by the order of nature, she is destined to occupy. European mankind seemed anxious to make to the fair an ample compensation for the neglect of the olden time, and to restore to them those rights which were apparently lost, especially among the Eastern nations. ol

The epic songs of the middle ages may be all said to have a lyrical tinge. The commencement of a dramatic art shone faintly forth in the rude form of religious shows, generally represented by monks, and called "Mysteries.

The Reformation, which, as we have seen, caused the full awakening of reason, and thus the moral regeneration of mankind, gave to modern times the dramatic tendency. Nations appear on the field of history in highly developed individuality: freedom being the prevailing sentiment, which everywhere impels them to action. In vain would you seek in this period for the epic repose of the ancients. Lyrical enthusiasm, regulated by reason, is the ruling element in the dramatic character of modern times. In the poetry of distinct nations we meet with the same appearances. In Spain and in England, the dramatic art first attained its perfection. The Italians gave their grand epics a dramatic shade, until Alfieri appeared and created a national drama.

The French made a mighty advance, when the creative power of Corneille and Racine called their drama into existence; but it was frozen within the three unities of Aristotle. They wished to copy the

ancients; but succeeded only in the form. The grace, the harmony, the calmness of tragical character, and the wonderful melody of the Greek language, they could not imitate.

success.

My countrymen of modern times have long laboured in the dramatic field, with but indifferent I shall have occasion to show you some specimens of tragedy-writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ayrer, Gryphius, Lohenstein, and others. At length Lessing showed the way to more laudable exertion, and Schiller, Goethe, and Heinrich von Kleist have followed him. Since these celebrated authors, Germany has beheld the ranks of dramatists thicken rapidly, and at present she possesses a numerous host of playwrights; but are they all able hands? Ludwig Tieck thinks not, and he is the best German critic, since A. W. von Schlegel has resigned that office.

In modern times have appeared two standardbearers, round whom a swarm of imitators have gathered, and are gathering still. They both, jointly, represent the character of romantic art, as described in the foregoing pages: and each of them is also the distinct representative of one strongly-marked feature of modern times. Calderon, the representative of Catholicism, in its form of the infantine creed, and of youthful strength; Shakspeare, that of Protestantism, as the form of reason and the manly age. In both, the subjective character of modern art, individuality and subjectiveness, are strongly deline

ated; but, while the former embraces the idea of the beautiful, with religious enthusiasm, the latter, with philosophic depth, unveils the mysteries of the human breast.

While, in Calderon, a glowing fancy transports your beyond the bounds of history, and makes you forget the miseries of the present, Shakspeare, everywhere, by the force of his poetical reasoning, by the power of his psychological perceptions, and by the charms of a Proteus-like diction, places history before you, reconciling the past and the present. He dives into your own heart, reveals to you its mysteries: he predicts, with apodictical certainty, its hopes and fears. Both poets are sentimental, for sentiment is a characteristic feature of Christian art: but the Spaniard is so, like a youth bursting forth into passionate rapture: the Briton, like a man, who, suppressing his tears, conquering his sorrows, and bridling his passions, shows his victory, in proportion as his moral and mental strength is evinced. While the former captivates you by his imagery, the latter convinces you by incontrovertible reasoning.

Thus comprising the results of all which I have said, in the preceding pages, under one view, we arrive at this truth;

The history of the human race has a two-fold appearance the inward, or esoteric, which comprises the development of human cultivation, and the outward, or exoteric, embracing the successive series of human actions and events. Both these stand in or

ganical connexion, the one explaining and elucidating the other; and both have their common degrees, stages, and epochs, which I have endeavoured to trace, as distinctly as the pressure of time would permit.

The history of the human mind, the consciousness of our divine nature, and the experience of daily life, all show that we possess innate ideas, from which the idea of the beautiful, through the agency of feeling and fancy, produces the work of art. Art, as the organical and mutual pervasion of idea and form, has a threefold style, analogous to the three great epochs conspicuous in history; and this style, as the effect of feeling and fancy, we have seen shadowed forth, not only in the history of mankind, but in that of every single nation-nay in the biography of the individual man. Thus the history of art-and that of one branch of it-poetry, stand in immediate connexion with universal history.

And herein, gentlemen, we have fixed the point of view from which to consider the history of German poetry since the beginning of the Reformation. But this period, by reason of its paramount influence on German cultivation, claims our particular attention; and I may hope that my dwelling on that memorable event, and on the chief actor in it, will be conducive to your forming a just idea of the place which they occupy in the literary history of Germany.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the hierarchy might be not unaptly compared to a pedagogue, who has grown gray in the exercise of authority, and who becomes more harsh and morose with increasing age, because conscious of the decline of his power. Accustomed to implicit obedience from his disciples, he cannot conceive that they should outgrow their unquestioning compliance; and if he occasionally perceive the ebullition of a spirit tending to freedom, he strives to repress it by increased severity. The disciple, though bound to obedience both by custom and attachment, feels these bonds gradually loosen before the awakening selfconsciousness of his masculine mind, while the illjudged and senseless severity of the old man continues to defeat its object, until at length some trifling circumstance becomes the apparent cause, which calls the pupil (now matured to manhood) from his seclusion, into active life. In vain the pedagogue wrestles with the youthful giant. He loses the government, because he is unworthy of it, by his ignorance of the means necessary to its preservation. The youth shakes the school-dust from his feet,hastens into active life, strives for its highest honours and advantages—and wins the palm which he has merited.

As little can the bursting forth of the reformation in Germany be called an accident (indeed I acknowledge no accident in the history of mankind), as its receiving for its champion a man, who not only represented the spirit of his time, but whose character