unsettled problems of history whether or not they may not be won back at some future time.

The Southern German states announced their desire to join with the North, and in 1871, in France, King William was acclaimed German Emperor.

Measures for further consolidation of the empire were at once undertaken and the fine educational system of Prussia made obligatory throughout the country. The splendid king and emperor died in 1888, having lived to see one of the strongest nations of Europe built up, largely through the influence and policy of his distinguished Chancellor Bismarck. Kaiser Frederick succeeded, but lived only three months, whereupon in the same year the present Kaiser William II. was crowned. His curt dismissal of Bismarck, who had stood at the helm for so many years, did not tend to win him popularity, and there are few more touching scenes in history than that of the aged Chancellor going alone to leave a single rose upon the tomb of William I. before going into the retirement of private life. Above any slight which a young and selfsufficient ruler could offer, the unity of Germany remains the great monument to Otto von Bismarck, and his name is dear to the hearts of his countrymen.

Germany today presents the spectacle-unusual in our time of an autocratic ruler in a land where socialism is rapidly growing. A very large vote is controlled by the socialists, and it is plain that despotic government would meet with failure were it again attempted.

MODERN LITERATURE IN GERMANY.*

GERMANY'S greatest humorist is Jean

Paul Richter (1763-1825), called by his admirers Jean Paul the Unique. Heine acknowledged an inestimable debt to his influence, and Thomas Carlyle describes him, in characteristic fashion, as "that vast World-Mælstrom of Humor." In one of his incomparable essays on this strange German genius, Carlyle says: "In the whole circle of literature, we look in vain. for his parallel. Unite the sportfulness of Rabelais, and the best sensibility of Sterne, with the earnestness, and, even in slight portions, the sublimity of Milton; and let the mosaic brain of old Burton give forth the workings of this strange union, with the pen of Jeremy Bentham!"

Readers of Carlyle's two essays on Richter, with their sympathetic insight into the odd twistings and solecistic peculiarities of the German's style, will see what an affinity exists betwen subject and rhapsodist. Even in diction the two are brothers; the Germans themselves read Richter by the aid of a special dictionary! Indeed, without so much license as is usually the case in literary comparison, we may style Richter the German Carlyle; or, from a strict chronological standpoint, pronounce Carlyle the British Richter. Carlyle himself confesses of Richter what many of Carlyle's readers have found true of "Sartor Resartus"-that "without great patience and some considerable catholicity of disposition, no reader is likely to prosper much with them." Richter's quips and conceits move along in an anarchy of art-form like "parti-colored mob-masses." He is a humor*For German dramatists, see Part VII.

ist, moreover, heartily and throughout; not only in the low provinces of thought, but in the loftiest provinces. His fantastic dreamings sport even with the transcendental. A contemporary of Goethe and Schiller, he could not "fall in with those two," and they regarded him with curious wonder. To Schiller he seemed "foreign, like a man fallen from the moon." That poet declared: "If Richter had made as good use of his riches as other men made of their poverty, he would have been worthy of the highest meed of genius." And, in spite of his extravagant and lawless style, modeled upon his favorite Sterne, his wild tissue of metaphors and similes, and his capricious conceits, no reader of Richter can fail to get a glimpse of a splendor of disordered genius, of a fertile imagination. He is one of the great nature-painters of the world. He has given us fascinating pictures of childhood, youth, friendship and love.

Himself the son of a poor country pastor, and long the slave of pinching poverty, he wrote in "Siebenkaes:" "All sins arise from poverty, but there are joys and virtues in every class. Therefore, fiction should paint joy in poverty.” And in the pages of his voluminous novels-in such figures as Wuz, as Quintus Fixlein, as Siebenkaes and his friend Liebgeber, as Dr. Katzenberger and others, we truly behold the German life, domestic and civil, of a hundred years ago, with all its charms and all its foibles, its innocence and absurdity, its pedantry and its freedom, its sordid limitations not preventing generous development or sport. What an idyllic picture is that of the wedding of Fixlein and his beloved Thiennette.

"A huge, irregular man, both in mind and person, full of fire, strength, and impetuosity," Carlyle describes him, yet admiringly adds: "His thoughts, his feelings, the creations of his spirit, walk before us embodied under wondrous shapes, in motley and ever-fluctuating groups; but his essential character, however he disguise it, is that of a philosopher and moral poet, whose study has been human nature, whose delight and best endeavor are with all that is beautiful and tender, and mysteriously sublime, in the fate or history of man." The critic continues: "In him philosophy and poetry are not only reconciled, but blended together into a purer

essence, into religion." To appreciate the full significance of this verdict, one has only to read the wonderful dream (Richter is full of famous dreams) of a Godless Universe, found in the first chapter or "flower-piece" of his "Siebenkaes."

His "lawless, untutored half-savage face," which always gave forth everything (philosophical treatises, and even his Autobiography) encased in some quaint fantastic framing, was the victim of an irregular education, due to poverty. Born in the mountain district of Fichtelgebirge, four years after Schiller, the son of a debt-burdened pastor, he was obliged to endure all manner of poverty's stings. He had only water sometimes, and not even prisoners' bread; and had finally to flee from Leipzig to escape a debtor's prison. Ten years he toiled, sustained by his widowed mother's brave trust in him, until with "The Invisible Lodge” (1793) and "Hesperus" (1795) he attained fame. Later he shone at Weimar, apart from Goethe and Schiller, and enjoyed a pension during his last years in Baireuth, Bavaria.

His early satires, written in the bitterness of an empty purse and stomach, were "Lawsuits in Greenland," "Selections from the Papers of the Devil," and "Biographical Recreations under the Cranium of a Giantess." Odd titles, truly, and odder style.

His quaint novels followed: "The Invisible Lodge," "The Years of Wild Oats," "Life of Fixlein," "Parson in Jubilee," "Schmelzle's Journey to the Bath," "Life of Fibel," "Hesperus," and "Titan." The three greatest of these (deemed by Richter as his masterpieces) are "Wild Oats," "Hesperus,” and "Titan," evidently inspired as a reply to the too earthly realism of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Richter tried in these novels to portray an equally roundly developed manhood, possessed, however, of a higher spirituality.

The stupendous sentimentality of Richter is seen in "Hesperus," wherein Viktor exclaims, "Give me two days or one night, and I will fall in love with whomever you choose." "Wild Oats" is the story of twin brothers, Walt and Vult, who represent Love and Knowledge, or the contrast between the dreamy and practical-"Opposite Magnets," says Richter. "Titan" represents force struggling with the divine harmony, and proving that idealism must be mingled with realism.