the depths of the creative spirit, to its minutest | characters as men, something of that sterling finish on the canvas of the painter, on the lips nobleness, that union of majesty with meekof the poet, or under the finger of the musician, ness, which we must ever venerate in those our he was that man. A nation which appreciates spiritual fathers? And do their works, in the such studies, nay, requires and rewards them, [new form of this century, show forth that old cannot, wherever its defects may lie, be defec-nobleness, not consistent only, with the science, tive in judgment of the arts.

the precision, the skepticism of these days, but wedded to them, incorporated with them, and shining through them like their life and soul ? Might it in truth almost seem to us, in reading the prose of Goethe, as if we were reading that of Milton; and of Milton writing with the cul

with old English depth? And of his poetry may it indeed be said that it poetry, and yet the poetry of our own generation; an ideal world, and yet the world we even now live in?

These questions we must leave candid and studious inquirers to answer for themselves; prémising only, that the secret is not to be found on the surface; that the first reply is likely to be in the negative, but with inquirers of this sort, by no means likely to be the final one.

But a weightier question still remains. What has been the fruit of this its high and just judgment on these matters? What has criticism profited it, to the bringing forth of good works? How do its poems and its poets correspond with so lofty a standard? We an-ture of this time; combining French clearness swer, that on this point also, Germany may rather court investigation than fear it. There are poets in that country who belong to a nobler class than most nations have to show in these days; a class entirely unknown to some nations; and, for the last two centuries, rare in all. We have no hesitation in stating, that we see in certain of the best German poets, and those too of our own time, something which associates them, remotely or nearly we say not, but which does associate them with the Masters of Art, the Saints of Poetry, long To ourselves, we confess, it has long so apsince departed, and, as we thought, without peared. The poetry of Goethe, for instance, successors, from the earth; but canonized in we reckon to be Poetry, sometimes in the very the hearts of all generations, and yet living to highest sense of that word; yet it is no remiall by the memory of what they did and were. niscence, but something actually present and Glances we do seem to find of that ethereal before us; no looking back into an antique glory, which looks on us in its full brightness Fairy-land, divided by impassable abysses from from the Transfiguration of Rafaelle, from the the real world as it lies about us and within us; Tempest of Shakspeare; and in broken, but but a looking round upon that real world itself, purest and still heart-piercing beams, strug-now rendered holier to our eyes, and once gling through the gloom of long ages, from the tragedies of Sophocles and the weather-worn sculptures of the Parthenon. This is that heavenly spirit, which, best seen in the aerial embodiment of poetry, but spreading likewise over all the thoughts and actions of an age, has given us Surreys, Sydneys, Raleighs in court and camp, Cecils in policy, Hookers in divinity, Bacons in philosophy, and Shakspeares and Spensers in song. All hearts that know this, know it to be the highest; and that, in poetry or elsewhere, it alone is true and imperishable. În affirming that any vestige, however feeble, of this divine spirit, is discernible in German poetry, we are aware that we place it above the existing poetry of any other nation.

To prove this bold assertion, logical arguments were at all times unavailing; and, in the present circumstances of the case, more than usually so. Neither will any extract or specimen help us; for it is not in parts, but in whole poems, that the spirit of a true poet is to be seen. We can, therefore, only name such men as Tieck, Richter, Herder, Schiller, and, above all, Goethe; and ask any reader who has learned to admire wisely our own literature of Queen Elizabeth's age, to peruse these writers also; to study them till he feels that he has understood them, and justly estimated both their light and darkness; and then to pronounce whether it is not, in some degree, as we have said. Are there not tones here of that old melody? Are there not glimpses of that serene soul, that calm harmonious strength, hat smiling earnestness, that Love and Faith and Humanity of nature? Do these foreign contemporaries of ours still exhibit, in their

more become a solemn temple, where the spirit of Beauty still dwells, and, under new emblems, to be worshipped as of old. With Goethe, the mythologies of bygone days pass only for what they are; we have no witchcraft or magic in the common acceptation; and spirits no longer bring with them airs from heaven or blasts from hell; for Pandemonium and the steadfast Empyrean have faded away, since the opinions which they symbolized no longer are. Neither does he bring his heroes from remote Oriental climates, or periods of Chivalry, or any section either of Atlantis or the Age of Gold? feeling that the reflex of these things is cold and faint, and only hangs like a cloud-picture in the distance, beautiful but delusive, and which even the simplest know to be delusion. The end of Poetry is higher; she must dwell in Reality, and become manifest to men in the forms among which they live and move. And this is what we prize in Goethe, and more or less in Schiller and the rest; all of whom, each in his own way, are writers of a similar aim. The coldest skeptic, the most callous worldling, sees not the actual aspects of life more sharply than they are here delineated: the nineteenth century stands before us, in all its contradiction and perplexity; barren, mean, and baleful, as we have all known it; yet here no longer mean or barren, but enamelled into beauty in the poet's spirit; for its secret significance is laid open, and thus, as it were, the life-giving fire that slumbers in it is called forth, and flowers and foliage, as of old, are springing on its bleakest wildernesses, and overmantling its sternest cliffs. For these men have not only

the clear eye, but the loving heart. They have with what might be called the Scotch: Cra penetrated into the mystery of Nature; after mer was not unlike our Blair; Von Cronegk long trial they have been initiated: and, to might be compared with Michael Bruce; and unwearied endeavour, Art has at last yielded Rabener and Gellert with Beattie and Logan. her secret; and thus can the Spirit of our Age, To this mild and cultivated period, there sucimbodied in fair imaginations, look forth on ceeded, as with us, a partial abandonment of us, earnest and full of meaning, from their poetry, in favour of political and philosophical works. As the first and indispensable condi- Illumination. Then was the time, when hot tion of good poets, they are wise and good men: war was declared against Prejudice of all much they have seen and suffered, and they sorts; Utility was set up for the universal have conquered all this, and made it all their measure of mental as well as material value; own; they have known life in its heights and poetry, except of an economical and precepdepths, and mastered it in both, and can teach | torial character, was found to be the product others what it is, and how to lead it rightly. of a rude age; and religious enthusiasm was Their minds are as a mirror to us, where the but derangement in the biliary organs. Then perplexed image of our own being is reflected did the Prices and Condorcets of Germany back in soft and clear interpretation. Here indulge in day-dreams of perfectibility; a new mirth and gravity are blended together; wit social order was to bring back the Saturnian rests on deep devout wisdom, as the green-era to the world; and philosophers sat on sward with its flowers must rest on the rock, whose foundations reach downward to the centre. In a word, they are believers; but their faith is no sallow plant of darkness; it is green and flowery, for it grows in the sunlight. And this faith is the doctrine they have to teach us, the sense which, under every noble and graceful form, it is their endeavour to set forth:

As all nature's thousand changes
But one changeless God proclaim,
So in Art's wide kingdoms ranges
One sole meaning, still the same;
This is Truth, eternal Reason,
Which from Beauty takes its dress,

And, serene through time and season,
Stands for aye in loveliness.

Such indeed is the end of Poetry at all times;
yet in no recent literature known to us, except
the German, has it been so far attained; nay,
perhaps, so much as consciously and stead-
fastly attempted.

their sunny Pisgah, looking back over dark savage deserts, and forward into a land flowing with milk and honey.

This period also passed away, with its good and its evil; of which chiefly the latter seems to be remembered; for we scarcely ever find the affair alluded to, except in terms of contempt, by the title Aufklärerey (Illuminationism); and its partisans, in 'subsequent satirical controversies, received the nickname of Philistern (Philistines), which the few scattered remnants of them still bear, both in writing and speech. Poetry arose again, and in a new and singular shape. The Sorrows of Werter, Goetz von Berlichingen, and The Robbers, may stand as patriarchs and representatives of three separate classes, which, commingled in various proportions, or separately coexisting, now with the preponderance of this, now of that, occupied the whole popular literature of The reader feels that if this our opinion be Germany, till near the end of the last century. in any measure true, it is a truth of no ordinary These were the Sentimentalists, the Chivalry. moment. It concerns not this writer or that; play-writers, and other gorgeous and outragebut it opens to us new views on the fortune ous persons; as a whole, now pleasantly de of spiritual culture with ourselves and all na-nominated the Kraftmänner, literally, Powertions. Have we not heard gifted men com- men. They dealt in skeptical lamentation, plaining that Poetry had passed away without mysterious enthusiasm, frenzy and suicide: return; that creative imagination consorted they recurred with fondness to the Feudal not with vigour of intellect, and that in the Ages, delineating many a battlemented keep, cold light of science there was no longer room and swart buff-belted man-at-arms; for in refor faith in things unseen? The old simplicity flection as in action, they studied to be strong, of heart was gone; earnest emotions must no vehement, rapidly effective; of battle-tumult, longer be expressed in earnest symbols; beauty love-madness, heroism, and despair, there was must recede into elegance, devoutness of cha- no end. This literary period is called the racter be replaced by clearness of thought, and Sturm-und-Drang-Zeit, the Storm-and-Stress Pegrave wisdom by shrewdness and persiflage.riod; for great indeed, was the wo and fury Such things we have heard, but hesitated to believe them. If the poetry of the Germans, and this not by theory but by example, have proved, or even begun to prove, the contrary, it will deserve far higher encomiums than any we have passed upon it.

of these Power-men. Beauty, to their mind, seemed synonymous with Strength. All passion was poetical, so it were but fierce enough. Their head moral virtue was Pride: their beau idéal of manhood was some transcript of Milton's Devil. Often they inverted Bolingbroke's In fact, the past and present aspect of Ger- plan, and instead of "patronizing Providence," man literature illustrates the literature of Eng-did directly the opposite; raging with extreme land in more than one way. Its history keeps pace with that of ours; for so closely are all European communities connected, that the phases of mind in any one country, so far as these represent its general circumstances and intellectual position, are but modified repetitions of its phases in every other. We hinted above, that the Saxon School corresponded

animation against Fate in general, because it enthralled free virtue; and with clenched hands, or sounding shields, hurling defiance towards the vault of heaven.

These Power-men are gone too; and, with few exceptions, save the three originals above named, their works have already followed them. The application of all this to our own

or within it. If any man shall here turn upon us, and assert that there are no such invisible objects; that whatever cannot be so pictured or imagined (meaning imaged) is nothing, and the science that relates to it nothing; we shall regret the circumstance. We shall request him, however, to consider seriously and deeply within himself what he means simply by these two words, GoD and his own SOUL; and whether he finds that visible shape and true existence are here also one and the same? If he still persist in denial, we have nothing for it, but to wish him good speed on his own separate path.of inquiry; and he and we will agree to differ on this subject of mysticism, as on so many more important ones.

literature is too obvious to require much exposition. Have we not also had our Powermen? And will not, as in Germany, to us likewise a milder, a clearer, and a truer time come round? Our Byron was, in his youth, but what Schiller and Goethe had been in theirs yet the author of Werter wrote Iphigenie and Torquato Tasso; and he who began with The Robbers ended with Wilhelm Tell. With longer life, all things were to have been hoped for from Byron: for he loved truth in his inmost heart, and would have discovered at last that his Corsairs and Harolds were not true. It was otherwise appointed: but with one man all hope does not die. If this way is the right one, we too shall find it. The poetry of Germany, meanwhile, we cannot but regard as well deserving to be studied, in this as in other points of view: it is distinctly an advance beyond any other known to us; whether on the right path or not, may be still uncertain; but a path selected by Schillers and Goethes, and vindicated by Schlegels and Tiecks, is surely worth serious examination. For the rest, need we add that it is study for self-in-provided his diagram be complete, and the same struction, nowise for purposes of imitation, that we recommend? Among the deadliest of poetical sins is imitation; for if every man must have his own way of expressing it, much more every nation. But of danger on that side, in the country of Shakspeare and Milton, there seems little to be feared.

Now, whoever has a material and visible object to treat, be it of natural Science, Political Philosophy, or any such externally and sensibly existing department, may represent it to his own mind, and convey it to the minds of others, as it were, by a direct diagram, more complex indeed than a geometrical diagram, but still with the same sort of precision; and

both to himself and his reader, he may reason of it, and discuss it, with the clearness, and, in some sort, the certainty of geometry itself. If he do not so reason of it, this must be for want of comprehension to image out the whole of it, or of distinctness to convey the same whole to his reader: the diagrams of the two are different; the conclusions of the one diverge from those of the other, and the obscurity here, provided the reader be a man of sound judgment and due attentiveness, results from incapacity on the part of the writer. In such a case, the latter is justly regarded as a man of imperfect intellect; he grasps more than he can carry; he confuses what, with ordinary faculty, might be rendered clear; he is not a mystic, but, what is much worse, a dunce. Another matter it is, however, when the object to be treated of belongs to the invisible and `immaterial class; cannot be pictured out even by the writer himself, much less, in ordinary symbols, set before the reader. In this case, it is evident, the difficulties of comprehension are increased an hundred-fold. Here it will require long, patient, and skilful effort, both from the writer and the reader, before the two can so much as speak together; before the former can make known to the latter, not how the matter stands, but even what the matter is, which they have to

We come now to the second grand objection against German literature, its mysticism. In treating of a subject itself so vague and dim, it were well if we tried, in the first place, to settle, with more accuracy, what each of the two contending parties really means to say or to contradict regarding it. Mysticism is a word in the mouths of all: yet, of the hundred, perhaps not one has ever asked himself what this opprobrious epithet properly signified in his mind; or where the boundary between true Science and this Land of Chimeras was to be laid down. Examined strictly, mystical, in most cases, will turn out to be merely synonymous with not understood. Yet surely there may be haste and oversight here; for it is well known, that, to the understanding of any thing, two conditions are equally required; intelligibility in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable than intelligence in the examiner of it. "I am bound to find you in reasons, Sir," said Johnson, "but not in brains;" a speech of the most shocking un-investigate in concert. He must devise new politeness, yet truly enough expressing the state of the case.

It may throw some light on this question, if we remind our readers of the following fact. In the field of human investigation, there are objects of two sorts: First, the visible, including not only such as are material, and may be seen by the bodily eye; but all such, likewise, as may be represented in a shape, before the mind's eye, or in any way pictured there: And, secondly, the invisible, or such as are not only unseen by human eyes, but as cannot be seen by any eye; not objects of sense at all; not capable, in short, of being pictured or imaged in the mind, or in any way represented by a shape either without the mind

means of explanation, describe conditions of mind in which this invisible idea arises, the false persuasions that eclipse it, the false shows that may be mistaken for it, the glimpses of it that appear elsewhere; in short, strive by a thousand well-devised methods, to guide his reader up to the perception of it; in all which, moreover, the reader must faithfully and toilsomely co-operate with him, if any fruit is to come of their mutual endeavour. Should the latter take up his ground too early, and affirm to himself that now he has seized what he still has not seized; that this and nothing else is the thing aimed at by his teacher, the consequences are plain enough: disunion, darkness, and contradiction between the two; the writer

has written for another man, and this reader, | thinkers, does a frantic exaggeration in senti. after long provocation, quarrels with him ment, a crude fever-dream in opinion, any finally, and quits him as a mystic.

where break forth, it is directly labelled as Nevertheless, after all these limitations, we Kantism; and the moon-struck speculator is, shall not hesitate to admit, that there is in the for the time, silenced and put to shame by this German mind a tendency to mysticism, pro- epithet. For often, in such circles, Kant's perly so called; as perhaps there is, unless Philosophy is not only an absurdity, but a carefully guarded against, in all minds tem- wickedness and a horror; the pious and peacepered like theirs. It is a fault; but one hardly ful sage of Königsberg passes for a sort of separable from the excellencies we admire Necromancer and Blackartist in Metaphysics; most in them. A simple, tender, and devout his doctrine is a region of boundless baleful nature, seized by some touch of divine Truth, gloom, too cunningly broken here and there by and of this perhaps under some rude enough splendours of unholy fire; spectres and temptsymbol, is wrapt with it into a whirlwind of ing demons people it; and, hovering over unutterable thoughts; wild gleams of splendour fathomless abysses, hang gay and gorgeous dart to and fro in the eye of the seer, but the air-castles, into which the hapless traveller is vision will not abide with him, and yet he feels seduced to enter, and so sinks to rise no more. that its light is light from heaven, and precious If any thing in the history of Philosophy to him beyond all price. A simple nature, a could surprise us, it might well be this. PerGeorge Fox, or a Jacob Boehme, ignorant of haps among all the metaphysical writers of all the ways of men, of the dialect in which the eighteenth century, including Hume and they speak, or the forms by which they think, Hartley themselves, there is not one that so is labouring with a poetic, a religious idea, ill meets the conditions of a mystic as this which, like all such ideas, must express itself same Immanuel Kant. A quit, vigilant, clearby word and act, or consume the heart it dwells | sighted man, who had become distinguished to in. Yet how shall he speak, how shall he pour the world in mathematics before he attempted forth into other souls, that of which his own philosophy; who, in his writings generally, on soul is full even to bursting? He cannot this and other subjects, is perhaps characterspeak to us; he knows not our state, and can- ized by no quality so much as precisely by the not make known to us his own. His words distinctness of his conceptions, and the seare an inexplicable rhapsody, a speech in an quence and iron strictness with which he unknown tongue. Whether there is meaning reasons. To our own minds, in the little that we in it to the speaker himself, and how much or know of him, he has more than once recalled how true, we shall never ascertain; for it is Father Boscovich in Natural Philosophy; so not in the language of men, but of one man piercing, yet so sure; so concise, so still, se who had not learned the language of men; and, simple; with such clearness and composure with himself, the key to its full interpretation was does he mould the complicacy of his subject lost from amongst us. These are mystics; men and so firm; sharp, and definite are the results who either know not clearly their own mean- he evolves from it.* Right or wrong as his mean-he ing, or at least cannot put it forth in formulas hypothesis may be, no one that knows him will of thought, whereby others, with whatever diffi- suspect that he himself had not seen it, and culty, may apprehend it. Was their meaning seen over it; had not meditated it with calmclear to themselves, gleams of it will yet ness and deep thought, and studied throughout shine through, how ignorantly and unconsci- to expound it with scientific rigor. Neither, as ously soever it may have been delivered; was we often hear, is there any superhuman faculty it still wavering and obscure, no science could required to follow him. We venture to assure have delivered it wisely. In either case, much such of our readers as are in any measure more in the last, they merit and obtain the used to metaphysical study, that the Kritik der name of mystics. To scoffers they are a ready reinen Vernunft is by no means the hardest task and cheap prey; but sober persons understand they have tried. It is true, there is an unknown that pure evil is as unknown in this lower and forbidding terminology to be mastered; Universe as pure good; and that even in mys- is not this the case also with Chemistry, and tics, of an honest and deep-feeling heart, there Astronomy, and all other sciences that deserve may be much to reverence, and of the rest the name of science? It is true, a careless or more to pity than to mock. unprepared reader will find Kant's writing à riddle; but will a reader of this sort make much of Newton's Principia, or D'Alembert's Calculus of Variations? He will make nothing of them; perhaps less than nothing; for if he trust to his own judgment, he will pronounce them madness. Yet if the Philosophy of Mind is any philosophy at all, Physics and Mathematics must be plain subjects compared with it. But these latter are happy, not only in the fixedness and simplicity of their methods, but also in the universal acknowledgment of their

But it is not to apologize for Boehme, or Novalis, or the school of Theosophus and Flood, that we have here undertaken. Neither is it on such persons that the charge of mysticism brought against the Germans mainly rests. Boehme is little known among us; Novalis, much as he deserves knowing, not at all; nor is it understood, that, in their own country, these men rank higher than they do, or might do, with ourselves. The chief mystics in Germany, it would appear, are the Transcendental Philosophers, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling! With these is the chosen seat of mysticism, these are its "tenebrific constellation," from which it "doth ray out darkness" over the earth. Among a certain class of

but

*We have heard that the Latin Translation of his works is unintelligible, the Translator himself not hav ing understood it; also that Villers is no safe guide in the study of him. Neither Villers nor those Latin works are known to us.