literary history, others to different foreign authors, Turgénieff, Bulwer, George Eliot, etc. They have already been discussed in the pages of this magazine.

In conclusion, we would renew our praise of this writer, and call the attention of the public to his works. His books, and Taine's History of English Literature, form good memorials of the more serious criticism of the present day. They instruct while they entertain.

T. S. Perry.

1 For a fuller discussion of this book, see the North American Review for July, 1874.