of natural sounds, or love, the expression of the deepest sensation of the human heart? No, the spirit of the universe is one of harmony. The universe itself, the concentration of harmony, but the highest and deepest is to be found in the human heart.

Früh Morgens ging ein Mädchen in den Garten, sich einen Kranz zu sammeln aus schönen Rosen. Sie standen alle noch in ihrer Knospe da, geschlossen oder halbgeschlossen, des Morgenthaues duftende Kelche. "Noch will ich euch nicht brechen" sagte das Mädchen. "Erst soll euch die Sonne öffnen: so werdet ihr schöner prangen und stärker duften." Sie kam am Mittage und sah die schönsten Rosen-vom Wurm zerfressen, vom Strahl der Sonne gebeugt, erblasst und welkend. Das Mädchen weinte über ihre Thorheit, und am folgenden Morgen sammelte sie sich ihren Kranz früh.

Seine liebsten Kinder ruft Gott früh aus diesem Leben, ehe der Strahl der Sonne sie sticht, ehe der Wurm sie berührt. Das Paradies der Kinder ist eine hohe Stufe der Herrlichkeit; der gerechteste Fromme kann sie nicht betreten, denn seine Seele ist befleckt gewesen.

CRITICISMS ON HERDER.

"Er fand eine leere und nüchterne Zeit vor, in der es mehr darauf ankam, mit seinem Instinkt das Schöne von allen Seiten aufzuspüren, als durchgreifende Prinzipien geltend zu machen. In diesem Sinne hat er sehr bedeutend und im Ganzen vortheilhaft gewirkt, ja seine unmittelbare Wirksamkeit war grösser als die Lessing's."-JULIAN SCHMIDT, Lit. Geschichte, p. 16.

Die "Stimmen der Völker" lehrten uns auf die dunkeln Laute der Natur lauschen, in denen, wenn man sie unbefangen gewähren lässt, sich immer etwas vom Bild der reinen Menschheit zeigen muss.-J. SCHMIDT, p. 17.

Seine Fähigkeit ist der Universalismus in der grossartigsten, damals noch von keinem Menschen auf Erden erreichten, ja von keiner nur gedachten und begriffenen Weise; eine Fähigkeit, durch welche er weit über die Grenzen des Gebietes hinaus, in welchem wir uns gegenwärtig bewegen, wirksam war. -VILMAR, p. 553.

"Herder war kein Dichter,—er war etwas weit erhabener und besser als ein Poet; er war selbst ein Gedicht, ein indisch-griechisches Epos, von einem der reinsten Götter geschaffen."-JEAN PAUL RICHTER.

Göthe, in writing to his friend Meyer, speaks thus, of Herder's 'Brief über Humanität.'

Durch das Ganze schnurrt wieder die alte halbwahre Philisterleier, "dass die Künste das Sittengesetz anerkennen und sich ihm unterordnen sollen! Das Erste haben sie immer gethan und müssen es thun, weil ihre Gesetze so gut als das Sittengesetz aus der Vernunft entspringen; thäten sie aber das Zweite, so wären sie verloren, und es wäre besser, dass man ihnen gleich einen Mühlstein an den Hals binge, und sie ersäufte, als dass man sie nach und nach ins Nützlich platte absterben liesse.

"Der siebente Band", says GÖTHE in a letter to Schiller in alluding to Herder's Briefe über Humanität', scheint mir vortrefflich gesehen, gedacht und geschrieben; der achte macht einem nicht wohl, und es ist dem Verfasser auch nicht wohl gewesen, da er ihn schrieb. Eine gewisse Zurückhaltung, eine gewisse Vorsicht, ein Drehen und Wenden, ein Ignoriren, ein kärgliches Vertheilen von Lob und Tadel, macht besonders das, was er von deutscher Literatur sagt, äusserst mager.

"Wenn man von Schriften wie von Handlungen, nicht mit einer liebevollen Theilnahme, nicht mit einem gewissen partheiischen Enthusiasmus spricht, so bleibt so wenig daran, dass es der Rede gar nicht werth ist. Lust, Freude, Theilnahme an den Dingen ist das einzige Reelle, und was wieder Realität hervorbringt; alles andere ist eitel und vereitelt nur."

Der eine grosse Gedanke, dass die Menschheit einer unendlichen Verwandlung fähig sei, weil in ihr der Geist der Gottheit lebe; dieser unerschütterliche Glaube an das Höhere in der Menschheit beseligte und begeisterte ihn, Mensch zu sein im schönsten Streben und Wirken,-Humanität, das war seines Lebens Ziel und Kern.-FINDEL, Lit. Geschichte, p. 192.

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

THIS writer, an enigma not solved yet, bears, in my humble opinion, a striking resemblance, in a literary point of view, to Turner, the celebated English painter. The latter, after having traced out his subject in general outlines, thrown in his characters in apparently wild confusion, and covered the whole with the veil of his own phantastic imagination, leaves you to find your way through the mist-enveloped sphere, and to detect, amidst the nebulæ, the aesthetic beauties of the scenery. At first you are puzzled, bewildered, and apparently lost in the haze. But, never mind, go on steadily, for in proportion, as you persevere, you will be rewarded for your labour. Do you see that red speck in yonder foggy distance? No! Look again! Ah, now I see it, what can it be? Wait a little. And you do wait, for there is nothing

like patience in this world. The little speck becomes gradually more distinct, and when the fleeting clouds have cleared it, you begin to discern the objects around, the purple-tinted mass disappears, and, all at once, flashes out in beauty and dazzling majesty a sea of light; for what you have been watching all the time is God's glorious and blessed sun, and now it has risen, and the veil has disappeared, and the landscape, in all its vernal freshness and charm, is spread before you. Green hills, golden fields, and shady forests, nature divine is wide awake-and her children; yes, all her children, are busy around, and celebrate their author with songs of praise, and the flowers-for they also are full of sentiment-weep for joy, and their diamond tears moisten the holy earth that gave them birth. Now, what we thus have seen in Turner's paintings, we discover also in Jean Paul's writings. He also, our eccentric countryman, delights in roaming about in a chaotic and cloudy sphere; yet, when examining the subject closer we discover the hidden beauties with which his writings abound, his genius being the sun that brightens up his literary landscape. At once witty, humorous, pathetic, and dazzlingly graphic, he draws in turn from his reader the merry laughter, and the silent, sympathizing tear. He appeals essentially to the tender feelings of the heart. His language bears that sweetly dreamy character, the 'Schwärmerische,' always sure to strike a chord in the German heart. He is dazzling, yet thoughtful, merry and melancholy, erudite and superficial, graphic and fascinating; and, above all, always moral and pure. Madame Herder thus speaks of him :'His perpetual cheerful youthful temper, his fun and humour, the animation with which he treats every subject, always imparts to it new life. Herder differed from Richter in his appreciation of women, thinking that he represented them as melancholy and desponding. He valued his genius far above the spiritless productions of the time, which only aimed at the outer form; for Richter, compared with his contemporaries, stood, upon a high elevation, and Herder would willingly have exchanged all his aesthetical forms for the living virtue, the feeling heart and the perennial creative genius of Richter, who knew how to impart always new life, truth and reality into the declining misunderstood vocation of the poet.'

The deep and marked peculiarity of his nature were never brought into fuller exercise, than by Richter in the formation and management of his little school. That which to men of rich endowments is usually a vexing and wearisome employment, the daily routine of instructing children in the elements of knowledge,

became to him a source of elevating and ennobling thought.

His mode of instruction was the opposite of that which as he believed he had himself suffered. In his little school there was no learning by heart, no committing to memory the thoughts of others; but every child was expected to use its own powers. His instruction, directed to create a desire for self-study, led the pupil to selfknowledge. Above all, and with all, he directed their tender, innocent hearts to a Father in heaven, for he said: 'There can be no better companion to the heart of children, throughout their whole life, than the ever-present thought of God and immortality.' There are only three ways of becoming happier,' he continues 'The first leads upwards, far beyond the vault of life, where the exterior world, with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and lightningconductors are no longer visible, where everything below appears like a neglected child. The second is, to fall down from those spheres, to establish oneself snugly in some furrow, so that, in looking from one's comfortable nest, one no longer sees the wolf-dens, the charnel-houses, and poles, but only waving cornfields, each ear of which is a tree giving shelter to the little bird in its furrow, and acting both as parasol and umbrella. The third, and by far the most judicious mode of living, is to use alternately the one and the other.'*

Jean Paul Friedrich Richtert was born at Wunsiedel, a small town in Bavaria, on the 20th March, 1763. His father, a worthy clergyman of the old school, instructed his son according to his own notions, which, although somewhat tedious, by no damped the ardour of young Richter, who, once prepared, went in the year 1779, to the Gymnasium of Hof, where his mind could move in a wider sphere. Here the wonderful rhetorical powers of the young student soon became troublesome to the Superior of that establishment. At the University of Leipsic, whither he went shortly before his father's death, in 1780, young Richter had to encounter many difficulties; his poverty being so great that, for a considerable time, he had to live on milk and bread; yet he struggled on, and his delight was great, indeed, when he received one day, from a bookseller, the sum of sixteen louis d'or, in payment for some satirical essays written and published

* Herder on Jean Paul, Tait's Magazine, 1854.

If in connection with Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, we mention here Ernst Wagner (1769-1812), the author of 'Wilibald's Ansichten des Lebens,' 'die reisenden Maler,' 'die Reisen aus der Fremde in die Heimath,' and 'Isidora,' it is not on account of the literary merit of these novels, but because the mental efforts of Wagner, encouraged by Richter, deserve to be noticed in an age which was less prolific than the present in novel writers.

under the title of Grönländische Processe. His extreme poverty compelled him, however, in the year 1784, to leave Leipsic and to accept a tutorship at Toepen, an occupation by no means suiting his inclinations. He left it to stay with his mother in Hof, continuing, meanwhile, his literary occupations, and trusting hopefully in a brighter future. At last it came, the clouds began to break, in proportion as his labours became appreciated. In rapid succession appeared now Die Unsichtbare Loge,' 1793, 'Hesperus,' 1795, Siebenkäs, 1794-96-the proceeds from which enabled him to alleviate the sufferings of a beloved mother, not destined to enjoy much longer the happiness of witnessing the rising fame of her dear son, for she died in 1797. In the same year, he went to Weimar, at that time the centre of German literature and learning, where Madame von Kalb, to whom he has erected a monument in Titan,' his most celebrated work, and a young, pretty Swiss widow, Amelia von Berlepsch, bestowed their attentions upon him. Herder and Wieland received him equally well; Schiller and Göthe more reservedly. From Weimar he went to Berlin, where the gifted Caroline Meyer became his wife.

Richter, of a humble origin, had always a foible for the upper classes; he liked a scented atmosphere, and became, in turn, the favourite of the gentle sex. At Berlin, in that intellectual circle, of which Henrietta Herz and Rachel Levin were at that time the principal ornaments, he was considered as a kind of literary oracle. The ladies, according to Mrs. Herz, felt grateful to him for having in his works devoted so much attention to them, and for having understood them so well; above all, did those of the upper classes thank him, for having described them in a much more idealic character than they really possess. (I beg to remind the fair reader, that the sentiments expressed here, from which, I am sure, every gallant man dissents are those of Henrietta Herz, who evidently must have been neglected by Richter.)

This arose from the fact of his not having at first had an opportunity of knowing them. His imagination, therefore, followed its flight, and when afterwards, he made their acquaintance, the illusion was kept up by them so skilfully, as to deceive him, and for this reason he always judged them wrongly.

After his marriage, he went to Weimar, where Herder received him hospitably; thence to Memmingen, Coburg, and finally to Baireuth, where, respected and beloved by all who knew him, he lived for many years the happy life of a paterfamilias. The loss of a beloved son, however, who died in 1821, interrupted this domestic happiness, and produced a lasting impression upon him.