there on a day when disturbance again raged on the streets of Paris. It was the end of August, 1870. In Alsace and Lorraine the armies of France had just been crushed; in the next week was to come Sedan. The streets were full of the tumult of war, the foot-beat of passing regiments, the clatter of drill, the "Marseillaise." On the Seine, just before, a band of ouvriers threatened to throw us into the river as Prussian spies. In the confusion the shrine of the serene goddess was left vacant, as at that former time. I found it a hushed asylum, the fairest of statues rising from its pedestal, wearing upon its lips its eternal smile. The rounded outlines swelled into their curves of perfect beauty; within the eyes lay the divine calm; on the neck, a symmetry more than mortal; all this, and at the same time the mutilation, - the broken folds of the drapery, the dints made in the marble by barbarian blows, the absent arms. When one stands before the Venus of Milo, it is not unworthy of even so high a moment to call up the image of that suffering man of great genius, shamed from his sneer and restored to his best self in the supernal presence. May we not see in the statue a type of Heine's genius, so shorn of strength, so stained and broken, yet, in the ruin, of beauty and power so unparalleled?

35

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MODERN ERA.

The story of German literature has been brought down to our own day. The position in which the German nation stands before the world was never prouder than now; their intellectual activity was never greater, their accomplishment never more impressive. As regards polite literature however it is not such a period as that which closed with the death of Göthe; the modern era is one of decay in poetic force. The causes of decay are not far to

seek.

The new circumstances of the nation call genius into other fields. The change of political condition, the cementing together of the fragments of German nationality into a mighty empire, gives new outlets for ability. In public life, at length, there are some opportunities for the citizen, though, as yet, not such opportunities as lie open to the freeborn Englishman and American. Again, in manufactures and commerce the possibilities have extended in a marvellous way. Until our own time, German industry has been in every way fettered. Unwise trade regulations strangled export and import;

1 Vilmar.

commerce languished in the interior of the land, and abroad the wings of enterprise were crippled. The restrictions now are for the most part removed. What merchant more daring in his ventures than the German? What competition more dreaded in the markets of the world than that of the German artisan? Who more bold than the German explorer? There are no finer ships upon the seas than those the German builds and mans. In some East Indian marts he threatens to crowd out Englishman and Hollander.

He plants his

naval stations in the heart of Oceanica, elbows sharply vegetating Spaniards and Portuguese in Rio and Peru; climbs, in Schlagintweit, the Himalayas ; in Barth, tracks the African desert; and presses along with Englishman, American, and Russian in search for the North Pole. Only yesterday the possibilities were opened, but through them power is already marvellously attracted that heretofore has been spent at the desk and in the library.

Positive science, in the third place, has come in our time to absorb in an extraordinary degree enthusiasm and energy. The conquest of force and matter never before went forward so triumphantly. When achievement is so dazzling, what wonder that ambitious youths enlist for such campaigns, and crowd laboratory, assay-room, and the cabinet of the naturalist! The idealism which was so captivating seventy years ago is forsaken, and the few representatives of a spiritual philosophy must fight hard to maintain their ground against Büchner, Karl Vogt, and the other advocates of materialism.

One of the most noted of modern literary critics utters himself as follows: "It would be an immense mistake to imagine that a trace remains of the elements that went to form the picture some writers have given to the world of us. The idealism, the dreaminess, the moonshine, have had their day. We have become strict realists. The questions that occupy us in the morning, which perplex us at nightfall, are business questions. All in art and literature that savored of idealism, dreaminess, and moonshine has gone. We have become accustomed to deal better than we used to with realities, and to describe things as they are. I had a conversation the other day with one of our best painters, in which he told me in the most animated manner that he had found a splendid subject for a picture; that he had now spent twelve months in preparatory studies, and that he should give the next few years of his life exclusively to the work. Although myself a tolerably thorough-going realist, I at once supposed he had chosen some famous event in the world's history. What was my astonishment when he told me that the subject was an iron-foundry!"'1

In our field, then, the famous men have vanished, and none of equal significance have arisen to take their places. The great Schiller hardly belongs to the present century. Almost half a century has passed since the death of the greater Göthe. Romanticism too has passed almost utterly away, present only in our heavens as a bank of vapor hangs on the

1 Julian Schmidt, in London Athenæum, May 18, 1872.

far horizon, from which the earth is sweeping, — shapeless, indefinite, full of lovely tints, but no longer right at hand to dazzle and obscure. The few great men in whom the brilliant past prolonged itself into the present are one by one dropping away. The grave has just closed over the poets Freiligrath and Simrock, and the story-teller, Hans Christian Andersen. On the scene we now behold figures not great, though often respectable,-poets like Jordan, dramatists like Gustav Freytag, story-tellers like Auerbach, Spielhagen, the prolific Mühlbach, and Paul Heyse. The force that in another time might have written a great lyric, guides an iron steamship or founds a trading-house in Hong Kong or Valparaiso. To discover the sources of the Nile, or a practicable path through the Arctic Ocean seems a grander thing than to write "Iphigenia' "Wallenstein;" or if men of power remain at home among books, they are more likely to undertake a sober history than an epic, a treatise upon evolution or the action of molecules than a romantic tale.

or

Still, that writer would do injustice to many persons of high talent and noble industry who should represent the German literature of our time as at all insignificant. I was so fortunate as to make my pilgrimage when America had as a representative at Berlin a scholar who, aside from diplomatic ability, won respect in that country of scholars by the best literary gifts and acquirements, the historian Bancroft. Mr. Bancroft was always ready to befriend the student, however humble, and introduced through