Chapter 9

_Editorial room of the Union. Enter_ BOLZ _through the door on the left, directly afterward_ MILLER.

BOLZ (_at middle door_).

In here with the table!

MILLER (_carries small table, all set, with wine-bottles, glasses and plates, to the foreground on the left; brings up five chairs while he speaks_).

Mr. Piepenbrink sends his regards, with the message that the wine is yellow-seal, and that, if the Doctor drinks any healths, he must not forget Mr. Piepenbrink's health. He was very jolly, the stout gentleman. And Madam Piepenbrink reminded him that he ought to subscribe for the _Union_. He commissioned me to see to it.

BOLZ (_who meanwhile has been turning over papers at the work-table on the right, rising_).

Let's have some wine!

[MILLER _pours some in a glass_.]

In honor of the worthy vintner! [_Drinks._]

I treated him scandalously, but he has proved true-hearted. Tell him his health was not forgotten. There, take this bottle along!--Now, get out!

[_Exit_ MILLER. BOLZ _opening the door on the left_.]

Come, gentlemen, today I carry out my promise.

[_Enter_ KÄMPE, BELLMAUS, KÖRNER.]

This is the lunch I agreed to give. And now, my charming day-flies, put as much rose-color into your cheeks and your humors as your wits will let you. [_Pouring out_.] The great victory is won; the _Union_ has celebrated one of the noblest of triumphs; in ages still to come belated angels will say with awe: "Those were glorious days," and so on--see continuation in today's paper. Before we sit down, the first toast--

KÄMPE. The member-elect--

BOLZ.

No, our first toast is to the mother of all, the great power which produces members--the newspaper, may she prosper!

ALL.

Hurrah! [_Clink glasses_.]

BOLZ.

Hurrah! And secondly, long live--hold on, the member himself is not here yet.

KÄMPE.

Here he comes.

_Enter_ OLDENDORF.

BOLZ.

The member from our venerable town, editor-in-chief and professor, journalist, and good fellow, who is angry just now because behind his back this and that got into the paper--hurrah for him!

ALL.

Hurrah!

OLDENDORF (_in a friendly tone_.)

I thank you, gentlemen.

BOLZ (_drawing_ OLDENDORF _to the front_).

And you are no longer vexed with us?

OLDENDORF.

Your intention was good, but it was a great indiscretion.

BOLZ.

Forget all about it! (_Aloud_.) Here, take your glass and sit down with us. Don't be proud, young statesman! Today you are one of us. Well, here sits the editorial staff! Where is worthy Mr. Henning--where tarries our owner, printer and publisher, Gabriel Henning?

KÄMPE.

I met him a little while ago on the stairs. He crept by me as shyly as though he were some one who had been up to mischief.

BOLZ.

Probably he feels as Oldendorf does--he is again not pleased with the attitude of the paper.

MILLER (_thrusting in his head_).

The papers and the mail!

BOLZ.

Over there! [MILLER _enters, lays the papers on the work-table._]

MILLER.

Here is the _Coriolanus_. There is something in it about our paper. The errand-boy of the _Coriolanus_ grinned at me scornfully, and recommended me to look over the article.

BOLZ.

Give it here! Be quiet, Romans, _Coriolanus_ speaks.--All ye devils, what does that mean? [_Reads_.] "On the best of authority we have just been informed that a great change is imminent in the newspaper affairs of our province. Our opponent, the _Union_, will cease to direct her wild attacks against all that is high and holy."--This high and holy means Blumenberg.--"The ownership is said to have gone over into other hands, and there is a sure prospect that we shall be able from now on to greet as an ally this widely read sheet." How does that taste to you, gentlemen?

MILLER} Thunder! KÄMPE.}_(All together_.) Nonsense! BELLMAUS.} It's a lie!

OLDENDORF.

It's another of Blumenberg's reckless inventions.

BOLZ.

There is something behind it all. Go and get me Gabriel Henning. [_Exit_ MILLER.] This owner has played the traitor; we have been poisoned. [_Springing up._] And this is the feast of the Borgia! Presently the _misericordia_ will enter and sing our dirge. Do me the favor at least to eat up the oysters before it be too late.

OLDENDORF (_who has seized the newspaper_.)

Evidently this news is only an uncertain rumor. Henning will tell us there is no truth in it. Stop seeing ghosts, and sit down with us.

BOLZ (_seating himself_).

I sit down, not because I put faith in your words, but because I don't wish to do injustice to the lunch. Get hold of Henning; he must give an account of himself.

OLDENDORF.

But, as you heard, he is not at home.

BOLZ (_zealously eating_).

Oh, thou wilt have a fearful awakening, little Orsini! Bellmaus, pour me out some wine. But if the story be not true, if this _Coriolanus_ have lied, by the purple in this glass be it sworn I will be his murderer! The grimmest revenge that ever an injured journalist took shall fall on his head; he shall bleed to death from pin-pricks; every poodle in the street shall look on him scornfully and say: "Fie, _Coriolanus_, I wouldn't take a bite at you even if you were a sausage." [_A knock is heard_. BOLZ _lays down his knife.] Memento mori_! There are our grave-diggers. The last oyster, now, and then farewell thou lovely world!

_Enter_ JUDGE SCHWARZ _and_ SENDEN _from the door on the left; the door remains open_.

SCHWARZ.

Obedient servant, gentlemen!

SENDEN.

Your pardon if we disturb you.

BOLZ (_remaining seated at the table_).

Not in the least. This is our regular luncheon, contracted for a whole year--fifty oysters and two bottles daily for each member of the staff. Whoever buys the newspaper has to furnish it.

SCHWARZ.

What brings us here, Professor, is a communication which Mr. Henning should have been the first to make to you. He preferred handing over the task to me.

OLDENDORF.

I await your communication.

SCHWARZ.

Mr. Henning has, from yesterday on, transferred to me by sale all rights pertaining to him as owner of the newspaper _Union_.

OLDENDORF.

To you, Judge?

SCHWARZ.

I acknowledge that I have bought it merely as accredited agent of a third person. Here is the deed; it contains no secrets. [_Hands him a paper_.]

OLDENDORF (_looking through it, to_ BOLZ).

It is drawn up by a notary in due form--sold for thirty thousand thalers. [_Agitation among the staff-members_.] Let me get to the bottom of the matter. Is this change of owner also to be connected with a change in the political attitude of the sheet?

SENDEN (_coming forward_).

Certainly, Professor, that was the intention in making the purchase.

OLDENDORF.

Do I possibly see in you the new owner?

SENDEN.

Not that, but I have the honor to be a friend of his. You yourself, as well as these gentlemen, have a right to demand the fulfilment of your contracts. Your contracts provide, I understand, for six months' notice. It goes without saying that you continue to draw your salary until the expiration of this term.

BOLZ (_rising_).

You are very kind, Mr. von Senden. Our contracts empower us to edit the paper as we see fit, and to control its tone and its party affiliations. For the next half-year, therefore, we shall not only continue to draw our salaries but also to conduct the paper for the benefit of the party to which you have not the honor to belong.

SENDEN (_angrily_).

We'll find a way to prevent that!

OLDENDORF.

Calm yourself. That kind of work would scarcely be worthy of us. If such are the circumstances, I announce that I resign the editorship from today, and release you from all obligations to me.

BOLZ.

I don't mind. I make the same announcement.

BELLMAUS.

KÄMPE}(_together_). We too!

KÖRNER}

SENDEN (_to_ SCHWARZ).

You can testify that the gentlemen voluntarily renounce their rights.

BOLZ (_to the staff_).

Hold on, gentlemen, don't be too generous. It is all right for you to take no further part in editing the paper if your friends withdraw. But why abandon your pecuniary claims on the new owner?

BELLMAUS.

I'd rather take nothing at all from them; I'll follow your example.

BOLZ (_stroking him_).

Noble sentiment, my son! We'll make our way in the world together. What do you think of a hand-organ, Bellmaus! We 'll take it to fairs and sing your songs through. I'll turn and you'll sing.

OLDENDORF.

Since the new owner of the paper is not one of you, you will, in concluding this transaction, find the question only natural--To whom have we ceded our rights?

SENDEN.

The present owner of the paper is--

_Enter_ COLONEL _through side door on the left_.

OLDENDORF (_starting back in alarm_).

Colonel!

BOLZ.

Ah, now it is becoming high tragedy!

COLONEL.

First of all, Professor, be assured that I have nothing to do with this whole affair, and merely come at the request of the purchaser. Not until I came here, did I know anything of what was going on. I hope you will take my word for that.

BOLZ.

Well, I find this game unseemly, and I insist on being told who this new owner is who mysteriously hides behind different persons!

_Enter_ ADELAIDE _from the side door, left._

ADELAIDE.

He stands before you!

BOLZ.

I should just like to faint.

BELLMAUS.

That is a heavenly joke!

ADELAIDE (_bowing_).

How do you do, gentlemen! [_To the staff_.] Am I right in assuming that these gentlemen have hitherto been connected with editing the paper?

BELLMAUS (_eagerly_).

Yes, Miss Runeck! Mr. Kämpe for leading articles, Mr. Körner for the French and English correspondence, and I for theatre, music, fine arts, and miscellaneous.

ADELAIDE.

I shall be much pleased if your principles will let you continue devoting your talents to my newspaper. [_The three members of the staff bow_.]

BELLMAUS (_laying his hand on his heart_).

Miss Runeck, under your editorship I'll go to the ends of the world!

ADELAIDE (_smiling and politely_).

Ah, no, merely into that room.

[_Points to the door on the right_.]

I need half an hour to collect my thoughts for my new activities.

BELLMAUS (_while departing_).

That's the best thing I ever heard!

[BELLMAUS, KÄMPE, KÖRNER _leave_.]

ADELAIDE.

Professor, you resigned the management of the paper with a readiness which delights me. (_Pointedly_.) I wish to edit the _Union_ in my own fashion.

[_Seizes his hand and leads him to the_ COLONEL.]

Colonel, he is no longer editor; we have outwitted him; you have your satisfaction.

COLONEL (_holding out his arms to him_).

Come, Oldendorf! For what happened I have been sorry since the moment we parted.

OLDENDORF.

My honored friend!

ADELAIDE (_pointing to the door on the left_).

There is some one else in there who wants to take part in the reconciliation. It might be Mr. Gabriel Henning.

IDA _appears at the side door_.

IDA.

Edward!

[OLDENDORF _hurries to the door_, IDA _meets him, he embraces her. Both leave on the left. The_ COLONEL _follows_.]

ADELAIDE (_sweetly_).

Before asking you, Mr. von Senden, to interest yourself in the editing of the newspaper, I beg you to read through this correspondence which I received as a contribution to my columns.

SENDEN (_takes a glance at them_).

Miss Runeck, I don't know whose indiscretion--

ADELAIDE.

Fear none on my part. I am a newspaper proprietor, and (_with, marked emphasis_) shall keep editorial secrets.

[SENDEN _bows_.]

May I ask for the deed, Judge? And will you gentlemen be kind enough to ease the mind of the vendor as to the outcome of the transaction?

[_Mutual bows_. SENDEN _and_ SCHWARZ _leave_.]

ADELAIDE (_after a short pause_).

Now, Mr. Bolz, what am I going to do about you?

BOLZ.

I am prepared for anything. I am surprised at nothing any more. If some one should go straight off and spend a capital of a hundred millions in painting negroes white with oil-colors, or in making Africa four-cornered, I should not let it astonish me. If I wake up tomorrow as an owl with two tufts of feathers for ears and a mouse in my beak, I will say, "All right," and remember that worse things have happened.

ADELAIDE.

What is the matter with you, Conrad? Are you displeased with me?

BOLZ.

With you? You have been generous as ever; only too generous. And it would all have been fine, if only this whole scene had been impossible. That fellow Senden!

ADELAIDE.

We have seen the last of him! Conrad, I'm one of the party!

BOLZ.

Hallelujah! I hear countless angels blowing on their trumpets! I'll stay with the _Union_!

ADELAIDE.

About that I am no longer the one to decide. For I have still a confession to make to you. I, too, am not the real owner of the newspaper.

BOLZ.

You are not? Now, by all the gods, I am at my wit's end. I'm beginning not to care who this owner is. Be he man, will-of-the-wisp, or the devil Beelzebub in person, I bid him defiance.

ADELAIDE.

He is a kind of a will-of-the-wisp, a little something of a devil, and from top to toe a great rogue. For, Conrad, my friend, beloved of my youth, it is you yourself.

[_Hands him the deed_.]

BOLZ (_stupefied for a moment, reads_).

"Ceded to Conrad Bolz"--correct! So that would be a sort of gift. Can't be accepted, much too little!

[_Throws the paper aside_.] Prudence be gone!

[_Falls on his knees before_ ADELAIDE.]

Here I kneel, Adelaide! What I am saying I don't know in my joy, for the whole room is dancing round with me. If you will take me for your husband, you will do me the greatest favor in the world. If you don't want me, box my ears and send me off!

ADELAIDE (_bending down to him_).

I do want you! (_Kissing him_.) This was the cheek!

BOLZ.

And these are the lips.

[_Kisses her; they remain in an embrace; short pause_.]

_Enter_ COLONEL, IDA, OLDENDORF.

COLONEL (_in amazement, at the door_).

What is this?

BOLZ.

Colonel, it takes place under editorial sanction.

COLONEL.

Adelaide, what do I see?

ADELAIDE (_stretching out her hand to the_ COLONEL).

Dear friend, I'm betrothed to a journalist!

[_As_ IDA _and_ OLDENDORF _from either side hasten to the pair, the curtain falls_]

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: Permission S. Hirzel, Leipzig.]

* * * * *

DOCTOR LUTHER (1859)

By GUSTAV FREYTAG

TRANSLATED BY E.H. BABBITT, A.B. Assistant Professor of German, Tufts College.

Some well-meaning men still wish that the defects of their old church had not led to so great a revolt, and even liberal Roman Catholics still fail to see in Luther and Zwingli anything but zealous heretics whose wrath brought about a schism. May such views vanish from Germany! All religious denominations have reason to attribute to Luther whatever in their present faith is genuine and sincere, and has a wholesome and sustaining influence. The heretic of Wittenberg is fully as much the reformer of the German Catholics as of the Protestants. This is true not only because the teachers of the Catholic Church in their struggle against him outgrew the old scholasticism, and fought for their sacraments with new weapons gained from his language, his culture, and his moral worth; nor because he, in effect, destroyed the church of the Middle Ages and forced his opponents at Trent to raise a firmer structure, though seemingly within the old forms and proportions; but still more because he expressed the common basis of all German denominations, of our spiritual courage, piety, and honesty, with such force that a good deal of his own nature, to the present benefit of every German, has survived in our doctrines and language, in our civil laws and morals, in the thoughtfulness of our people, and in our science and literature. Some of the ideas for which Luther's stubborn and contentious spirit fought, against both Catholics and Calvinists, are abandoned by the free investigation of modern times. His intensely passionate beliefs, gained in the heartrending struggles of a devout soul, occasionally missed an important truth. Sometimes he was harsh, unfair, even cruel toward his opponents; but such things should no longer disturb any German, for all the limitations of his nature and training are as nothing compared with the fulness of the blessings which have flowed from his great heart into the life of our nation.

But he should not have seceded after all, some people say; for his action has divided Germany into two hostile camps, and the ancient strife, under varying battle-cries, has continued to our day. Those who think so might assert with equal right that the Christian revolt from Judaism was not necessary--why did not the apostles reform the venerable high-priesthood of Zion? They might assert that Hampden would have done better if he had paid the ship-money and had taught the Stuarts their lesson peaceably; that William of Orange committed a crime when he did not put his life and his sword into the hands of Alva, as Egmont did; that Washington was a traitor because he did not surrender himself and his army to the English; they might condemn as evil everything that is new and great in doctrine and in life and that owes its birth to a struggle against what is old.

To but few mortals has been vouchsafed such a powerful influence as Luther had upon their contemporaries and upon subsequent ages. But his life, like that of every great man, leaves the impression of an affecting tragedy when attention is centred on its pivotal events. It shows us, like the career of all heroes of history whom Fate permitted to live out their lives, three stages. First, the personality of the man develops, powerfully influenced by the restricting environment. It tries to reconcile incompatibilities, while in the depth of his soul ideas and convictions are gradually translated into volition. At last they burst forth in a definite action, and the solitary individual enters upon the contest with the world. Then follows a period of greater activity, more rapid growth, and larger victories. The influence of the one man upon the masses grows ever greater. Mightily he draws the whole nation to follow in his footsteps, and becomes its hero, its pattern; the vital force of millions appears summed up in one man.

But the spirit of the nation does not long endure the preëminence of a single, well-centred personality; for the life and the power and the needs of a nation are more manifold than even the greatest single force and lofty aim. The eternal contrast between the individual and the nation appears. Even the soul of a nation is, in the presence of the eternal, a finite personality--but in comparison with the individual it appears boundless. A man is forced by the logical result of his thoughts and actions, by all the significance of his own deeds, into a closely restricted path. The soul of the nation needs for its life irreconcilable contrasts and incessant effort in most varied directions. Much that the individual failed to assimilate rises to fight against him. The reaction of the people begins--at first weak, here and there, based on different reasons and with slight justification; then it grows stronger and ever more victorious. Finally the intellectual influence of the life of the individual is limited to his own followers, and crystallizes into a single one of the many elements of national growth. The last period of a great life is always filled with secret resignation, with bitterness, and with silent suffering.

Thus it was with Luther. The first of these periods continued up to the day on which he posted his theses, the second until his return from the Wartburg, the third to his death and the beginning of the Schmalkaldic War. It is not the purpose of this sketch to give his entire biography, but to tell briefly how he developed and what he was. Much in his nature appears strange and unpleasing so long as he is viewed from afar; but this historic figure has the remarkable quality of becoming greater and more attractive the more closely it is approached, and from beginning to end it would inspire a good biographer with admiration, tenderness, and a certain good humor.

Luther rose from the great source of all national strength, the freeholding peasant class. His father moved from Möhra, a forest village of the Thuringian mountains, where his relatives constituted half the population, northward into the neighborhood of Mansfeld, to work as a miner. So the boy's cradle stood in a cottage in which was still felt the old thrill of the ghosts of the pine wood and the dark clefts which were thought to be the entrances to the ore veins of the mountain. Certainly the imagination of the boy was often busy with dark traditions from heathen mythology. He was accustomed to feel the presence of uncanny powers as well in the phenomena of nature as in the life of man. When he turned monk such remembrances from childhood grew gloomier and took the shape of the devil of Scripture, but the busy tempter who everywhere lies in wait for the life of man always retained for him something of the features of the mischievous goblin who secretly lurks about the peasant's hearth and stable.

His father, a curt, sturdy, vigorous man, firm in his resolves, and of unusual, shrewd common sense, had worked his way, after hard struggles, to considerable prosperity. He kept strict discipline in his household. Even in later years Luther thought with sadness of the severe punishments he had endured as a boy and the sorrow they had caused his tender, childish heart. But Old Hans Luther, nevertheless, up to his death in 1530, had some influence on the life of his son. When at the age of twenty-two Martin secretly entered the monastery the old man was violently angry; for he had already planned a good match for him. Friends finally succeeded in bringing the angry father to consent to a reconciliation; and as his imploring son confessed that a terrible apparition had driven him to the secret vow to enter the monastery, he replied with the sorrowful words, "God grant that it was not a deception and trick of the devil;" and he still further wrenched the heart of the monk by the angry question, "You thought you were obeying the command of God when you went into the monastery; have you not heard also that you shall obey your parents?" These words made a deep impression on the son, and when, many years after, he sat in the Wartburg, expelled from the Church and outlawed by the Emperor, he wrote to his father the touching words: "Do you still wish to tear me from the monastery? You are still my father and I your son. The law and the power of God are on your side--on my side human weakness. But look that you boast not yourself against God, he has been beforehand with you,--he has taken me out himself." From that time on it seemed to the old man as if his son were restored to him. Old Hans had once counted upon having a grandson for whom he would work. He now came back obstinately to this thought, caring nothing for the rest of the world, and soon urged his son to marry; his encouragement was not the least of the influences to which Luther yielded, and when his father, advanced in years, at last a councillor of Mansfeld, lay in his death throes and the minister bent over him and asked the dying man if he wished to die in the purified faith in Christ and the Holy Gospel, old Hans gathered his strength once more and said curtly, "He is a wretch who does not believe in it." When Luther told this later he added admiringly, "Yes that was a man of the old time." The son received the news of the father's death in the fortress of Coburg. When he read the letter, in which his wife inclosed a picture of his youngest daughter Magdalena, he uttered to a companion merely the words, "Well, my father is dead too," rose, took his psalter, went into his room, and prayed and wept so hard that, as the faithful Veit Dietrich wrote, his head was confused the next day; but he came out again with his soul at peace. The same day he wrote with deep emotion to Melanchthon of the great love of his father and of his intimate relations with him. "I have never despised death so much as today. We die so often before we finally die. Now I am the oldest of my family and I have the right to follow him." From such a father the son inherited what was fundamental to his character--truthfulness, a sturdy will, straightforward common sense, and tact in dealing with men and affairs. His childhood was full of rigor. He had many a bitter experience in the Latin school and as a choir boy, though tempered by kindness and love, and he kept through it all--what is more easily kept in the lowlier circles of life--a heart full of faith in the goodness of human nature and reverence for everything great in the world. When he was at the University of Erfurt, his father was already in a position to supply his needs more abundantly. He felt the vigor of youth, and was a merry companion with song and lute. Of his spiritual life at that time little is known except that death came near him, and that in a thunder storm he was "called upon by a terrible apparition from heaven." In terror he took a vow to go into a monastery, and quickly and secretly carried out his resolve.

From that time date our reports about the troubles of his soul. At odds with his father, full of awe at the thought of an incomprehensible eternity, cowed by the wrath of God, he began with supernatural exertions a life of renunciation, devotion, and penance. He found no peace. All the highest questions of life rushed with fearful force upon his defenseless, wandering soul. Remarkably strong and passionate with him was the necessity of feeling himself in harmony with God and the universe. What theology offered him was all unintelligible, bitter, and repulsive. To his nature the riddles of the moral order of the universe were most important. That the good should suffer, and the evil succeed; that God should condemn the human race to the monstrous burden of sin because a simple-minded woman had bitten into an apple; that this same God should endure our sins with love, toleration, and patience; that Christ at one time sent away honorable people with severity, and at another time associated with harlots, publicans, and sinners--"human understanding with its wisdom turns to folly at this." Then he would complain to his spiritual adviser, Staupitz: "Dear Doctor, our Lord treats people so cruelly. Who can serve Him if he lays on blows like this?" But when he got the answer, "How else could He subdue the stubborn heads?" this sensible argument could not console the young man. With fervid desire to find the incomprehensible God, he searched all his thoughts and dreams with self-torture. Every earthly thought, every beat of his youthful blood, became for him a cruel wrong. He began to despair of himself; he wrestled in unceasing prayer, fasted and scourged himself. At one time the priests had to break into his cell in which he had been lying for days in a condition not far from insanity. With warm sympathy Staupitz looked upon such heart-rending torment, and sought to give him peace by blunt counsel. Once when Luther had written to him, "Oh, my sin! My sin! My sin!" his spiritual adviser gave him the answer, "You long to be without sin, and you have no real sin. Christ is the forgiveness of real sins, such as parricide and the like. If Christ is to help you, you must have a list of real sins, and not come to Him with such trash and make-believe sins, seeing a sin in every trifle." The manner in which Luther gradually raised himself above such despair was decisive for his whole life. The God whom he served was at that time a God of terror. His anger was to be appeased only by the means of grace which the ancient Church prescribed--in the first place through constant confession, for which there were innumerable prescriptions and formulæ which seemed to the heart empty and cold. By strictly prescribed activities and the practice of so-called good works, the feeling of real atonement and inward peace had not come to the young man. Finally a saying of his spiritual adviser pierced his heart like an arrow: "That alone is true penance which begins with love for God. Love for God and inward exaltation is not the result of the means of grace which the Church teaches; it must go before them." This doctrine from Tauler's school became for the young man the basis of a new spiritual and moral relation to God; it was for him a sacred discovery. The transformation of his spiritual life was the principal thing. For that he had to work. From the depths of every human heart must come repentance, expiation, and atonement. He and every man could lift himself up to God, alone. Not until now did he realize what free prayer was. In place of a far-off divine power which he had formerly sought in vain through a hundred forms and childish confessions, there came before him at last the image of an all-loving protector to whom he could speak at any time joyfully and in tears; to whom he could bring all sorrow, every doubt; who took unceasing interest in him, cared for him, granted or denied his heartfelt petitions tenderly, like a good father. So he learned to pray; and how ardent his prayers became! From this time he lived in peace with the beloved God whom he had finally found, every day, every hour. His intercourse with the Most High became more intimate than with the dearest companions of this earth. When he poured out his whole self before Him, then calm came over him and a holy peace, a feeling of unspeakable love. He felt himself a part of God, and remained in this relation to Him from that time throughout his whole life. He heeded no longer the roundabout ways of the ancient Church; he could, with God in his heart, defy the whole world. Even thus early he ventured to believe that those held false doctrine who put so much stress on works of penance, that there was nothing beyond these works but a cold satisfaction and a ceremonious confession; and when, later, he learned from Melanchthon that the Greek word for penitence, _metanoia_ meant literally "change of mind," it seemed to him a wonderful revelation. On this ground rested the confident assurance with which he opposed the words of Scripture to the ordinances of the Church. By this means Luther in the monastery gradually worked his way to spiritual liberty. All his later doctrines, his battles against indulgences, his imperturbable steadfastness, his method of interpreting the Scriptures, rested upon the struggles through which he, while a monk, had found his God; and it may well be said that the new era of German history began with Luther's prayers in the monastery. Life was soon to thrust him under its hammer, to harden the pure metal of his soul.

In 1508 Luther reluctantly accepted the professorship of dialectics at the new university of Wittenberg. He would rather have taught that theology which even then he believed the true one. When, in 1510, he went to Rome on business for his order, it is well known what devotion and piety marked his sojourn in the Holy City, and with what horror the heathen life of the Romans and the moral corruption and worldliness of the clergy filled him. It was there where his devotions, while he was officiating at mass, were disturbed by the reckless jests which the Roman priests of his order called out to him. He never forgot the devil-inspired words[2] as long as he lived.

But the hierarchy, however deeply its corruption shocked him, still contained his whole hope; outside of it there was no God and no salvation. The noble idea of the Catholic Church, and its conquests of fifteen hundred years, enraptured the mind even of the strongest. And when this German in Roman clerical dress, at the risk of his life, inspected the ruins of ancient Rome and stood in awe before the gigantic columns of the temples which, according to report, the Goths had once destroyed, the sturdy man from the mountains of the old Hermunduri little dreamed that it would be his own fate to destroy the temples of medieval Rome more thoroughly, more fiercely, more grandly. Luther came back from Rome still a faithful son of the great Mother Church. All heresy, such as that of the Bohemians, was hateful to him. He took a warm interest, after his return, in Reuchlin's contest against the judges of heresy at Cologne, and, in 1512, stood on the side of the Humanists; but even then he felt that something separated him from this movement. When, a few years later, he was in Gotha, he did not call upon the worthy Mutianus Rufus, although he wrote him a very polite letter of apology; and soon after he was offended by the inward coldness and secular tone in which theological sinners were ridiculed in Erasmus' dialogues. The profane worldliness of the Humanists was never quite in harmony with the cheerful faith of Luther's soul, and the pride with which he afterward offended the sensitive Erasmus in a letter which was meant to be conciliatory, was probably even then in his soul. Even the forms of literary modesty adopted by Luther at that time give the impression that they were wrung from an unbending spirit by the power of Christian humility.

For even at that time he felt himself secure and strong in his faith. As early as 1516 he wrote to Spalatin, who was the link of intercourse between him and the Elector, Frederick the Wise, that the Elector was the most prudent of men in the things of this world, but was afflicted with sevenfold blindness in matters concerning God and the salvation of the soul. And Luther had reason for this expression, for the provident spirit of that moderate prince appeared in his careful efforts, among other things, to gather in for domestic use the means of grace recommended by the Church. For instance, he had a special hobby for sacred relics, and just at this time Staupitz, the vicar of the Augustinian order for Saxony, was occupied in the Rhine region and elsewhere in collecting them for the Elector. For Luther the absence of his superior was important, for he had to fill his place. He was already a respected man in his order. Although professor (of theology since 1512), he still lived in his monastery in Wittenberg and generally wore his monk's habit; and now he visited the thirty monasteries in his charge, deposed priors, uttered severe censure of bad discipline, and urged severity against fallen monks. But something of the simple faith of the brother of the monastery still clung to him.

It was in this spirit of confidence and German sincerity that he wrote, October 31, 1517, after he had posted the theses against Tetzel on the church door, to Archbishop Albert of Mainz, the protector of the seller of indulgences. Full of the popular belief in the wisdom and the goodwill of the highest rulers, Luther thought (he often said so later) that it was only necessary to present honestly to the princes of the Church the disadvantage and immorality of such abuses. But how childish this zeal of the monk appeared to the polished and worldly prince of the Church! What so deeply offended the honest man was, from the point of view of the Archbishop, a matter long settled. The sale of indulgences was an evil in the Church a hundred times deplored, but as unavoidable as many institutions seem to the politician; while not good in themselves, they must be kept for the sake of a greater interest. The greatest interest of the Archbishop and the curia was their supremacy, which was acquired and maintained by such commercial dealings. The great interest of Luther and the people was truth. This was the parting of the ways.

And so Luther entered upon the struggle, a poor and faithful son of the Church, full of German devotion to authority; but yet he had in his character something which gave him strength against too extreme exercise of this authority--a close relation to his God. He was then thirty-four years old, in the fulness of his strength, of medium stature, his body vigorous and without the corpulency of his later years, appearing tall beside the small, delicate, boyish form of Melanchthon. In the face which showed the effects of vigils and inward struggles, shone two fiery eyes whose keen brilliancy was hard to meet. He was a respected man, not only in his order, but at the University; not a great scholar--he learned Greek from Melanchthon in the first year of his professorship, and Hebrew soon after. He had no extensive book learning, and never had the ambition to shine as a writer of Latin verse; but he was astonishingly well-read in the Scriptures and some of the Fathers of the Church, and what he had once learned he assimilated with German thoroughness. He was the untiring shepherd of his flock, a zealous preacher, a warm friend, once more full of a decorous cheerfulness; he was of an assured bearing, polite and skilful in social intercourse, with a confidence of spirit which often lighted up his face in a smile. The small events of the day might indeed affect him and annoy him. He was excitable, and easily moved to tears, but on any great emergency, after he had overcome his early nervous excitement, such as, for instance, embarrassed him when he first appeared before the Diet at Worms--then he showed wonderful calmness and self-command. He knew no fear. Indeed, his lion's nature found satisfaction in the most dangerous situations. The danger of death into which he sometimes fell, the malicious ambushes of his enemies, seemed to him at that time hardly worthy of mention. The reason for this superhuman heroism, as one may call it, was again his close personal relation to his God. He had long periods in which he wished, with a cheerful smile, for martyrdom in the service of truth and of his God. Terrible struggles were still before him, but those in which men opposed him did not seem to deserve this name. He had defeated the devil himself again and again for years. He even overcame the fear and torment of hell, which did its utmost to cloud his reason. Such a man might perhaps be killed, but he could hardly be conquered.

The period of the struggle which now follows, from the beginning of the indulgences controversy until his departure from the Wartburg--the time of his greatest victories and of his tremendous popularity--is perhaps best known; but it seems to us that even here his nature has never yet been correctly judged.

Nothing is more remarkable at this period than the manner in which Luther became gradually estranged from the Church of Rome. His life was modest and without ambition. He clung with the deepest reverence to the lofty idea of the Church, for fifteen hundred years the communion of saints; and yet in four short years he was destined to be cut off from the faith of his fathers, torn from the soil in which he had been so firmly rooted. And during all this time he was destined to stand alone in the struggle, or at best with a few faithful companions--after 1518 together with Melanchthon. He was to be exposed to all the perils of the fiercest war, not only against innumerable enemies, but also in defiance of the anxious warnings of sincere friends and patrons. Three times the Roman party tried to silence him--through the official activity of Cajetan, through the persuasive arts of Miltitz, and the untimely persistence of the contentious Eck. Three times he spoke to the Pope himself in letters which are among the most valuable documents of those years. Then came the parting. He was anathematized and outlawed. According to the old university custom, he burned the enemy's declaration of war, and with it the possibility of return. With cheerful confidence he went to Worms in order that the princes of his nation might decide whether he should die or thenceforth live among them without pope or church, according to the Bible alone.

At first, when he had printed his theses against Tetzel, he was astonished at the enormous excitement which they caused in Germany, at the venomous hatred of his enemies, and at the signs of joyful recognition which he received from many sides. Had he, then, done such an unheard-of thing? What he had expressed was, he knew, the belief of all the best men of the Church. When the Bishop of Brandenburg had sent the Abbot of Lehnin to him, with the request that Luther would suppress the printed edition of his German sermon on indulgences and grace, however near the truth he might be, the brother of the poor Augustinian monastery was deeply moved that such great men should speak to him in so friendly and cordial a manner, and he was ready to give up the printing rather than make himself a monster that disturbed the Church. Eagerly he sought to refute the report that the Elector had instigated his quarrel with Tetzel--"they wish to involve the innocent prince in the enmity that falls on me." He was ready to do anything to keep the peace before Cajetan and with Miltitz. One thing he would not do--recant what he had said against the unchristian extension of the system of indulgences; but recantation was the only thing the hierarchy wanted of him. For a long time he still wished for peace, reconciliation, and return to the peaceful activity of his cell; and again and again a false assertion of his opponents set his blood on fire, and every opposition was followed by a new and sharper blow from his weapon.

Even in the first letter to Leo X, May 30, 1518, Luther's heroic assurance is remarkable. He is still entirely the faithful son of the Church. He still concludes by falling at the Pope's feet, offers him his whole life and being, and promises to honor his voice as the voice of Christ, whose representative the head of the Church is; but even from this devotion befitting the monk, the vigorous words flash out: "If I have merited death, I refuse not to die." In the body of the letter, how strong are the expressions in which he sets forth the coarseness of the sellers of indulgences! Here, too, his surprise is honest that his theses are making so much stir with their unintelligible sentences, involved, according to the old custom, to the point of riddles. And good humor sounds in the manly words: "What shall I do? I cannot recant. In our century full of intellect and beauty, which might put Cicero into a corner, I am only an unlearned, limited, poorly educated man! But the goose must needs cackle among the swans."

The following year almost all who honored Luther united in the endeavor to bring about a reconciliation. Staupitz and Palatin, and the Elector through them, scolded, besought, and urged; the papal chamberlain, Miltitz himself, praised Luther's attitude, and whispered to him that he was entirely right, implored him, drank with him, and kissed him. Luther, to be sure, thought he knew that the courtier had a secret mission to make him a captive, if possible, and bring him to Rome. But the peacemakers successfully hit upon the point in which the stubborn man heartily agreed with them--that respect for the Church must be maintained, and its unity must not be destroyed. Luther promised to keep quiet and to submit the decision of the contested points to three worthy bishops. While in this position he was urged to write a letter of apology to the Pope. But even this letter of March 3, 1519, though approved by the mediators and written under compulsion, is characteristic as showing the advance Luther had made. Humility, such as our theologians see in it, is hardly present, but a cautious diplomatic attitude throughout. Luther regrets that what he has done to defend the honor of the Roman Church should have been interpreted as lack of respect in him. He promises henceforth to say nothing more about indulgences--if, that is, his opponents will do the same; he offers to address a manifesto to the people in which he will advise them to give proper obedience to the Church and not to be estranged from her because his adversaries have been insolent and he himself harsh. But all these submissive words do not conceal the rift which already separates his mind from the essential basis of the Church of Rome. It sounds like cold irony when he writes: "What shall I do, Most Holy Father? I am at a complete loss. I cannot endure the weight of your anger, and yet I do not know how to escape it. They demand a recantation from me. If it could accomplish what they propose by it, I would recant without hesitation, but the opposition of my adversaries has spread my writings farther than I had ever hoped; they have taken hold too deeply on the souls of men. In Germany today talent, learning, freedom of judgment are flourishing. If I should recant, I should cover the Church, in the judgment of my Germans, with still greater disgrace. It is they--my adversaries--who have brought the Church of Rome into disrepute with us in Germany." He finally closes politely: "If I should be able to do more, I shall without doubt be very ready. May Christ preserve your Holiness! Martin Luther."

Much is to be read between the lines of this studied reserve. Even if the vain Eck had not immediately set all Wittenberg University by the ears, this letter could hardly have been considered at Rome as a token of repentant submission.

The thunderbolt of excommunication had been hurled; Rome had spoken. Now Luther, again completely his old self, wrote once more to the Pope that great and famous letter which, at the request of the untiring Miltitz, he dated back to September 6, 1520, that he might be able to ignore the bull of excommunication. It is a beautiful reflection of a resolute mind which from a lofty standpoint calmly surveys its opponent, and at the same time is magnificent in its sincerity, and of the noblest spirit. With sincere sympathy he speaks of the personality and of the difficult position of the Pope; but it is the sympathy of a stranger. He still laments with melancholy the condition of the Church, but it is plain that he himself has already outgrown it. It is a farewell letter. With the keenest severity there is still a firm attitude and silent sorrow. Such is the way a man parts from what he has once loved and found unworthy. This letter was to be the last bridge for the peacemakers. For Luther it was the liberation of his soul.

In these years Luther had become a different man. In the first place he had acquired prudence and self-reliance in his intercourse with the most exalted personages, and at heavy cost had won insight into the policies and the private character of the rulers. Nothing was at heart more painful to the peaceable nature of his sovereign than this bitter theological controversy, which sometimes furthered his political ends but always disturbed his peace of mind. Constant efforts were made by his court to keep the Wittenberg people within bounds, and Luther always saw to it that they were made too late. Whenever the faithful Spalatin dissuaded him from the publication of a new polemic, he received the answer that there was no help for it, that the sheets were printed and already in the hands of many and could not be suppressed. And in his dealings with his adversaries Luther had acquired the assurance of a seasoned warrior. He was bitterly hurt when Hieronymus Emser, in the spring of 1518, craftily took him to a banquet in Dresden where he was forced to argue with angry enemies, especially when he learned that a Dominican friar had listened at the door and the next day had spread it in the town that Luther had been completely silenced, and that the listener had had difficulty to restrain himself from rushing into the room and spitting in Luther's face. At that first meeting with Cajetan Luther still prostrated himself humbly at the feet of the prince of the Church; after the second he allowed himself to express the view that the cardinal was as fit for his office as an ass to play the harp. He treated the polite Miltitz with fitting politeness. The Roman had hoped to tame the German bear, but soon the courtier came of his own accord into the position which was appropriate for him--he was used by Luther. And in the Leipzig disputation against Eck the favorable impression which the self-possessed, honest, and sturdy nature of Luther produced was the best counterpoise to the self-satisfied assurance of his clever opponent.

But Luther's inward life calls for greater sympathy. It was after all a terrible period for him. Close to exaltation and victory lay for him deathly anxiety, torturing doubt, and horrible apparitions. He, almost alone, was in arms against all Christendom, and was becoming more and more irreconcilably hostile to the mightiest power, which still included everything that had been sacred to him since his youth. What if, after all, he were wrong in this or that! He was responsible for every soul that he led away with him--and whither? What was there outside the Church but destruction and perdition for time and for eternity? If his adversaries and anxious friends cut him to the heart with reproaches and warnings, the pain, the secret remorse, the uncertainty which he must not acknowledge to any one, were greater beyond comparison. He found peace, to be sure, in prayer. Whenever his fervid soul, seeking its God, rose in mighty flights, he was filled with strength, peace, and cheerfulness. But in hours of less tense exaltation, when his sensitive spirit quivered under unpleasant impressions, then he felt himself embarrassed, divided, under the spell of another power which was hostile to his God. He knew from childhood how actively evil spirits ensnare mankind; he had learned from the Scripture that the Devil works against the purest to ruin them. On his path the busy devils were lurking to weaken him, to mislead him, to make innumerable others wretched through him. He saw their work in the angry bearing of the cardinal, in the scornful face of Eck, even in the thoughts of his own soul. He knew how powerful they had been in Rome. Even in his youth apparitions had tormented him; now they reappeared. From the dark shadows of his study the spectre of the tempter lifted its claw-like hand against his reason. Even while he was praying the Devil approached him in the form of the Redeemer, radiant as King of Heaven with the five wounds, as the ancient Church represented Him. But Luther knew that Christ appears to poor humanity only in His words, or in humble form, as He hung upon the cross; and he roused himself vigorously and cried to the apparition: "Avaunt, foul fiend!"--and the vision disappeared. Thus the strong heart of the man worked for years in savage indignation--always renewed. It was a sad struggle between reason and insanity, but Luther always came out victorious; the native strength of his sound nature prevailed. In long prayer, often lasting for hours, the stormy waves of his emotion became calm, and his massive intelligence and his conscience brought him every time out of doubt to certainty. He considered this process of liberation as a gracious inspiration of his God, and after such moments he who had once been in such anxious doubt was as firm as steel, indifferent to the opinion of men, not to be moved, inexorable. Quite a different picture is that of his personality in contest with earthly foes. Here he retains almost everywhere the superiority of conviction, particularly in his literary feuds.

The literary activity which he developed at this time was gigantic. Up to 1517 he had printed little. From that time on he was not only the most productive but the greatest popular writer of Germany. The energy of his style, the vigor of his argumentation, the ardor and passion of his conviction, carried away his readers. No one had ever spoken thus to the people. His language lent itself to every mood, to all keys; now brief, forcible, sharp as steel, now in majestic breadth, the words poured in among the people like a mighty stream. A figurative expression, a striking simile, made the most difficult thoughts intelligible. His was a wonderfully creative power. He used language with sovereign ease. As soon as he touched a pen his mind worked with the greatest freedom; his sentences show the cheerful warmth which filled him, the perfect charm of sympathetic creation is poured out upon them. And such power is by no means least apparent in the attacks which he makes upon individual opponents, and it is closely connected with a fault which caused misgivings even to his admiring contemporaries. He liked to play with his opponents. His imagination clothed the form of an enemy with a grotesque mask, and he teased, scorned, and stabbed this picture of his imagination with turns of speech which had not always the grace of moderation, or even of decency; but in the midst of vituperation, his good humor generally had a conciliatory effect--although, to be sure, not upon his victims. Petty spite was rarely visible; not seldom the most imperturbable good-nature. Sometimes he fell into a true artistic zeal, forgot the dignity of the reformer, and pinched like a German peasant boy, even like a malicious goblin. What blows he gave to all his opponents, now with a club, wielded by an angry giant, now with a jester's bauble! He liked to twist their names into ridiculous forms, and thus they lived in Wittenberg circles as beasts, or as fools. Eck became Dr. Geck; Murner was adorned with the head and claws of a cat; Emser, who had printed at the head of most of his pamphlets his coat-of-arms the head of a horned goat, was abused as a goat. The Latin name of the renegade humanist Cochläus, was retranslated, and Luther greeted him as a snail with impenetrable armor, and--sad to say--sometimes also as a dirty boy whose nose needed wiping. Still worse, terrible even to his contemporaries, was the reckless violence with which he declaimed against hostile princes. It is true that he sometimes bestowed upon his sovereign's cousin, Duke George of Saxony, a consideration hardly to be avoided. Each considered the other the prey of the devil, but in secret each esteemed in the other a manly worth. Again and again they fell into dissension, even in writing, but again and again Luther prayed warmly for his neighbor's soul. The reckless wilfulness of Henry VIII. of England, on the other hand, offended the German reformer to the depths of his soul; he reviled him horribly and without cessation; and even in his last years he treated the hot-headed Henry of Brunswick like a naughty school-boy. "Clown" was the mildest of many dramatic characters in which he represented him. When, later, such outpourings of excessive zeal stared at him from the printed page, and his friends complained, he would be vexed at his rudeness, upbraid himself, and honestly repent. But repentance availed little, for on the next occasion he would commit the same fault; and Spalatin had some reason to look distrustfully upon a projected publication even when Luther proposed to write very gently and tamely. His opponents could not equal him in his field. They called names with equal vigor, but they lacked his inward freedom. Unfortunately it cannot be denied that this little appendage to the moral dignity of his nature was sometimes the spice which made his writings so irresistible to the honest Germans of the sixteenth century.

In the autumn of 1517 he had got into a quarrel with a reprobate Dominican friar; in the winter of 1520 he burned the Pope's bull. In the spring of 1518 he had prostrated himself at the feet of the Vicar of Christ; in the spring of 1521 he declared at the Diet of Worms, before the emperor and the princes and the papal legates, that he believed neither the Pope nor the Councils alone, only the testimony of the Holy Scripture and the interpretation of reason. Now he was free, but excommunication and outlawry hovered over his head. He was inwardly free, but he was free as the beast of the forest is free, and behind him bayed the blood-thirsty pack. He had reached the culminating point of his life, and the powers against which he had revolted, even the thoughts which he himself had aroused among the people, were working from now on against his life and doctrine.

Even at Worms, so it appears, it had been made clear to Luther that he must disappear for a while. The customs of the Franconian Knights, among whom he had faithful followers, suggested the idea of having him spirited away by armed men. Elector Frederick, with his faithful friends, discussed the abduction, and it was quite after the manner of this prince that he himself did not wish to know the place of retreat, in order to be able, in case of need, to swear to his ignorance. Nor was it easy to win Luther over to the plan, for his bold heart had long ago overcome earthly fear; and with an enthusiastic joy, in which there was much fanaticism and some humor, he watched the attempts of the Romanists to put out of the way a man of whom Another must dispose, He who spoke through his lips.

Unwillingly he submitted. The secret was not easy to keep, however skilfully the abduction had been planned. At first none of the Wittenbergers but Melanchthon knew where he was. But Luther was the last man to submit to even the best-intentioned intrigue. Very soon an active communication arose between the Wartburg and Wittenberg. No matter how much caution was used in delivering the letters, it was difficult to avoid suspicion. In his fortified retreat, Luther found out earlier than the Wittenbergers what was going on in the world outside. He was informed of everything that happened at his university, and tried to keep up the courage of his friends and direct their policy. It is touching to see how he tried to strengthen Melanchthon, whose unpractical nature made him feel painfully the absence of his sturdy friend. "Things will get on without me," he writes to him; "only have courage. I am no longer necessary to you. If I get out, and I cannot return to Wittenberg, I shall go into the wide world. You are men enough to hold the fortress of the Lord against the Devil, without me." He dated his letters from the air, from Patmos, from the desert, from "among the birds that sing merrily on the branches and praise God with all their might from morning to night." Once he tried to be crafty. He inclosed in a letter to Spalatin a letter intended to deceive: "It was believed without reason that he was at the Wartburg. He was living among faithful brethren. It was surprising that no one had thought of Bohemia;" and then came a thrust--not ill-tempered--at Duke George of Saxony, his most active enemy. This letter Spalatin was to lose with well-planned carelessness so that it should come into the hands of the enemy. But in this kind of diplomacy he was certainly not logical, for as soon as his leonine nature was aroused by some piece of news, he would determine impulsively to start for Erfurt or Wittenberg. It was hard for him to bear the inactivity of his life. He was treated with the greatest attention by the governor of the castle, and this attention expressed itself, as was the custom at that time, primarily in the shape of the best care in the matter of food and drink. The rich living, the lack of activity, and the fresh mountain air into which the theologian was transported, had their effect upon soul and body. He had already brought from Worms a physical infirmity, now there were added hours of gloomy melancholy which made him unfit for work.

On two successive days he joined hunting parties, but his heart was with the few hares and partridges which were driven into the net by the troop of men and dogs. "Innocent creatures! The papists persecute in the same way!" To save the life of a little hare he had wrapped him in the sleeve of his coat. The dogs came and crushed the animal's bones within the protecting coat. "Thus Satan rages against the souls that I seek to save." Luther had reason for protecting himself and his friends from Satan. He had rejected all the authority of the Church; now he stood terribly alone; nothing was left to him but his last resort--the Scriptures. The ancient Church had represented Christianity in continual development. The faith had been kept in a fluid state by a living tradition which ran parallel with the Scriptures, by the Councils, by the Papal decrees; and they had adapted themselves, like a facile stream, to the sharp corners of national character, to the urgent needs of each age. It is true that this noble idea of a perpetually living organism had not been preserved in its original purity. The best part of its life had vanished; empty cocoons were being preserved. The old democratic church had been transformed into the irresponsible sovereignty of a few, had been stained with all the vices of an unconscientious aristocracy, and was already in striking opposition to reason and popular feeling. What Luther, however, could put in its place--the word of the Scriptures--although it gave freedom from a hopeless mass of soulless excrescences, threatened on the other hand new dangers.

What was the Bible? Between the earliest and latest writings of the sacred book lay perhaps two thousand years. Even the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, not even entirely by those who had received the sacred doctrine from his lips. It was compiled after his death. Portions of it might have been transmitted inexactly. Everything was written in a foreign tongue, which it was difficult for the Germans to understand. Even the keenest penetration was in danger of interpreting falsely unless the grace of God enlightened the interpreter as it had the apostles. The ancient Church had settled the matter summarily; in it the sacrament of holy orders gave such enlightenment. Indeed, the Holy Father even laid claim to divine authority to decide arbitrarily what should be right, even when his will was contrary to the Scriptures. The reformer had nothing but his feeble human knowledge, and prayer.

The first unavoidable step was that he must use his reason, for a certain critical treatment even of the Holy Bible was necessary. Nor did Luther fail to see that the books of the New Testament were of varying worth. It is well known that he did not highly esteem the Apocalypse, and that the Epistle of James was regarded by him as "an epistle of straw." But his objection to particular portions never shook his faith in the whole. His belief was inflexible that the Holy Scriptures, excepting a few books, contained a divine revelation in every word and letter. It was for him the dearest thing on earth, the foundation of all his learning. He had put himself so in sympathy with it that he lived among its figures as in the present. The more urgent his feeling of responsibility, the warmer the passion with which he clung to Scripture; and a strong instinct for the sensible and the fitting really helped him over many dangers. His discrimination had none of the hair-splitting sophistry of the ancient teachers. He despised useless subtleties, and, with admirable tact, let go what seemed to him unessential; but, if he was not to lose his faith or his reason, he could do nothing, after all, but found the new doctrine on words and conditions of life fifteen hundred years old, and in some cases he became the victim of what his adversary Eck called "the black letter."

Under the urgency of these conditions his method took form. If he had a question to settle, he collected all the passages of Holy Scripture which seemed to offer him an answer. He sought earnestly to understand all passages in their context, and then he struck a balance, giving the greatest weight to those which agreed with each other, and for those which were at variance patiently striving to find a solution which might reconcile the seeming contradiction. The resulting conviction he firmly established in his heart, regardless of temptations, by fervent prayer. With this procedure he was sometimes bound to reach conclusions which seemed, even to ordinary human understanding, vulnerable. When, for instance, in the year 1522, he undertook, from the Scriptures, to put matrimony on a new moral basis, reason and the needs of the people were certainly on his side when he subjected to severe criticism the eighteen grounds of the Ecclesiastical Law for forbidding and annulling marriages and condemned the unworthy favoring of the rich over the poor. But it was, after all, strange when Luther tried to prove from the Bible alone what degrees of relationship were permitted and what were forbidden, especially as he also took into consideration the Old Testament, in which various queer marriages were contracted without any opposition from the ancient Jehovah. God undoubtedly had sometimes allowed his elect to have two wives.

And it was this method which, in 1529, during the discussions with the Calvinists, made him so obstinate, when he wrote on the table in front of him, "This _is_ my body," and sternly disregarded the tears and outstretched hand of Zwingli. He had never been narrower and yet never mightier--the fear-inspiring man who had won his conviction in the most violent inward struggles against doubt and the Devil. It was an imperfect method, and his opponents attacked it, not without success. With it his doctrine became subject to the fate of all human wisdom. But in this method there was also a vivid emotional process in which his own reason and the culture and the inward needs of his time found better expression than he himself knew. And it became the starting-point from which a conscientious spirit of investigation has wrought for the German people the highest intellectual freedom.

With such tremendous trials there came also to the outcast monk at the Wartburg other minor temptations. He had long ago, by almost superhuman intellectual activity, overcome what were then regarded with great distrust as fleshly impulses; now nature asserted herself vigorously, and he several times asked his friend Melanchthon to pray for him on this account. Then Fate would have it that during these very weeks the restless mind of Carlstadt in Wittenberg fell upon the question of the marriage of priests, and reached the conclusion, in a pamphlet on celibacy, that the vow of chastity was not binding on priests and monks. The Wittenbergers in general agreed--first of all, Melanchthon, whose position in this matter was freest from prejudice, since he had never received ordination and had been married for two years.

So at this point a tangle of thoughts and moral questions was caused from without in Luther's soul, the threads of which were destined to involve his whole later life. Whatever heartfelt joy and worldly happiness was granted him from this time on depended on the answer which he found to this question. It was the happiness of his home-life which made it possible for him to endure the later years. Only in it did the flower of his abundant affection develop. So Fate graciously sent the lonely man the message which was to unite him anew and more firmly than ever with his people; and the way in which Luther dealt with this question is again characteristic. His pious disposition and the conservative strain in his nature revolted against the hasty and superficial manner in which Carlstadt reasoned.

It may be assumed that much in his own feelings, at that particular time, made him suspicious that the Devil might be using this dubious question to tempt the children of God, and yet at this very moment, in his confinement, he had special sympathy for the poor monks behind monastery walls. He searched the Scriptures. He had soon disposed of the marriage of priests, but there was nothing in the Bible about monks. "The Scripture is silent; man is uncertain." And then he was struck by the ridiculous idea that even his nearest friends might marry. He writes to the cautious Spalatin, "Good Lord! Our Wittenbergers want to give wives to the monks too. Well, they are not going to hang one on my neck;" and he gives the ironical warning, "Look out that you do not marry too." But the problem still occupied him incessantly. Life is lived rapidly in such great times. Gradually, through Melanchthon's reasoning, and, we may assume, after fervent prayer, he found certainty. What settled the matter, unknown to himself, must have been the recognition that the opening of the monasteries had become reasonable and necessary for a more moral foundation of civil life. For almost three months he had struggled over the question. On the first of November, 1521, he wrote the letter to his father already cited.

The effect of his words upon the people was incalculable. Everywhere there was a stir in the cloisters. From the doors of almost all the monasteries and convents monks and nuns stole out--at first singly and in secret flight; then whole convents broke up. When Luther with greater cares weighing upon him returned the next spring to Wittenberg, the runaway monks and nuns gave him much to do. Secret letters were sent to him from all quarters, often from excited nuns who, the children of stern parents, had been put into convents, and now, without money and without protection, sought aid from the great reformer. It was not unnatural that they should throng to Wittenberg. Once nine nuns came in a carriage from the aristocratic establishment at Nimpfschen--among them a Staupitz, two Zeschaus, and Catherine von Bora. At another time sixteen nuns were to be provided for, and so on. He felt deep sympathy for these poor souls. He wrote in their behalf and traveled to find them shelter in respectable families. Sometimes indeed he felt it too much of a good thing, and the hordes of runaway monks were an especial burden to him. He complains that "they wish to marry immediately and are the most incompetent people for any kind of work." Through his bold solution of a difficult question he gave great offense. He himself had painful experiences; for among those who now returned in tumult to civil life there were, to be sure, high-minded men, but also those who were rude and worthless. Yet all this never made him hesitate for a moment. As usual with him, he was made the more determined by the opposition he met. When, in 1524, he published the story of the sufferings of a novice, Florentina of Oberweimar, he repeated on the title page what he had already so often preached: "God often gives testimony in the Scriptures that He will have no compulsory service, and no one shall become His except with pleasure and love. God help us! Is there no reasoning with us? Have we no sense and no hearing? I say it again, God will have no compulsory service. I say it a third time, I say it a hundred thousand times, God will have no compulsory service."

So Luther entered upon the last period of his life. His disappearance in the Thuringian forest had caused an enormous stir. His adversaries trembled before the anger which arose in town and country against those who were called murderers. But the interruption of his public activity became fateful for him. So long as in Wittenberg he was the central point of the struggle, his word, his pen, had held sovereign control over the great intellectual movement in north and south; now it worked without method in different directions, in many minds. One of the oldest of Luther's allies began the confusion. Wittenberg itself became the scene of a strange commotion. Then Luther could endure the Wartburg no longer. Once before he had been secretly in Wittenberg; now, against the Elector's will, he returned there publicly. And there began a heroic struggle against old friends, and against the conclusions drawn from his own doctrine. His activity was superhuman. He thundered without cessation from the pulpit, in the cell his pen flew fast; but he could not reclaim every dissenting mind. Even he could not prevent the rabble of the towns from breaking out in savage fury against the institutions of the ancient Church and against hated individuals, nor the excitement of the people from brewing political storms, nor the knights from rising against the princes, and the peasants against the knights. What was more, he could not prevent the intellectual liberty which he had won for the Germans from producing, even in pious and learned men, an independent judgment about creed and life, a judgment which was contrary to his own convictions. There came the gloomy years of the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Peasant Wars, the regrettable dissensions over the sacrament. How often at this time did Luther's form rise sombre and mighty over the contestants! How often did the perversion of mankind and his own secret doubts fill him with anxious care for the future of Germany!

For in a savage age which was accustomed to slay with fire and sword, this German had a high, pure conception of the battles of the intellect such as no other man attained. Even in the times of his own greatest danger he mortally hated any use of violence. He himself did not wish to be sheltered by his prince--indeed he desired no human protection for his doctrine. He fought with a sharp quill against his foes, but he burnt only a paper at the stake. He hated the Pope as he did the Devil, but he always preached a love of peace and Christian tolerance of the Papists. He suspected many of being in secret league with the Devil, but he never burned a witch. In all Catholic countries the pyres flamed high for the adherents of the new creed; even Hutten was under strong suspicion of having cut off the ears of a few monks. So humane was Luther's disposition that he entertained cordial sympathy with the humiliated Tetzel and wrote him a consolatory letter. To obey the authorities whom God has established was his highest political principle. Only when the service of his God demanded it did his opposition flame up. When he left Worms he had been ordered not to preach--he who was just on the point of being declared an outlaw. He did not submit to the prohibition, but his honest conscience was fearful that this might be interpreted as disobedience. His conception of the position of the Emperor was still quite the antiquated and popular one. As subjects obey the powers that be, so the princes and electors had to obey the Emperor according to the law of the land.

With the personality of Charles V. he had human sympathy all his life--not only at that first period when he greeted him as "Dear Youngster," but also later, when he well knew that the Spanish Burgundian was granting nothing more than political tolerance to the German Reformation. "He is pious and quiet," Luther said of him; "he talks in a year less than I do in a day. He is a child of fortune." He liked to praise the Emperor's moderation, modesty, and forbearance. Long after he had condemned Charles' policy, and in secret distrusted his character, he insisted upon it among his table companions that the master of Germany should be spoken of with reverence, and said apologetically to the younger ones, "A politician cannot be so frank as we of the clergy."

Even as late as 1530 it was his view that it was wrong for the Elector to take arms against his Emperor. Not until 1537 did he fall in reluctantly with the freer views of his circle, but he thought then that the endangered prince had no right to make the first attack. The venerable tradition of a firm, well articulated federal State was still thus active in this man of the people at a time when the proud structure of the old Saxon and Franconian empires was already crumbling away. Yet in such loyalty there was no trace of a slavish spirit. When his prince once urged him to write an open letter, his sense of truth rose against the title of the Emperor, "Most Gracious Lord," for he said the Emperor was not graciously disposed toward him. And in his frequent intercourse with those of rank, he showed a reckless frankness which more than once alarmed the courtiers. In all reverence he spoke truths to his own prince such as only a great character may express and only a good-hearted one can listen to. On the whole he cared little for the German princes, much as he esteemed a few. Frequent and just were his complaints about their incapacity, their lawlessness, and their vices. He also liked to treat the nobility with irony; the coarseness of most of them was highly distasteful to him. He felt a democratic displeasure toward the hard and selfish jurists who managed the affairs of the princes, worked for favor, and harassed the poor; for the best of them he admitted only a very doubtful prospect of the mercy of God. His whole heart, on the other hand, was with the oppressed. He sometimes blamed the peasants for their stolidity, and their extortions in selling their grain, but he often praised their class, looked with cordial sympathy upon their hardships, and never forgot that by birth he belonged among them.

But all this belonged to the temporal order; he served the spiritual. The popular conception was also firmly fixed in his mind that two controlling powers ought to rule the German nation in common--the Church and the princes; and he was entirely right in proudly contrasting the sphere where lay his rights and duties with that of the temporal powers. In his spiritual field there were solidarity, a spirit of sacrifice, and a wealth of ideals, while in secular affairs narrow selfishness, robbery, fraud, and weakness were to be found everywhere. He fought vigorously lest the authorities should assume to control matters which concerned the pastor and the independence of the congregations. He judged all policies according to what would benefit his faith, and according to the dictates of his Bible. Where the Scriptures seemed endangered by worldly politics, he protested, caring little who was hit. It was not his fault that he was strong and the princes were weak, and no blame attaches to him, the monk, the professor, the pastor, if the league of Protestant princes was weak as a herd of deer against the crafty policy of the Emperor. He himself was well aware that Italian diplomacy was not his strong point. If the active Landgrave of Hesse happened not to follow the advice of the clergy, Luther, in his heart, respected him all the more: "He knows what he wants and succeeds, he has a fine sense of this world's affairs."

Now, after Luther's return to Wittenberg, the flood of democracy was rising among the people. He had opened the monasteries; now the people called for redress against many other social evils, such as the misery of the peasants, the tithes, the traffic in benefices, the bad administration of justice. Luther's honest heart sympathized with this movement. He warned and rebuked the landed gentry and the princes. But when the wild waves of the Peasant War flooded his own spiritual fields, and bloody deeds of violence wounded his sensibilities; when he felt that the fanatics and demagogues were exerting upon the hordes of peasants an influence which threatened destruction to his doctrine; then, in the greatest anger, he threw himself into opposition to the uncouth mob. His call to the princes sounded out, wild and warlike; the most horrible thing had fallen upon him--the gospel of love had been disgraced by the wilful insolence of those who called themselves its followers. His policy here was again the right one; there was, unfortunately, no better power in Germany than that of the princes, and the future of the Fatherland depended upon them after all, for neither the serfs, the robber barons, nor the isolated free cities which stood like islands in the rising flood, gave any assurance. Luther was entirely right in the essential point, but the same obstinate, unyielding manner which previously had made his struggle against the hierarchy so popular, turned now against the people themselves. A cry of amazement and horror shot through the masses. He was a traitor! He who for eight years had been the favorite and hero of the people suddenly became most unpopular. His safety and his life were again threatened; even five years later it was dangerous for him, on account of the peasants, to travel to Mansfeld to visit his sick father. The indignation of the people also worked against his doctrine. The itinerant preachers and the new apostles treated him as a lost, corrupted man.

He was outlawed, banned, and cursed by the populace. Many well-meaning men, too, had not approved of his attack on celibacy and monastic life. The country gentry threatened to seize the outlaw on the highways because he had destroyed the nunneries into which, as into foundling asylums, the legitimate daughters of the poverty-stricken gentry used to be cast in earliest childhood. The Roman party was triumphant; the new heresy had lost what so far had made it powerful. Luther's life and his doctrine seemed alike near their end.

Then Luther determined to marry. For two years Catherine von Bora had lived in the house of Reichenbach, the city clerk, afterward mayor of Wittenberg. A healthy, good looking girl, she was, like many others, the abandoned daughter of a family of the country gentry of Meissen. Twice Luther had tried to find her a husband, as in fatherly care he had done for several of her companions. Finally Catherine declared that she would marry no one but Luther himself, or his friend Amsdorf. Luther was surprised, but he reached a decision quickly. Accompanied by Lucas Kranach, he asked for her hand and married her on the spot. Then he invited his friends to the wedding feast, asked at Court for the venison which the Prince was accustomed to present to his professors when they married, and received the table wine as a present from the city of Wittenberg. How things stood in Luther's soul at that time we should be glad to know. His whole being was under the highest tension. The savage vigor of his nature struck out in all directions. He was deeply shocked at the misery which arose about him from burned villages and murdered men. If he had been a fanatic in his ideas, he would probably have perished now in despair; but above the stormy restlessness which could be perceived in him up to his marriage, there shone now, like a clear light, the conviction that he was the guardian of divine right among the Germans, and that to protect civil order and morality, he must lead public opinion, not follow it. However violent his utterances are in particular cases, he appears just at this time preëminently conservative, and more self-possessed than ever. He also believed, it is true, that he was not destined to live much longer, and often and with longing awaited his martyrdom. He entered wedlock, perfectly at peace with himself on this point, for he had fully convinced himself of the necessity and the scriptural sanction of the married state. In recent years he had urged all his acquaintances to marry--finally even his old adversary, the Archbishop of Mainz. He himself gave two reasons for his decision. For many years he had deprived his father of his son; and it would be like an atonement if he should leave to old Hans a grandson in case of his own death. There was also some defiance in it. His adversaries were saying in triumph that Luther was humiliated, and since all the world now took offense at him, he proposed to give them still greater offense in his good cause. He was of vigorous nature, but there was no trace of coarse sensuality in him, and we may assume that the best reason, which he confessed to no friend, was, after all, the decisive one: Gossip had known for a long time more than he did, but now he also knew that Catherine was dear to him. "I am no passionate lover, but I am fond of her," he wrote to one of his closest friends.

And this marriage, performed in opposition to the judgment of his contemporaries, and amid the shouts of scorn of his adversaries, became the bond to which we Germans owe as much as to the years in which he, a priest of the ancient Church, bore arms in behalf of his theology. For henceforth the husband, the father, and the citizen, became the reformer also of the domestic life of his nation; and the very blessing of their earthly life which Protestants and Catholics share alike today is due to the marriage of an excommunicated monk with a runaway nun.

For twenty more busy years he was destined to work as an educator of his nation. During this time his greatest work, the translation of the Bible, was completed, and in this work, which he accomplished in coöperation with his Wittenberg friends, he acquired a complete control of the language of the people--a language whose wealth and power he first learned to realize through this work. We know the lofty spirit which he brought to this undertaking. His purpose was to create a book for the people, and for this he studied industriously turns of phrases, proverbs, and special terms which made up the people's current language. Even Humanists had written an awkward, involved German, with clumsy sentences in unfortunate imitation of the Latin style. Now the nation acquired for daily reading a work which, in simple words and short sentences, gave expression to the deepest wisdom and the best intellectual life of the time. Along with Luther's other works, the German Bible became the foundation of the modern German language, and this language, in which our whole literature and intellectual life has found expression, has become an indestructible possession which, in the gloomiest times, even corrupted and distorted, has reminded the various German strains that they have common interests. Every individual in our country still rises superior to the dialect of his native place, and the language of culture, poetry, and science which Luther created is still the tie which binds all German souls in unity.

And what he did for the social life of the Germans was no less; for by his precepts and his writings he consecrated family prayers, marriage and the training of children, the daily life of the community, education, manners, amusements, whatever touches the heart, and all social pleasures. He was everywhere active in setting up new ideals, in laying deeper foundations. There was no field of human duty upon which he did not force his Germans to reflect. Through his many sermons and minor writings he influenced large groups of people, and by his innumerable letters, in which he gave advice and consolation to those who asked for them, he influenced individuals. When he incessantly urged his contemporaries to examine for themselves whether a desire was justified or not, or what was the duty of a father toward his child, of the subject toward the authorities, of the councillor toward the people, the progress which was made through him was so important because here too he set free the conscience of the individual and put everywhere in the place of compulsion from without, against which selfishness had defiantly rebelled, a self-control in harmony with the spirit of the individual. How beautiful is his conception of the necessity of training children by schooling, especially in the ancient languages! How he recommends the introduction of his beloved music into the schools! How large is his vision when he advises the city-councils to establish public libraries! And again, how conscientiously he tried, in matters of betrothal and marriage, to protect the heart of the lovers against stern parental authority! To be sure, his horizon is always bounded by the letter of the Scriptures, but everywhere there sounds through his sermons, his advice, his censure, the beautiful keynote of his German nature, the necessity of liberty and discipline, of love and morality. He had overthrown the old sacrament of marriage, but gave a higher, nobler, freer form to the intimate relation of man and wife. He had fought the clumsy monastery schools; and everywhere in town and hamlet, wherever his influence was felt, there grew up better educational institutions for the young. He had done away with the mass and with Latin church music; he put in its place, for friends and foes alike, regular preaching and German chorals.

As time advanced, it became ever more apparent that it was a necessity for Luther to perceive God in every gracious, good and tender gift of this world. In this sense he was always pious and always wise--when he was out-of-doors, or among his friends, in innocent merriment, when he teased his wife, or held his children in his arms. Before a fruit-tree, which he saw hanging full of fruit, he rejoiced in its splendor, and said, "If Adam had not fallen, we should have admired all trees as we do this one." He took a large pear into his hands and marveled: "See! Half a year ago this pear was deeper under ground than it is long and broad, and lay at the very end of the roots. These smallest and least observed creations are the greatest miracles. God is in the humblest things of nature--a leaf or a blade of grass." Two birds made their nest in the Doctor's garden and flew up in the evening, often frightened by passers-by. He called to them, "Oh, you dear birds! Don't fly away. I am very willing to have you here, if you could only believe me. But just so we mortals have no faith in our God." He delighted in the companionship of whole-souled men; he drank his wine with satisfaction, while the conversation ran actively over great things and small. He judged with splendid humor enemies and good acquaintances alike, and told jolly stories; and when he got into discussion, passed his hand across his knee, which was a peculiarity of his; or he might sing, or play the lute, and start a chorus. Whatever gave innocent pleasure was welcome to him. His favorite art was music; he judged leniently of dancing, and, fifty years before Shakespeare, spoke approvingly of comedy, for he said, "It instructs us, like a mirror, how everybody should conduct himself."

When he sat thus with Melanchthon, Master Philip was the charitable scholar who sometimes put wise limitations upon the daring assertions of his lusty friend. If, at such times, the conversation turned upon rich people, and Frau Käthe could not help remarking longingly, "If my man had had a notion, he would have got very rich," Melanchthon would pronounce gravely, "That is impossible; for those who, like him, work for the general good cannot follow up their own advantage." But there was one subject upon which the two men loved to dispute. Melanchthon was a great admirer of astrology, but Luther looked upon this science with supreme contempt. On the other hand, Luther, through his method of interpreting the Scriptures--and alas! through secret political cares also--had arrived at the conviction that the end of the world was near. That again seemed to the learned Melanchthon very dubious. So if Melanchthon began to talk about the signs of the zodiac and aspects, and explained Luther's success by his having been born under the sign of the Sun, then Luther would exclaim, "I don't think much of your Sol. I am a peasant's son. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were thorough peasants." "Yes," replied Melanchthon, "even in a hamlet, you would have become a leader, a magistrate, or a foreman over other laborers." "But," cried Luther, victoriously, "I have become a bachelor of arts, a master, a monk. That was not foretold by the stars. And after that I got the Pope by the hair and he in turn got me. I have taken a nun to wife and got some children by her. Who saw that in the stars?" Melanchthon, continuing his astrological prophecies and turning to the fate of the Emperor Charles, declared that this prince was destined to die in 1584. Then Luther broke out vehemently--"The world will not last as long as that, for when we drive out the Turks the prophecy of Daniel will be fulfilled and completed; then the Day of Judgment is certainly at our doors."

How lovable he was as father in his family! When his children stood before the table and looked hard at the fruit and the peaches, he said, "If anybody wants to see the image of one who rejoiceth in hope, he has here the real model. Oh, that we might look forward so cheerfully to the Judgment Day! Adam and Eve must have had much better fruit! Ours are nothing but crab-apples in contrast. And I think the serpent was then a most beautiful creature, kindly and gracious; it still wears its crown, but after the curse it lost its feet and beautiful body." Once he looked at his three-year-old son who was playing and talking to himself and said, "This child is like a drunken man. He does not know that he is alive, yet lives on safely and merrily and hops and jumps. Such children love to be in spacious apartments where they have room," and he took the child in his arms. "You are our Lord's little fool, subject to His mercy and forgiveness of sins, not subject to the Law. You have no fear; you are safe, nothing troubles you; the way you do is the uncorrupted way. Parents always like their youngest children best; my little Martin is my dearest treasure. Such little ones need their parents' care and love the most; therefore the love of their parents always reaches down to them. How Abraham must have felt when he had in mind to sacrifice his youngest and dearest son! Probably he said nothing to Sarah about it. That must have been a bitter journey for him." His favorite daughter Magdalena lay at the point of death and he lamented, "I love her truly, but, dear God, if it be Thy will to take her away to Thee, I shall gladly know that she is with Thee. Magdalena, my little daughter, you would like to stay here with your father, and yet you would be willing to go to the other Father?" Then the child said, "Yes, dear father, as God wills." When she was dying he fell on his knees before the bed and wept bitterly, and prayed that God would redeem her; and so she fell asleep under her father's hands, and when the people came to help lay out the corpse and spoke to the Doctor according to custom, he said, "I am cheerful in my mind, but the flesh is weak. This parting is hard beyond measure. It is strange to know she is certainly in peace and that it is well with her, and yet to be so sorrowful all the time."

His Dominus, or Lord Käthe, as he liked to call his wife in letters to his friends, had soon developed into a capable manager. And she had no slight troubles: little children, her husband often in poor health, a number of boarders--teachers and poor students--her house always open, seldom lacking scholarly or noble guests, and, with all that, scanty means and a husband who preferred giving to receiving, and who once, in his zeal, when she was in bed with a young child, even seized the silver baptismal presents of the child in order to give alms. Luther, in 1527, for instance, could not afford even eight gulden for his former prior and friend Briesger. He writes to him sadly: "Three silver cups (wedding presents) are pawned for fifty gulden, the fourth is sold. The year has brought one hundred gulden of debts. Lucas Kranach will not go security for me any more, lest I ruin myself completely." Sometimes Luther refuses presents, even those which his prince offers him: but it seems that regard for his wife and children gave him in later years some sense of economy. When he died his estate amounted to some eight or nine thousand gulden, comprising, among other things, a little country place, a large garden, and two houses. This was surely in large part Frau Käthe's doing. By the way in which Luther treats her we see how happy his household was. When he made allusions to the ready tongue of women he had little right to do so, for he himself was not by any means a man who could be called reticent. When she showed her joy at being able to bring to table all kinds of fish from the little pond in her garden, the Doctor, for his part, was deeply pleased but did not fail to add a pleasant discourse on the happiness of contentment. Or when on one occasion she became impatient at the reading of the Psalter, and gave him to understand that she had heard enough about saints--that she read a good deal every day and could talk enough about them too--that God only desired her to act like them; then the Doctor, in reply to this sensible answer, sighed and said, "Thus begins discontent at God's word. There will be nothing but new books coming out, and the Scriptures will be again thrown into the corner." But the firm alliance of these two good people was for a long time not without its secret sorrow. We can only surmise the suffering of the wife's soul when, even as late as 1527, Luther in a dangerous illness took final farewell from her with the words: "You are my lawful wife, and as such you must surely consider yourself."

In the same spirit as with his dear ones, Luther consorted with the high powers of his faith. All the good characters from the Bible were true friends to him. His vivid imagination had confidently given them shape, and, with the simplicity of a child, he liked to picture to himself their conditions. When Veit Deitrich asked him what kind of person the Apostle Paul was, Luther answered quickly, "He was an insignificant, slim little fellow like Philip Melanchthon." The Virgin Mary was a graceful image to him. "She was a fine girl," he said admiringly; "she must have had a good voice." He liked to think of the Redeemer as a child with his parents, carrying the dinner to his father in the lumber yard, and to picture Mary, when he stayed too long away, as asking--"Darling, where have you been so long?" One should not think of the Saviour seated on the rainbow in glory, nor as the fulfiller of the law--this conception is too grand and terrible for man--but only as a poor sufferer who lives among sinners and dies for them.

Even his God was to him preëminently the head of a household and a father. He liked to reflect upon the economy of nature. He lost himself in wondering consideration of how much wood God was obliged to create. "Nobody can calculate what God needs to feed the sparrows and the useless birds alone. These cost him in one year more than the revenues of the king of France. And then think of the other things! God understands all trades. In his tailor shop he makes the stag a coat that lasts a hundred years. As a shoemaker he gives him shoes for his feet, and through the pleasant sun he is a cook. He might get rich if he would; he might stop the sun, inclose the air, and threaten the pope, emperor, bishops and the doctors with death if they did not pay him on the spot one hundred thousand gulden. But he does not do that, and we are thankless scoundrels." He reflected seriously about where the food comes from for so many people. Old Hans Luther had asserted that there were more people than sheaves of grain. The Doctor believed that more sheaves are grown than there are people, but still more people than stacks of grain. "But a stack of grain yields hardly a bushel, and a man cannot live a whole year on that." Even a dunghill invited him to deep reflection. "God has as much to clear away as to create. If He were not continually carrying things off, men would have filled the world with rubbish long ago." And if God often punishes those who fear Him worse than those who have no religion, he appears to Luther to be like a strict householder who punishes his son oftener than his good-for-nothing servant, but who secretly is laying up an inheritance for his son; while he finally dismisses the servant. And merrily he draws the conclusion, "If our Lord can pardon me for having annoyed Him for twenty years by reading masses, He can put it to my credit also that at times I have taken a good drink in His honor. The world may interpret it as it will."

He is also greatly surprised that God should be so angry with the Jews. "They have prayed anxiously for fifteen hundred years with seriousness and great zeal, as their prayer-books show, and He has not for the whole time noticed them with a word. If I could pray as they do I would give books worth two hundred florins for the gift. It must be a great unutterable wrath. O, good Lord, punish us with pestilence rather than with such silence!"

Like a child, Luther prayed every morning and evening, and frequently during the day, even while eating. Prayers which he knew by heart he repeated over and over with warm devotion, preferably the Lord's Prayer. Then he recited as an act of devotion the shorter Catechism; the Psalter he always carried with him as a prayer-book. When he was in passionate anxiety his prayer became a stormy wrestling with God, so powerful, great, and solemnly simple that it can hardly be compared with other human emotions. Then he was the son who lay despairingly at his father's feet, or the faithful servant who implores his prince; for his whole conviction was firmly fixed that God's decisions could be affected by begging and urging, and so the effusion of feeling alternated in his prayer with complaints, even with earnest reproaches. It has often been told how, in 1540, at Weimar, he brought Melanchthon, who was at the point of death, to life again. When Luther arrived, he found Master Philip in the death throes, unconscious, his eyes set. Luther was greatly startled and said, "God help us! How the Devil has wronged this _Organan_," then he turned his back to the company and went to the window as he was wont to do when he prayed. "Here," Luther himself later recounted, "Our Lord had to grant my petition, for I challenged Him and filled His ears with all the promises of prayer which I could remember from the Scriptures, so that He had to hear me if I was to put any trust in His promises." Then he took Melanchthon by the hand saying, "Be comforted, Philip, you will not die;" and Melanchthon, under the spell of his vigorous friend, began at once to breathe again, came back to consciousness, and recovered.

As God was the source of all good, so, for Luther, the Devil was the author of everything harmful and bad. The Devil interfered perniciously in the course of nature, in sickness and pestilence, failure of crops and famine. But since Luther had begun to teach, the greater part of the Enemy's activity had been transferred to the souls of men. In them he inspired impure thoughts as well as doubt, melancholy, and depression. Everything which the thoughtful Luther stated so definitely and cheerfully rested beforehand with terrible force upon his conscience. If he awoke in the night, the Devil stood by his bed full of malicious joy and whispered alarming things to him. Then his mind struggled for freedom, often for a long time in vain. And it is noteworthy how the son of the sixteenth century proceeded in such spiritual struggles. Sometimes it was a relief to him if he stuck out of bed the least dignified part of his body. This action, by which prince and peasant of the time used to express supreme contempt, sometimes helped when nothing else would. But his exuberant humor did not always deliver him. Every new investigation of the Scriptures, every important sermon on a new subject, caused him further pangs of conscience. On these occasions he sometimes got into such excitement that his soul was incapable of systematic thinking, and trembled in anxiety for days. When he was busy with the question of the monks and nuns, a text struck his attention which, as he thought in his excitement, proved him in the wrong. His heart "melted in his body; he was almost choked by the Devil." Then Bugenhagen visited him. Luther took him outside the door and showed him the threatening text, and Bugenhagen, apparently upset by his friend's excitement, began to doubt too, without suspecting the depth of the torment which Luther was enduring. This gave Luther a final and terrible fright. Again he passed an awful night. The next morning Bugenhagen came in again. "I am thoroughly angry," he said; "I have only just looked at the text carefully. The passage has a quite different meaning." "It is true," Luther related afterward, "it was a ridiculous argument--ridiculous, I mean, for a man in his senses, but not for him who is tempted."

Often he complained to his friends about the terrors of the struggles which the Devil caused him. "He has never since the creation been so fierce and angry as now at the end of the world. I feel him very plainly. He sleeps closer to me than my Käthe--that is, he gives me more trouble than she does pleasure." Luther never tired of censuring the pope as the Anti-Christ, and the papal system as the work of the Devil. But a closer scrutiny will recognize under this hatred of the Devil an indestructible piety, in which the loyal heart of the man was bound to the old Church. What became hallucinations to him were often only pious remembrances from his youth, which stood in startling contrast to the transformations which he had passed through as a man.

For no man is entirely transformed by the great thoughts and deeds of his manhood. We ourselves do not become new through new deeds. Our mental life is based upon the sum of all thoughts and feelings that we have ever had. Whoever is chosen by Fate to establish new greatness by destroying the greatness of the old, shatters in fragments at the same time a portion of his own life. He must break obligations in order to fulfil greater obligations. The more conscientious he is, the more deeply he feels in his own heart the wound he has inflicted upon the order of the world. That is the secret sorrow, the regret, of every great historical character. There are few mortals who have felt this sorrow so deeply as Luther. And what is great in him is the fact that such sorrow never kept him from the boldest action. To us this appears as a tragic touch in his spiritual life.

Another thing most momentous for him was the attitude which he had to take toward his own doctrine. He had left to his followers nothing but the authority of Scripture. He clung passionately to its words as to the last effective anchor for the human race. Before him the pope, with his hierarchy, had interpreted, misinterpreted, and added to the text of the Scriptures; now he was in the same situation. He, with a circle of dependent friends, had to claim for himself the privilege of understanding the words of the Scriptures correctly, and applying them rightly to the life of the times. This was a superhuman task, and the man who undertook it must necessarily be subject to some of the disadvantages which he himself had so grandly combatted in the Catholic Church. His mental makeup was firmly decided and unyielding: he was born to be a ruler if ever a mortal was; but this gigantic, daemonic character of his will inevitably made him sometimes a tyrant. Although he practised tolerance in many important matters, often as the result of self-restraint and often with a willing heart, this was only the fortunate result of his kindly disposition, which was effective also here. Not infrequently, however, he became the pope of the Protestants. For him and his people there was no choice. He has been reproached in modern times for doing so little to bring the laity into coöperation by means of a presbyterial organization. Never was a reproach more unjust. What was possible in Switzerland, with congregations of sturdy free peasants, was utterly impracticable at that time in Germany. Only the dwellers in the larger cities had among them enough intelligence and power to criticise the Protestant clergy; almost nine-tenths of the Protestants in Germany were oppressed peasants, the majority of whom were indifferent and stubborn, corrupt in morals, and, after the Peasant War, savage in manners. The new church was obliged to force its discipline upon them as upon neglected children. Whoever doubts this should look at the reports of visitations, and notice the continued complaints of the reformers about the rudeness of their poverty-stricken congregations. But the great man was subject to still further hindrances. The ruler of the souls of the German people lived in a little town, among poor university professors and students, in a feeble community of which he often had occasion to complain. He was spared none of the evils of petty surroundings, of unpleasant disputes with narrow-minded scholars or uncultured neighbors. There was much in his nature which made him especially sensitive to such things. No man bears in his heart with impunity the feeling of being the privileged instrument of God. Whoever lives in that feeling is too great for the narrow and petty structure of middle-class society. If Luther had not been modest to the depths of his heart, and of infinite kindness in his intercourse with others, he would inevitably have appeared perfectly unendurable to the matter-of-fact and common-sense people who stood indifferent by his side. As it was, however, he came only on rare occasions into serious conflict with his fellow-citizens, the town administration, the law faculty of his university, or the councillors of his sovereign. He was not always right, but he almost always carried his point against them, for seldom did any one dare to defy the violence of his anger. With all this he was subject to severe physical ailments, the frequent return of which in the last years of his life exhausted even his tremendous vigor. He felt this with great sorrow, and incessantly prayed to his God that He might take him to Himself. He was not yet an old man in years, but he seemed so to himself--very old and out of place in a strange and worldly universe. These years, which did not abound in great events, but were made burdensome by political and local quarrels, and filled with hours of bitterness and sorrow, will inspire sympathy, we trust, in every one who studies the life of this great man impartially. The ardor of his life had warmed his whole people, had called forth in millions the beginnings of a higher human development; the blessing remained for the millions, while he himself felt at last little but the sorrow. Once he joyfully had hoped to die as a martyr; now he wished for the peace of the grave, like a trusty, aged, worn-out laborer--another case of a tragic human fate.

But the greatest sorrow that he felt lay in the relation of his doctrine to the life of his nation. He had founded a new church on his pure gospel, and had given to the spirit and the conscience of the people an incomparably greater meaning. All about him flourished a new life and greater prosperity, and many valuable arts--painting and music--the enjoyment of comfort, and a finer social culture. Still there was something in the air of Germany which threatened ruin: princes and governments were fiercely at odds, foreign powers were threatening invasions--the Emperor of Spain, the Pope from Rome, the Turks from the Mediterranean; fanatics and demagogues were influential, and the hierarchy was not yet fallen. As to his new gospel, had it welded the nation into greater unity and power? The discontent had only been increased. The future of his church was to depend on the worldly interests of a few princes; and he knew the best among them! Something terrible was coming; the Scriptures were to be fulfilled; the Day of Judgment was at hand. But after this God would build up a new universe more beautiful, grander, and purer, full of peace and happiness, a world in which no devil would exist, in which every human soul would feel more joy over the flowers and fruit of the new trees of heaven than the present generation over gold and silver; where music, the most beautiful of all arts, should ring in tones much more delightful than the most splendid song of the best singers in this world. There a good man would find again all the dear ones whom he had loved and lost in this world.

The longing of the creature for the ideal type of existence grew stronger and stronger in him. If he expected the end of the world, it was due to dim remembrances from the far-distant past of the German people, which still hovered over the soul of the new reformer. Yet it was likewise a prophetic foreboding of the near future. It was not the end of the world that was in preparation, but the Thirty Years' War.

Thus he died. When the hearse with his corpse passed through the Thuringian country, all the bells in city and hamlet tolled, and the people crowded sobbing about his bier. A large portion of the German national strength went into the coffin with this one man. And Philip Melanchthon spoke in the castle church at Wittenberg over his body: "Any one who knew him well, must bear witness to this--that he was a very kind man, gracious, friendly, and affectionate in all conversation, and by no means insolent, stormy, obstinate, or quarrelsome. And yet with this went a seriousness and courage in words and actions, such as there should be in such a man. His heart was loyal and without guile. The severity which he used in his writings against the enemies of the Gospel came not from a quarrelsome and malicious spirit but from great seriousness and zeal for the truth. He showed very great courage and manhood, and was not easily disturbed. He was not intimidated by threats, danger, or alarms. He was also of such a high, clear intelligence that when affairs were confused, obscure, and difficult he was often the only one who could see at once what was advisable and feasible. He was not, as perhaps some thought, too unobservant to notice the condition of the government everywhere. He knew right well how we are governed, and noted especially the spirit and the intentions of those with whom he had to do. We, however, must keep a faithful, everlasting memory of this dear father of ours, and never let him go out of our hearts." Such was Luther--an almost superhuman nature; his mind ponderous and sharply limited, his will powerful and temperate, his morals pure, his heart full of love. Because no other man appeared after him strong enough to become the leader of the nation, the German people lost for centuries their leadership of the earth. The leadership of the Germans in the realm of intellect, however, is founded on Luther.

[Footnote 2: "_Cito remitte matri filiolum_!" ("Send the little boy right home to his mother.")]

* * * * *

FREDERICK THE GREAT

By GUSTAV FREYTAG

TRANSLATED BY E.H. BABBITT, A.B.

Assistant Professor of German, Tufts College

What was it that, after the Thirty Years' War drew the attention of the politicians of Europe to the little State on the northeastern frontier of Germany which was struggling upward in spite of the Swedes and the Poles, the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons? The inheritance of the Hohenzollern was no richly endowed land in which the farmer dwelt in comfort on well-tilled acres, to which wealthy merchant princes brought, in deeply-laden galleons, the silks of Italy and the spices and ingots of the New World. It was a poor, desolate, sandy country of burned cities and ruined villages. The fields were untilled, and many square miles, stripped of men and cattle, were given over to the caprices of wild nature. When, in 1640, Frederick William succeeded to the Electorate, he found nothing but contested claims to scattered territories of some thirty thousand square miles. In all the fortified places of his home land were lodged insolent conquerors. In an insecure desert this shrewd and tricky prince established his state, with a craft and disregard of his neighbors' rights which, even in that unscrupulous age, aroused criticism, but at the same time, with a heroism and greatness of mind which more than once showed higher conceptions of German honor than were held by the Emperor himself or any other prince of the realm. Nevertheless, when, in 1688, this adroit statesman died, he left behind him only an unimportant State, in no way to be reckoned among the powers of Europe. For while his sovereignty extended over about forty-four thousand square miles, these contained only one million three hundred thousand inhabitants; and when Frederick II., a hundred years after his great-grandfather, succeeded to the crown, he inherited only two million two hundred and forty thousand subjects, not so many as the single province of Silesia contains today. What was it then that, immediately after the battles of the Thirty Years' War, aroused the jealousy of all the governments, and especially of the Imperial house, and which since then has made such warm friends and such bitter enemies for the Brandenburg government? For two centuries neither Germans nor foreigners ceased to set their hopes on this new State, and for an equally long time neither Germans nor foreigners ceased to call it--at first with ridicule, and then with spite--"an artificial structure which cannot endure heavy storms, which has intruded without justification among the powers of Europe." How did it come about that impartial judges finally, soon after the death of Frederick the Great, declared that it was time to cease prophesying the destruction of this widely hated power? For after every defeat, they said, it had risen more vigorously, and had repaired all the damages and losses of war more quickly than was possible elsewhere; its prosperity and intelligence also were increasing more rapidly than in any other part of Germany.

It was indeed a very individual and new shade of German character which appeared in the Hohenzollern princes and their people on the territory conquered from the Slavs, and forced recognition with sharp challenge. It seemed that the characters there embraced greater contrasts; for the virtues and faults of the rulers, the greatness and the weakness of their policies, stood forth in sharp contradiction, every limitation appeared more striking, every discord more violent, and every achievement more astonishing. This State could apparently produce everything that was strange and unusual, but could not endure one thing--peaceful mediocrity, which elsewhere may be so comfortable and useful.

With this the situation of the country had much to do. It was a border land, making head at once against the Swedes, the Slavs, the French, and the Dutch. There was hardly a question of European diplomacy which did not affect the weal and woe of this State; hardly an entanglement which did not give an active prince the opportunity to validate his claim. The decadent power of Sweden and the gradual dissolution of Poland opened up extensive prospects; the superiority of France and the distrustful friendship of Holland urged armed caution. From the very first year, in which Elector Frederick William had been obliged to take possession of his own fortresses by force and cunning, it was evident that there on the outskirts of German territory a vigorous, cautious, warlike government was indispensable for the safety of Germany. And after the beginning of the French War in 1674, Europe recognized that the crafty policy which proceeded from this obscure corner was undertaking also the astonishing task of heroically defending the western boundary of Germany against the superior forces of the King of France.

There was perhaps also something remarkable in the racial character of the Brandenburg people, in which princes and subjects shared alike. Down to Frederick's time, the Prussian districts had given to Germany relatively few scholars, writers, and artists. Even the passionate zeal of the Reformation seemed to be subdued there. The people who inhabited the border land, mostly of the Lower Saxon strain, with a slight tinge of Slavic blood, were a tough, sturdy race, not specially graceful in social manners, but with unusual keenness of understanding and clearness of judgment. Those who lived in the capital had been glib of tongue and ready to scoff from time immemorial: all were capable of great exertions; industrious, persistent, and of enduring strength.

But the character of the princes was a more potent factor than the location of their country or the race-character of their people; for the way in which the Hohenzollerns molded their state was different from that of any other princes since the days of Charlemagne. Many a princely family can show a number of rulers who have successfully built up their state--the Bourbons, for instance, united a wide expanse of territory into one great political body;--or who have been brave warriors through several generations,--there never were any braver than the Vasas or the Protestant Wittelsbachs in Sweden. But none have been the educators of their people as were the early Hohenzollerns, who as great landed proprietors in a devastated country drew new men into their service and guided their education; who for almost a hundred and fifty years, as strict managers, worked, schemed, and endured, took risks, and even did injustice--all that they might build up for their state a people like themselves--hard, economical, clever, bold, with the highest civic ambitions.

In this sense we are justified in admiring the providential character of the Prussian State. Of the four princes who ruled it from the Thirty Years' War to the day when the "hoary-headed abbot in the monastery of Sans Souci" closed his weary eyes, each one, with his virtues and vices, was the natural complement of his predecessor--Elector Frederick William, the greatest statesman produced by the school of the Thirty Years' War, the splendor-loving King Frederick I., the parsimonious despot Frederick William I., and finally, in the eighteenth century, he in whom were united the talents and great qualities of almost all his ancestors--the flower of the family.

Life in the royal palace at Berlin was cheerless in Frederick's childhood; poorer in love and sunshine than in most citizens' households at that rude time. It may be doubted whether the king his father, or the queen, was more to blame for the disorganization of the family life--in either case through natural defects which grew more pronounced in the constant friction of the household. The king, an odd tyrant with a soft heart but a violent temper, tried to compel love and confidence with a cudgel; he possessed keen insight into human nature, but was so ignorant that he always ran the risk of becoming the victim of a scoundrel. Dimly aware of his weakness, he had grown suspicious and was subject to sudden fits of violence. The queen, in contrast, was a rather insignificant woman, colder at heart, but with a strong sense of her princely dignity; with a tendency to intrigue, without prudence or discretion. Both had the best of intentions, and took honest pains to bring up their children to a capable and worthy maturity; but both unintelligently interfered with the sound development of the childish souls. The mother was so tactless as to make the children, even at a tender age, the confidants of her annoyances and intrigues. The undignified parsimony of the king, the blows which he distributed so freely in his rooms, and the monotonous daily routine which he forced upon her, were the subject of no end of complaining, sulking, and ridicule in her apartments. Crown Prince Frederick grew up, the playmate of his elder sister, into a gentle child with sparkling eyes and beautiful light hair. He was taught with exactness what the king desired,--and that was little enough: French, a certain amount of history, and the necessary accomplishments of a soldier. Against the will of his father (the great King had never surmounted the difficulties of the genitive and dative) he acquired some knowledge of the Latin declensions. To the boy, who was easily led and in the king's presence looked shy and defiant, the women imparted his first interest in French literature. He himself later gave his sister the credit for it, but his governess too was an accomplished French woman. That the foreign atmosphere was hateful to the king certainly contributed to make the son fond of it; for almost systematically praise was bestowed in the queen's apartments upon everything that was displeasing to the stern mind of the master. When in the family circle the king made one of his clumsy, pious speeches, Princess Wilhelmina and young Frederick would look at each other significantly, until the mischievous face of one or the other aroused childish laughter, and brought the king's wrath to the point of explosion. For this reason, the son, even in his earliest years, became a source of vexation to his father, who called him an effeminate, untidy fellow with an unmanly pleasure in clothes and trifles.

But from the report of his sister, for whose unsparing judgment censure was easier than praise, it is evident that the amiability of the talented boy had its effect upon those about him: as when, for instance, he secretly read a French story with his sister, and recast the whole Berlin Court into the comic characters of the novel; when they made forbidden music with flute and lute; when he went in disguise to her and they recited the parts of a French comedy to each other. But in order to enjoy even these harmless pleasures the prince was constantly forced into falsehood, deception, and disguise. He was proud, high-minded, magnanimous, with an uncompromising love of truth. The fact that deception was utterly repulsive to him, that even where it was advisable he was unwilling to stoop to it, and that, if he ever undertook it, he dissimulated unskilfully, threw a constantly increasing strain upon his relations with his father. The king's distrust grew, and the son's offended sense of personal dignity found expression in the form of stubbornness.

So he grew up surrounded by coarse spies who reported every word to the king. With a mind of the richest endowments, of the most discerning eagerness for knowledge, but without any suitable male society, it is no wonder that the young man went astray. In comparison with other German courts, the Prussian might be regarded as very virtuous: but frivolity toward women and a lack of reserve in the discussion of the most dubious relations were pronounced even there. After a visit to the dissolute court of Dresden, Prince Frederick began to behave like other princes of his time, and generally found good comrades among his father's younger officers. We know little about him at that period, but may conclude that he ran some risk, not of becoming depraved, but of wasting valuable years in a spendthrift life among unworthy companions. It certainly was not alone the increasing dissatisfaction of his father which at that time destroyed his peace of mind and tossed him about aimlessly, but quite as much that inner discontent, which leads an unformed youth the more wildly astray the greater the secret demands are which his mind makes on life.

He determined to flee to England. How the flight failed, how the anger of the military commander, Frederick William, flamed up against the deserting officer, every one knows. With the days of his imprisonment in Küstrin and his stay in Ruppin, his years of serious education began. The terrible experiences he had been through had aroused new strength in him. He had endured, with princely pride, all the terrors of death and of the most terrible humiliation. He had reflected in the solitude of his prison on the greatest riddle of life--on death and what is beyond. He had realized that there was nothing left for him but submission, patience, and quiet waiting. But bitter, heart-rending misfortune is a school which develops not only the good--it fosters also many faults. He learned to keep his counsel hidden in the depth of his soul, and to look upon men with suspicion, using them as his instruments, deceiving and flattering them with prudent serenity in which his heart had no share. He was obliged to flatter the cowardly and vulgar Grumbkow, and to be glad when he finally had won him over to his side. For years he had to take the utmost pains, over and over again, to conquer the displeasure and lack of confidence of his stern father. His nature always revolted against such humiliation, and he tried by bitter mockery to give expression to his injured self-esteem. His heart, which warmed toward everything noble, prevented him from becoming a hardened egoist; but he did not grow any the milder or more conciliatory, and long after he had become a great man and wise ruler, there remained in him from this time of servitude some trace of petty cunning. The lion sometimes, in a spirit of undignified vengeance, did not scorn to scratch like a cat.

Still, in those years, he learned something useful too--the strict spirit of economy with which his father's narrow but able mind cared for the welfare of his country and his household. When, to please the king, he had to draw up leases, and took pains to increase the yield of a domain by a few hundred thalers; or even entered unduly into the hobbies of the king and proposed to him to kidnap a tall shepherd of Mecklenburg as a recruit--these doings were at first, to be sure, only a tedious means of propitiating the king, for he asked Grumbkow to procure for him a man to make out the lists in his stead; the officers in public and private service informed him where a surplus was to be made, here and there, and he continued to ridicule the giant soldiers whenever he could with impunity. Gradually, however, the new world into which he had been transplanted, and the practical interests of the people and of the State, became attractive to him. It was easy to see that even his father's turn for economy was often tyrannical and whimsical. The king was always convinced that he wished nothing but the best for his country, and therefore took the liberty to interfere, in the most arbitrary manner, even in the details of the property and business of private persons. He ordered, for instance, that no he-goat should run with the ewes; that all colored sheep, gray, black, or piebald, should be completely disposed of within three years, and only fine white wool be tolerated; he prescribed exactly how the copper standard measures of the Berlin bushel, which he had sent all over the country (at the expense of his subjects) should be preserved and kept locked up so as to get no dents. In order to foster the linen and woolen industry, he decreed that his subjects should wear none of the fashionable chintz and calico, and threatened with a hundred thalers' fine and three days in the pillory everybody who, after eight months, permitted a shred of calico in his house in dress, gown, cap, or furniture coverings. This method of ruling certainly seemed severe and petty; but the son learned to honor nevertheless the prudent mind and good intentions which were recognizable underneath such edicts, and himself gradually acquired a wealth of detailed knowledge such as is not usually at the disposal of a prince--real estate values, market prices, and the needs of the people; the usages, rights, and duties of humble life. He even absorbed something of the pride with which the King boasted of his business knowledge; and when he himself had become the all-powerful administrator of his State, the unbounded advantage which was due to his knowledge of the people and of trade became manifest. Only in this way was the wise economy made possible with which he managed his own household and the State finances, as well as the unceasing care for detail by which he developed agriculture, trade, prosperity, and culture among his people. He could examine equally well the daily accounts of his cooks and the estimates of the income from the domains, forests, and taxes. For his ability to judge with precision the smallest things as well as the greatest, his people were in great part indebted to the years during which he had sat unwillingly as assessor at the green table at Ruppin. Sometimes, however, there befell him also what in his father's time had been vexatious--that his knowledge of business details was, after all, not extensive enough, and that he, like his father, gave orders which arbitrarily interfered with the life of his Prussians, and could not be carried out.

Scarcely had Frederick partially recovered from the blows of the great catastrophe of his youth, when a new misfortune fell upon him, just as terrible as the first, and in its consequences still more momentous for his life. He was forced by the King to marry. Heartrending is the sorrow with which he struggles to free himself from the bride chosen for him. "She may be as frivolous as she pleases if only she is not a simpleton! That I cannot bear." It was all in vain. He looked upon this alliance with bitterness and anger almost to the very day of his wedding, and never outgrew the bitter belief that his father had thus destroyed his emotional life. His sensitive feelings, his affectionate heart, were bartered away in the most reckless manner. Nor by this act was he alone made unhappy, but also a good woman who was worthy of a better fate. Princess Elizabeth of Bevern had many noble qualities of heart; she was not a simpleton, she did not lack beauty, and could pass muster before the fierce criticism of the princesses of the royal house. But we fear that, if she had been an angel from heaven, the pride of the Prince would have protested against her, for he was offended to the depths of his nature by the needless barbarity of a compulsory marriage. And yet the relation was not always so cold as has sometimes been assumed. For six years the kindness of heart and tact of the Princess succeeded time after time in reconciling the crown prince to her. In the retirement of Rheinsberg she was really his helpmeet and an amiable hostess for his guests, and it was reported by the Austrian agents to the Court of Vienna that her influence was increasing. But her modest, clinging nature had too little of the qualities which can permanently hold an intellectual man. The wide-awake members of the Brandenburg line felt the need of giving quick and pointed expression to every easily aroused feeling. When the Princess was excited, she grew quiet as if paralyzed; she also lacked the easy graces of society. The two natures did not agree. Then, too, her manner of showing affection toward her husband, always dutiful, and subordinating herself as if under a spell and overwhelmed by his great mind, was not very interesting for the Prince, who had acquired, with the French intellectual culture, no little of the frivolity of French society.

When Frederick became King, the Princess soon lost even the slight part which she had won in her husband's affections. His long absence in the first Silesian War gave the finishing stroke to their estrangement. The relations of husband and wife became more and more distant. Years passed when they did not see each other, and icy brevity and coolness can be perceived in his letters to her. Still the fact that the King was obliged to esteem her character so highly maintained her in her outward position. Later, his relations with women influenced his emotions very slightly. Even his sister at Bayreuth, sickly, nervous, embittered by jealousy of an unfaithful husband, was estranged from her brother for years; and not until she had given up all hope of life did this proud member of the House of Brandenburg, aging and unhappy, seek again the heart of the brother whose little hand she had once held as they stood before their stern father. His mother also, to whom King Frederick always showed excellent filial devotion, was not able to occupy a large place in his heart. His other brothers and sisters were younger, and were only too much disposed to hatch obscure domestic conspiracies against him. If the King ever condescended to show any attentions to a lady of the court or of the stage, these were in general as disturbing as they were flattering for the persons in question. When he found intelligence, grace, and womanly dignity united, as in Frau von Camas, who was the Queen's first lady-in-waiting, he expressed the amiability of his nature in many cordial attentions. But on the whole, women did not add much light or splendor to his life, and the cordial intimacy of family life hardly ever warmed his heart. In this direction his feelings were dried up. This was perhaps fortunate for his people, it was undoubtedly fatal to his private life. The full warmth of his human feelings was reserved almost exclusively for his little circle of intimates, with whom he laughed, wrote poetry, discussed philosophy, made plans for the future, and later discussed his military operations and dangers.

His married life in Rheinsberg opens the best period of his younger years. He succeeded in bringing together there a number of well educated, cheerful companions. The little circle led a poetic life of which those who shared in it have left a pleasing picture. Frederick began to work seriously on his education. The expression of emotion easily took for him the form of conventional French versification. He worked incessantly to acquire the refinements of the foreign style. But his mind was also busy with more serious matters. He eagerly sought answers to all the highest questions of humanity in the works of the Encyclopedists and of Christian Wolff. He sat bent over maps and battle-plans, and, along with parts for the amateur theatre and architects' sketches, other projects were in preparation, which, a few years later, were to arouse the attention of the world.

Then the day came when his dying father laid down the reins of government and told the officer of the day to take his orders from the new commander-in-chief of Prussia. How the Prince was judged by his political contemporaries we see from the characterization which an Austrian agent had given of him a short time before: "He is graceful, wears his own hair, and has a somewhat careless bearing; likes the fine arts and good cooking. He would like to begin his rule by something striking. He is a firmer friend of the army than his father. His religion is that of a gentleman: he believes in God and the forgiveness of sins. He likes splendor and things on a large scale. He will reëstablish all the court positions and bring the nobles to his court." This prophecy was not fully justified. We seek to understand other sides of his nature at this time. The new King was a man of fiery, enthusiastic temperament, he was quickly aroused, and the tears came readily to his eyes. Like his contemporaries, he too was passionately eager to admire grandeur and to give himself up to tender feelings in a poetical mood. He played adagios softly on his flute. Like his worthy contemporaries, he did not easily find, in prose or poetry, the full expression of his feelings; pathetic oratory stirred him to tearful emotion. In spite of all his French aphorisms, the essence of his nature was very German in this respect also.

Those who ascribe to him a cold heart have judged him unfairly. It is not cold hearts in princes which give the most offense by their harshness. Such hearts are almost always gifted with the art of satisfying those about them by uniform graciousness and tactful expression. The strongest utterances of contempt are generally found close beside the pleasing tones of a caressing tenderness. But in Frederick, it seems to us, there was a striking and unusual union of two totally opposite tendencies of the emotional nature, which elsewhere are engaged in an unending struggle. He had in equal degree the need to idealize life for himself, and the impulse to destroy ideal moods without mercy in himself and in others. This first peculiarity of his was perhaps the most beautiful, perhaps the saddest, with which a human being was ever equipped in the struggles of earth. His was indeed a poetic nature. He possessed to a high degree that peculiar power which endeavors to reconstruct vulgar reality according to the ideal needs of its own nature, and covers everything near with the grace and light of a new life. It was a necessity for him to make over with the grace of his imagination the image of those dear to him, and to adorn the relation to them into which he had voluntarily entered. In this there was always a certain kind of posing. Even where he had the most ardent feelings, he was more in love with the glorified picture of the individual in his mind than with the real personality. It was in such a mood that he kissed Voltaire's hand. As soon as the difference between the ideal and the real person became unpleasantly perceptible, he let go the person and clung to the image. One to whom nature has given this temperament, letting him see love and friendship chiefly through the colored glass of a poetical mood, will always, according to the judgment of others, show caprice in the choice of his friends. The uniform warmth which treats with consideration all alike seems to be denied to such natures. To any one to whom the King had become a friend in his own fashion, he always showed the greatest attention and assiduity, however much his moods changed at particular moments. He could become as sentimental in his sorrow over the loss of such a friend as any German of the Werther period. He had lived for many years on somewhat distant terms with his sister in Bayreuth, and not until the last years before her death, amid the terrors of a burdensome war, did her image rise vividly again before him as that of an affectionate sister. After her death he found a gloomy satisfaction in picturing to himself and others the cordiality of his relations with her. He erected a little temple to her and often made pilgrimages to it. Toward any one who did not approach his heart through the medium of a poetic mood, or incite him to poetic expression of his affection, or who touched a wrong note anywhere in his sensitive nature, he was cold, contemptuous, and indifferent--a king who only asked to what extent the other person could be useful to him; he even pushed him aside when he could no longer use him. Such a character may perhaps surround the life of a young man with poetic lustre and give brightness and charm even to common things, but unless it is coupled with a high degree of morality, a sense of duty, and a mind set upon higher things, it will leave him sad and lonely in later years. In the most favorable cases it will make bitter enemies as well as very warm admirers. A somewhat similar disposition brought to Goethe's noble soul heavy sorrows, transitory relations, many disappointments, and a solitary old age. It becomes doubly momentous for a king, before whom others rarely stand with assurance and on equal terms; for his most sincere friends may yet turn into admiring flatterers, unstable in their bearing, now constrained under the moral spell of his majesty, now, under the conviction of their own rights, fault-finding and discontented.

This need of ideal relations and longing for people to whom he could unbosom himself without reserve, worked at cross purposes with Frederick's penetrating discrimination, and his uncompromising love of truth, which was a deadly enemy of all deception, impatiently resisted every illusion, despised shams, and sought for the essence of things. This scrutinizing view of life and its duties might well offer him protection against those deceptions which oftener annoy an imaginative prince, who gives his confidence, than a private individual. His acuteness, however, showed itself also in savage moods as unsparingly, sarcastically, and maliciously destructive. Where did he get this disposition? Was it Brandenburg blood? Was it an inheritance from his great-grandmother, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and his grandmother, Queen Sophia Charlotte, those intellectual women with whom Leibniz had discussed the eternal harmony of the universe? The harsh school of his youth certainly had had something to do with it. His insight into the foibles of others was keen. Wherever he saw a weak point, wherever any one's manners annoyed or provoked him, his ready tongue was busy. His gibes fell unsparingly upon friend and foe alike; and even where silence and patience were demanded by every consideration of prudence, he could not control himself. At such times his soul seemed to suffer some strange transformation. With merciless exaggeration he distorted the picture of his victim into a caricature. On closer examination the principal motive here also appears to be pleasure in intellectual production. He frees himself from an unpleasant impression by improvising against his victim. He makes a grotesque picture with inner satisfaction and is astonished if the victim, deeply offended, in turn takes up arms against him. His resemblance to Luther in this respect is very striking. Neither the king nor the reformer cared whether his behavior was dignified or seemly, for both of them, excited like men on the hunting field, entirely forgot the consequences in the joy of the fight. Both did themselves and their great causes serious injury in this way, and were honestly surprised when they discovered the fact. To be sure, the blows with the cudgel or the whip which the great monk of the sixteenth century dealt were far more terrible than the pin-pricks of the great prince in the age of enlightenment. But when a king teases and mocks and sometimes pinches maliciously, it is harder to forgive him for his undignified behavior; for he frequently engages in an unequal contest with his victims. The great prince treated all his political opponents in this way, and aroused deadly enemies against himself. He joked at the table, and put in circulation stinging verses and pamphlets about Madame de Pompadour in France and the Empresses Elizabeth and Maria Theresa. Similarly, he sometimes caressed, sometimes scolded and scratched his poetical ideal, Voltaire; but he also proceeded in this way with people whom he really esteemed highly, in whom he put the greatest confidence, and whom he took into the circle of his intimate friends. He brought the Marquis d'Argens to his court, made him chamberlain, member of the Academy, and one of his nearest and dearest friends. The letters which he wrote to him from the camps of the Seven Years' War are among the most beautiful and touching records that the King has left us. When Frederick came home from the war it was his fond hope that the marquis would live with him in his palace at Sans Souci. And a few years later this charming relation was broken up in the most painful manner. How was that possible! The marquis was perhaps the best Frenchman that the King had brought into his circle, a man of honor, with fine feelings, fine education, and really devoted to the King; but he was neither a great character nor an especially strong man. For years the King had admired in him a scholar--which he was not--a wise, clear-sighted, assured philosopher with pleasing wit and fresh humor; he had in short set up an extremely pleasing, fanciful image of him. Now, in daily intercourse, Frederick found himself mistaken. A lack of robustness on the part of the Frenchman, causing him to dwell with hypochondriac exaggeration on his poor health, annoyed the King, who began to realize that the aging marquis was neither a great genius nor an intellectual giant. The ideal which he had formed of him was destroyed. Now the King began to make fun of him on account of his weaknesses. The sensitive Frenchman thereupon asked for leave of absence, that a sojourn of a few months in France might restore his health. The King was offended by this ill-humored attitude, and continued his raillery in friendly letters which he sent him. He said that it was rumored that a werewolf had appeared in France. This was undoubtedly the marquis, in the disguise of a Prussian and a sick man, and he asked if he had begun to eat little children. He had not formerly had that bad habit, but people change a good deal in traveling. The marquis, instead of a few months, stayed two winters. When he was about to return, he sent certificates from his physicians. Probably the worthy man had really been ill, but the King was deeply offended by this awkward attempt at justification on the part of an old friend, and when the latter returned, the old intimacy was gone forever. The King would not let him go, but he took pleasure in punishing the renegade by stinging speeches and harsh jokes. Finally the Frenchman, deeply hurt, asked for his dismissal. His request was granted, and the sorrow and anger of the King is seen from the wording of the order. When the marquis, in the last letter which he wrote the King before his death, represented to him again, and not without bitterness, how scornfully and badly he had treated an unselfish admirer, Frederick read the letter without a word. But he wrote with grief to the dead man's widow telling her of his friendship for her husband, and had a costly monument erected for him in a foreign land. The great prince fared similarly with most of his intimates. Magic as was his power to attract, he had demoniac faculties for repelling. But if any one is disposed to blame the man for this, let him be told that hardly another king in history has so unsparingly disclosed his most intimate soul-life to his friends as Frederick.

Frederick had worn the crown only a few months when the Emperor Charles VI. died. Now everything urged the young King to risk a master-stroke. That he determined upon such a step was in itself, in spite of the momentary weakness of Austria, a token of bold courage. The countries which he ruled had perhaps a seventh as many inhabitants as the broad lands of Maria Theresa. True, his army was for the time being far superior to the Austrian in numbers and discipline, and according to the ideas of the time, the mass of the people was not then in the same way as today available for recruiting purposes. Nor did he fully realize the greatness of Maria Theresa. But even in the preparations for the invasion the King showed that he had long hoped to measure himself against Austria. In an exalted mood he entered upon a struggle which was to be decisive for his own life and that of his State. He cared little at heart for the right which he might have to the Silesian duchies, and which with his pen he tried to prove before Europe. For this the policy of the despotic States of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had no regard whatever. Any one who could find a plausible defense of his cause made use of it, but in case of need the most improbable argument, the most shallow pretext, was sufficient. In this way Louis XIV. had made war; in this way the Emperor had followed up his interests against the Turks, Italians, Germans, French, and Spaniards; in this way a great part of the successes of the great Elector had been frustrated by others. Just where the rights of the Hohenzollerns were the plainest, as in Pomerania, they had been most ruthlessly curtailed, and by no one more than by the Emperor and the Hapsburgs. Now the Hohenzollerns sought their revenge. "Be my Cicero and prove the right of my cause, and I will be your Cæsar and carry it through," Frederick wrote to Jordan after the invasion of Silesia. Gaily, with light step as if going to a dance, the King entered upon the fields of his victories. There was still cheerful enjoyment of life, sweet coquetry with verse, and intellectual conversation with his intimates on the pleasures of the day, on God, nature, and immortality, which he considered the spice of life. But the great task upon which he had entered began to have its effect upon his soul even in the early weeks, even before he had passed through the fiery ordeal of the first great battle. And from that time on it hammered and forged upon his soul until it turned his hair gray and hardened his fiery heart into ringing steel. With that wonderful clearness which was peculiar to him, he watched the beginning of these changes. He even then viewed his own life as from without. "You will find me more philosophical than you think," he writes to his friend. "I have always been so--sometimes more, sometimes less. My youth, the fire of passion, the longing for glory, and, to tell you the whole truth, curiosity, and finally, a secret instinct, have forced me out of the sweet peace which I enjoyed, and the wish to see my name in the gazettes and in history has led me into new paths. Come here to me. Philosophy will maintain her rights, and I assure you that if I had not this cursed love of fame, I should think only of peaceful comfort."

When the faithful Jordan actually came to him and the King saw the man of peaceful enjoyment timid and uncomfortable in the field, he suddenly realized that he himself had become another and a stronger man. The guest who had been honored by him so long as the more scholarly, and who had corrected his verses, criticized his letters, and been far ahead of him in the knowledge of Greek philosophy, now, in spite of all his philosophical training, gave the King the impression of a man without courage. With bitter derision Frederick attacked him in one of his best improvisations, contrasting the warrior in himself with the weak philosopher. In however bad taste the ridiculing verses were with which he overwhelmed Jordan again and again, the return of the old cordial feeling was just as quick; but it was the first gentle hint of fate for the King himself. The same thing was to befall him often. He was to lose valuable men, loyal friends, one after another; not only by death, but still more by the coldness and estrangement which arose between his nature and theirs. For the way upon which he had now entered was destined to develop more and more all the greatness, but also all the narrow features, of his nature, up to the limit of human possibility. The higher he rose above others, the smaller their natures inevitably appeared to him. Almost all whom in later years he measured by his own standard were far from able to endure the test, and the dissatisfaction and disappointment which he then experienced became again keener and more relentless until he himself, from a solitary height, looked down with stony eyes upon the doings of the men at his feet; but always, even to his last hours, the piercing chill of his searching glance was broken by the bright splendor of soft human feelings, and the fact that these were left to him is what makes his great tragic figure so affecting.

During the first war, to be sure, he still looked back with longing to the calm peace of his "Remusberg," and felt deeply the exaction of the tremendous fate which had already involved him. "It is hard to bear with equanimity this good and bad fortune," he writes; "one may appear indifferent in success and unmoved in adversity, the features of the face can be controlled; but the man, the inward man, the depths of the heart, are affected none the less." And he concludes hopefully, "All that I wish for myself is that success may not destroy in me the human feelings and virtues, to which I have always clung. May my friends find me as I have always been." And at the end of the war he writes: "See, your friend is victorious for the second time! Who would have said a few years ago that your pupil in philosophy would play a soldier's part in the world; that Providence would use a poet to overthrow the political system of Europe?" This shows how fresh and young Frederick felt when he returned to Berlin in triumph after his first war.

For the second time he took the field to assert his claim to Silesia. Again he was victorious. He had already the calm confidence of a tried general. His joy at the excellence of his troops was great. "All that flatters me in this victory," he wrote to Frau von Camas, "is that I could contribute by a quick decision and a bold manoeuvre to the preservation of so many good people. I would not have the least of my soldiers wounded for vain glory, which no longer deceives me." But in the midst of the contest came the death of two of his dearest friends, Jordan and Kayserlingk. His grief was touching: "In less than three months I have lost my two most faithful friends, people with whom I had lived daily, pleasant companions, honorable men, and true friends. It is hard for a heart that was made so sensitive as mine to restrain my deep sorrow. When I come back to Berlin, I shall be almost a stranger in my own fatherland, lonesome in my own house. You too have had the misfortune to lose at one time several people who were dear to you. I admire your courage, but I cannot imitate it. My only hope is in time, which can overcome everything in nature. It begins by weakening the impressions on our brains, and only ceases when it destroys us utterly. I anticipate with terror visiting all the places which call up in me sad memories of friends whom I have lost forever." And four weeks after their death he writes to the same friend, who tried to console him: "Do not believe that pressure of business and danger give distraction in sadness. I know from experience that that is a poor remedy. Unfortunately only four weeks have passed since my tears and my sorrow began, but after the violent outbursts of the first days, I feel myself just as sad, just as little consoled, as at the beginning." And when his worthy tutor, Duhan, sent him at his request some French books which Jordan had left behind, the King wrote, late in the autumn of the same year: "Tears came into my eyes when I opened the books of my poor dear Jordan. I loved him so much, it will be hard to realize that he is no more." Not long after the King lost also the intimate friend to whom this letter was addressed.

The loss, in 1745, of the friends of his youth was an important turning point in the King's mental life. With these unselfish, honorable men almost everything died which had made him happy in his intercourse with others. The intimacies into which he now entered as a man were all of another kind. Even the best of the new acquaintances received perhaps his occasional confidence, but never his heartfelt friendship. The need for stimulating intellectual intercourse remained, and became even stronger and more imperative, for in this too he was unique; he never could dispense with cheerful and confidential companions, with light, almost reckless conversation, flitting through all shades of human moods, thoughtful or frivolous, from the greatest questions of the human race down to the little events of the day. Immediately after his accession he had written to Voltaire and invited him to his court. He had first met the Frenchman in 1740 on a journey near Wesel. Soon after, Voltaire had come to Berlin for a few days, at heavy expense. He had even then impressed the King as a jester, but Frederick felt nevertheless an infinite respect for the talent of the man. Voltaire was to him the greatest poet of all times, the master of ceremonies of Parnassus, where the King himself was so anxious to play a part. Frederick's desire to have this man in his train became stronger and stronger. He regarded himself as his pupil; he wished to have all his verses approved by the master; among his Brandenburg officials he pined for the wit and spirit of the elegant Frenchman, and finally, his vanity as a sovereign was concerned--he wanted to be a prince of the _beaux esprits_ and philosophers, as he had become a glorious leader of armies. After the second Silesian war his intimates were mostly foreigners. After 1750 he had the pleasure of seeing the great Voltaire also as a member of his court. It was no misfortune that this unworthy man endured for only a few years his sojourn among the barbarians.

During these ten years, from 1746 to 1756, Frederick acquired literary independence, and that importance as a writer which is not yet sufficiently appreciated in Germany. As to his French poetry, a German can only judge imperfectly. He was a facile poet, who was easily master of every mood in metre and rhyme, but from the point of view of a Frenchman, he never completely overcame in his lyric poetry the difficulties of a foreign language, however diligently his confidants revised his work. He even lacked, it seems to us, the uniform rhetorical spirit, that style which in Voltaire's time was the first mark of a born poet. The effect of beautiful and noble sentiments, in splendid phraseology, is spoiled by trivial thoughts and commonplace expressions in the next line. Nor was the development of his taste sufficiently assured and independent. In his esthetic judgment he was quick, both to admire and to condemn; in reality, he was much more dependent upon the opinion of his French acquaintances than his pride would have admitted. What was best, moreover, in French poetry at that time--the return to Nature and the struggle of the beauty of reality against the fetters of an antiquated conventionalism--remained to him a sealed book. For a long time he looked upon Rousseau as an eccentric vagabond, and upon the conscientious and accurate spirit of Diderot even as shallow. And yet it seems to us that there often appear in his poems, especially in the light improvisations which he made to please his friends, a wealth of poetical detail and a charming tone of true feeling, which at least his model Voltaire might have envied.

Frederick's history of his times is, like Cæsar's _Commentaries_, one of the most important documents of historical literature. True, like the Roman general, like all practical statesmen, he stated facts as they are reflected in the soul of a participant. He does not give due value to everything or full justice to everybody, but he knows infinitely more than is revealed to one at a distance, and he wrote of some of the motives underlying the great events, not without prejudice, yet with magnanimity toward his opponents. Writing at times without the enormous reference material which a professional historian must collect about him, he was occasionally deceived by his memory and his judgment, though both were very reliable. He was, moreover, composing an apology for his house, his politics, his campaigns; and, like Cæsar, he sometimes ignores facts or interprets them as he wishes them to go down to posterity; but his love of truth and the frankness with which he treats his house and his own actions are no less admirable than his sovereign calm and the ease with which he soars above events, in spite of the little rhetorical embellishments which were due to the taste of his time.

His many-sidedness is as astonishing as his productiveness. One of the greatest military writers, a historian of importance, a clever poet, and at the same time a popular philosopher, a practical statesman, even a writer of very free and easy anonymous pamphlets, and sometimes a journalist, he was always ready to take up his pen for anything that inspired him and aroused his passions or enthusiasm, or to attack, in verse or prose, any one who provoked or annoyed him--not only the pope and the Empress, the Jesuits and the Dutch journalists, but also old friends if they seemed lukewarm to him,--which he could not endure,--or if they actually threatened to break with him. Never since Luther has there been such a belligerent, relentless, untiring writer. As soon as he put pen to paper he was like Proteus, everything: sage or intriguer, historian or poet, whatever the situation demanded, always an active, fiery, intellectual--sometimes also an ill-mannered--man, with never a moment's thought of his royal position. Whatever he liked he praised in poems or eulogies: the noble doctrines of his own philosophy, his friends, his army, religious liberty, independent investigation, tolerance, and popular education.

The conquering power of Frederick's mind had reached out in all directions. When ambition inspired him to victory it seemed as if there were no obstacle that would check him. Then came the years of trial--seven years of terrible, heartrending cares--the great period, in which the heaviest tasks that ever a man accomplished were laid upon his rich, ambitious spirit, in which almost everything perished which was his own possession, joy and happiness, peace and selfish comfort; in which also many pleasing and graceful characteristics of the man were to disappear, that he might become the self-sacrificing prince of his people, the foremost servant of his State, and the hero of a nation. No lust of conquest made him take the field this time; it had long been plain to him that he was fighting for his own life and that of his State. But his determination had grown only the stronger. Like the stormwind he purposed to dash into the clouds which were collecting from all sides about his head, and to break up the thunderbolts through the energy of an irresistible attack, before they were discharged. He had never been conquered up to this time. His enemies had been beaten every time he had fallen upon them with his terrible instrument--the army. Herein lay his only hope. If his well-tried power did not fail him now, he might save his State.

But in the very first conflict with his old enemy, the Austrians, he saw that they, too, had learned from him and were changed. He exerted his strength to the utmost, and at Kollin it failed him. The 18th of June, 1757, is the most momentous day in Frederick's life. There happened on that day what twice more in this war snatched victory from him--the general had underestimated his enemy and had expected the impossible from his own brave army. After a short period of stupefaction Frederick arose with new strength. Instead of an aggressive war, he had been forced to wage a desperate war of defense. His foes attacked his little country from all sides. He entered upon a death struggle with every great power of the Continent, master of only four million men and a defeated army. Now his talent as general showed itself as he escaped the enemy after defeats and again attacked in the most unexpected quarters and beat them, faced first one army and then another, unsurpassed in his dispositions, inexhaustible in expedients, unequaled as leader of troops in battle. So he stood, one against five--Austrians, Russians, French, any one of whom was his superior in strength, and at the same time against the Swedes and the Imperial troops. For five years he struggled thus against armies far larger than his own--every spring in danger of being crushed merely by numbers, every autumn free again. A loud cry of admiration and sympathy ran through Europe; and among those who gave the loudest praise, although reluctantly, were his most bitter enemies. Now, in these years of changing fortune, when the King himself experienced such bitter vicissitudes of the fortune of war, his generalship was the astonishment of all the armies of Europe. How, always the more rapid and skilful, he managed to establish his lines against his opponents; how so often he outflanked in an oblique position the weakest wing of the enemy, forced it back, and put it to rout; how his cavalry, which, newly organized, had become the strongest in the world, dashed in fury upon the foe, broke their ranks, scattered their battalions: all this was celebrated everywhere as a new advance in military art, and the invention of surpassing genius. The tactics and the strategy of the Prussian army came to be for almost half a century the ideal and model for all the armies of Europe. It was the unanimous opinion that Frederick was the greatest general of his time, and that there had been few leaders since the beginning of history who could be compared with him. It seemed incredible that the smaller numbers so often conquered the greater, and even when defeated, instead of being routed, faced the enemy, who had hardly recovered from his injuries, as threatening and fully equipped as before. Today we praise not only the field operations of the King, but also the wise prudence with which he handled his supplies. He knew very well how much he was limited by having to consider the commissariat, and the thousands of carts in which he had to take with him the provisions and the daily supplies of the soldiers; but he also knew that this method was his only salvation. Once, when after the battle of Rossbach he made the astonishing march into Silesia--one hundred and eighty-nine miles in fifteen days--he, in the greatest danger, abandoned his old method. He made his way through the country as other armies did at that time, and quartered his men upon the people. But he wisely returned at once to his old plan. For as soon as his enemies learned to imitate this free movement, he was certainly doomed. When the old militia in his ancient provinces rose to arms again, helped to drive out the Swedes, and bravely defended Colberg and Berlin, he accepted their assistance without objection; but he took pains not to encourage a guerilla war; and when his East Frisian peasantry revolted independently against the French and were severely punished by them for it, he told them with brutal frankness that it was their own fault, for war was a matter for soldiers; the business of the peasants and citizens should be uninterrupted industry, the payment of taxes, and the furnishing of recruits. He well knew that he was lost if a people's war in Saxony and Bohemia should be aroused against him. This readiness, indicative of the cautious general, to restrict himself to military forms, which alone made the contest possible for him, may be reckoned among his greatest qualities.

Louder and louder became the cry of sorrow and admiration with which Germans and foreigners watched this death-struggle of the lion at bay. As early as 1740 the young King had been praised by the Protestants as the champion of freedom of conscience and enlightenment, against intolerance and the Jesuits. When, a few months after the battle at Kollin, he completely defeated the French at Rossbach, he became the hero of Germany. A glad cry of joy broke out everywhere. For two hundred years the French had done great wrong to the divided country; now the German national idea began to revolt against the influence of French culture, and the King, who himself greatly admired Parisian poetry, had effectively routed the Parisian generals with German musket balls. It was such a brilliant victory, such a humiliating defeat of the hereditary enemy, that everywhere in Germany there was hearty rejoicing. Even where the soldiers of a State were fighting against King Frederick, the people at home in city and country rejoiced at the blows he dealt in good old German fashion. And the longer the war lasted, the more active became the faith in the King's invincibility, and the higher rose the confidence of the Germans. For the first time in long, long years they now had a hero of whose military glory they could be proud--a man who accomplished what seemed more than human. Innumerable anecdotes about him ran through the country. Every little touch about his calmness, good humor, kindness to individual soldiers, and the loyalty of his army, traveled hundreds of miles. How, in danger of death, he played the flute in his tent, how his wounded soldiers sang chorals after the battle, how he took off his hat to a regiment--he has often been imitated since--all this was reported on the Neckar and the Rhine, was printed, and listened to with merry laughter and tears of emotion. It was natural that poets should sing his praise. Three of them had been in the Prussian army: Gleim and Lessing, as secretaries of Prussian generals, and Ewald von Kleist, a favorite of the younger literary circles, as an officer, until the bullet struck him at Kunersdorf. But still more touching for us is the loyal devotion of the Prussian people. The old provinces, Prussia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Westphalia, were suffering unspeakably by the war, but the proud joy of having a share in the hero of Europe often lifted even humble men above their own sufferings. Citizens and peasants took the field as militiamen again and again for years. When a number of recruits from the province of Cleves and the county of Ravensberg deserted after a lost battle and returned home, the deserters were declared perjurers by their own fellow-countrymen and relatives, were excluded from the villages and driven back to the army.

Foreign opinion was no less enthusiastic. In the Protestant cantons of Switzerland there was as warm sympathy with the King's fate as if the descendants of the Rütli men had never been separated from the German empire. There were people there who were made ill by vexation when the King's cause was in a bad way. It was the same in England. Every victory of the King aroused wild joy in London. Houses were illuminated and pictures and laudatory poems offered for sale. In Parliament Pitt announced with admiration every new deed of the great ally. Even at Paris, in the theatres and salons, people were rather Prussian than French. The French derided their own generals and the clique of Madame de Pompadour. Whoever was on the side of the French arms, so Duclos reports, hardly dared to give expression to his views. In St. Petersburg, the grand duke Peter and his party were such good Prussians that they grieved in secret at every reverse of Frederick's cause. The enthusiasm penetrated even to Turkey and to the Khan of Tartary; and this respectful admiration of a whole continent outlasted the war. When Hackert, the painter, was traveling through the interior of Sicily, a gift of honor of wine and fruit was offered him by the city council because they had heard that he was a Prussian, a subject of the great King for whom they wished thereby to show their reverence; and Muley Ismail, the emperor of Morocco, released without any ransom the crew of a ship belonging to a citizen of Emden, whom the Berbers had brought prisoner to Mogador, sent them in new clothes to Lisbon, and assured them that their King was the greatest man in the world, that no Prussian should be a prisoner in his land, and that his cruisers would never attack the Prussian flag.

Poor oppressed soul of the German people! Long years had passed since the men between the Rhine and the Oder had felt the joy of being esteemed above others among the nations of the earth! Now by the magic of one man's power everything was transformed. The German citizen, awakened as from an anxious dream, looked out upon the world and within to his own heart. Men had long vegetated quietly, without a past in which they could rejoice, without a great future in which they could hope. Now all at once they felt that they, too, had a share in the honor and the greatness of the world; that a king and his people, all of their blood, had given to the German national idea a golden setting, and to the history of civilization a new meaning. Now they were experiencing the struggles, ventures, and victories of a great man. Work on in your study, peaceful thinker, fantastic dreamer! You have learned over-night to look down with a smile upon foreign ways and to expect great things of your own talent. Try to realize, now, what flows from your heart!

But while the youthful power of the people shook its wings with enthusiastic warmth, how did the great prince feel who was struggling ceaselessly against his enemies? The inspiring cry of the people rang in his ears as a feeble sound. The King heard it almost with indifference. His heart grew calmer and colder. To be sure, passionate hours of sorrow and heart-rending cares came to him over and over again. He kept them hidden from his army; his calm face became harder, his brow more deeply furrowed, and his expression more rigid. Only before a few intimates he opened his heart from time to time, and then for a moment the sorrow of the man who had reached the limits of human possibilities broke forth.

Ten days after the battle of Kollin his mother died. A few weeks afterward he drove in anger his brother August Wilhelm from the army, because he had not been strong enough to lead it. The next year this brother died "of sorrow," as the officer of the day announced to the King. Shortly after he received the news of the death of his sister at Bayreuth. One after another his generals fell by his side, or lost the King's confidence, because they were not equal to the superhuman tasks of this war. His veterans, the pride of his heart, hardened warriors, seasoned in three fierce wars, who, dying, stretched out their hands toward him and called his name, were crushed in entire companies about him, and what came to fill the broad gaps that death incessantly mowed in his army were young men, some good material, but many worthless. The King made use of them as he did of others, more sternly, more severely. His glance and his word gave courage and devotion even to the inferior sort, but still he knew that all this was not salvation. His criticism became brief and cutting, his praise rare. So he lived on; five summers and winters came and went; the work was gigantic; his thinking and scheming was inexhaustible, his eagle eye scrutinized searchingly the most remote and petty circumstances, and yet there was no change, and no hope anywhere. The King read and wrote in leisure hours just as before; he composed verses and kept up a correspondence with Voltaire and Algarotti, but he was prepared to see all this come soon to an end--a swift and sudden one. He carried in his pocket day and night something which could make him free from Daun and Laudon. At times the whole affair filled him with disdain.

The letters of the man from whom Germany dates a new epoch in its intellectual life deserve to be read with reverence by every German. When you find him writing to Frau von Camas, "For the last six years I have felt that it is the living, not the dead, for whom one should be sorry," if you are shocked by the gloomy energy of his determination you must beware of thinking that in it the power of this remarkable spirit found its highest expression. It is true that the King had some moments of desperation when he longed for death by the enemy's bullet in order not to be forced to use the capsule which he carried in his pocket. He was indeed fully determined not to ruin the State by living as a captive of Austria; to this extent what he writes is terribly true. But he was also of a poetic temperament, a child of the century which so longed for great deeds and found such immense satisfaction in the expression of exalted feelings. He was, to the bottom of his heart, a German with the same emotional needs as, for instance, the infinitely weaker Klopstock and his admirers. The consideration and resolute expression of his final resolve made him freer and more cheerful at heart. He wrote to his sister at Bayreuth about it in the momentous second year of the war; and this letter is especially characteristic, for his sister also was determined not to survive him and the downfall of his house; and he approved this decision, to which, by the way, he gave little attention in his gloomy satisfaction at his own reflections. The two royal children had once secretly recited, in the house of their stern father, the parts of French tragedies; now their hearts beat again in the single thought of freeing themselves by a Catonian death from a life full of disappointment, confusion, and suffering. But when the excited and nervous sister fell seriously ill, Frederick forgot all his Stoic philosophy, and clinging fast to life with a passionate tenderness, worried and mourned over her who was the dearest to him of his family. When she died, his poignant grief was perhaps increased by the feeling that he had interfered in too tragic a manner with a tender woman's life. Thus, even in the greatest of all Germans born in the first half of the eighteenth century, poetic feelings, and the wish to appear beautiful and great, were strangely mingled with the serious realities of life. Poor little Professor Semler who, while under the deepest emotion, still studied his attitudes and worked over his polite phrases, and the great King, who in cool expectation of the hour of his death, still wrote of suicide in beautifully balanced periods--both were sons of the same age, in which pathos, which had not yet found worthy expression in art, luxuriated like climbing plants about the realities of life. But the King was greater than his philosophy. In reality he never lost his courage, nor the persistent, defiant vigor characteristic of the old Germans, nor the secret hope which a man needs in every difficult task.

And he held out. The forces of his enemies grew weaker, their generals were worn out, and their armies were scattered. Finally Russia withdrew from the coalition. This, and the King's last victories, turned the balance. He had won. He had not only conquered Silesia, but vindicated its possession for his Prussian kingdom. But while his people rejoiced, and the loyal citizens of his capital prepared a festive reception for him, he shunned their merrymaking and withdrew silent and alone to Sans Souci. He said that he wished to spend his remaining days in peace, living for his people.

In the first twenty-three years of his reign he had struggled and fought to maintain his power against the world. Twenty-three years more he was destined to rule peacefully over his people as a wise, stern patriarch. He guided his State with the greatest self-denial, though with insistence on his own ways, striving for the greatest things, but yet in full control even of the smallest. Many of his ideas have been left behind by the advance of modern civilization--they were the result of the experiences of his youth and early manhood. Thought was to be free; every man to think what he pleased, but to do his duty as a citizen. He himself subordinated his comfort and his expenditures to the welfare of the State, meeting the whole expense of the royal household with some two hundred thousand thalers; thinking first of the advantage of his people and last of himself. His subjects, in their turn, he felt should bear cheerfully whatever duties and burdens he imposed upon them. Every one was to remain in the station in which birth and education had placed him. The noblemen were to be landholders and officers; to the citizens belonged the towns, trade, manufacturing, instruction, and invention; to the peasant, the land and the menial work. But in his sphere each one was to be prosperous and happy. Equal, strict, ready justice for every one; no favors to the highborn and rich--rather, in case of doubt, the humble should have the preference. To increase the number of useful men; to make every activity as profitable and as perfect as possible; to buy as little as possible abroad; to produce everything at home, exporting the surplus--these were the leading principles of his social and economic theories. He exerted himself incessantly to increase the acreage of arable land, and to provide new places for settlers. Swamps were drained, lakes drawn off, dikes thrown up. Canals were dug and money advanced to found new factories. At the instigation and with the financial support of the government cities and villages were rebuilt, more solid and sanitary than they had been before. The farmers' credit system, fire insurance societies, and the Royal Bank were founded. Everywhere public schools were established. Educated people were brought in from abroad; the government officials everywhere were required to be educated, and regulated by examination and strict inspection. It is the duty of the historian to enumerate and praise all this, if also to mention some unsuccessful attempts of the King, which were inevitable owing to his endeavor to control everything himself.

The King cared for all his lands, and by no means least for his child of sorrow, the newly won Silesia. When he conquered this great district it had a few more than a million inhabitants. They realized vividly the contrast between the easy-going Austrian management and the precise, restless, stirring rule of Prussia. In Vienna the catalogue of prohibited books had been larger than at Rome; now bales of books came incessantly from Germany into the province, reading and buying were astonishingly free, even printed attacks upon the sovereign himself. In Austria it was the privilege of the aristocracy to wear foreign cloth. When the father of Frederick the Great of Prussia had forbidden the importation of cloth, he had first of all dressed himself and his princes in domestic goods. In Vienna no office had been considered aristocratic if it implied anything but a nominal function; all the actual work was a matter for subordinates. A chamberlain stood higher than a veteran general or minister. In Prussia even the highest born was little esteemed if he was not useful to the State, and the King himself was a most exact official, who watched and scolded over every thousand thalers saved or spent. Any one in Austria who left the Catholic Church was punished with confiscation of property and banishment; under the Prussians anybody could leave or join any church--that was his own affair. Under the imperial rule the government had been, on the whole, negligent if it had been forced to occupy itself with any matter; the Prussian officials had their noses and their hands in everything. In spite of the three Silesian wars the province grew to be far more prosperous than it had been under the Empire. Up to this time a hundred years had not been sufficient to wipe out the visible traces of the Thirty Years' War. The people remembered well how in the cities the heaps of rubbish from the time of the Swedish invasions had lain about, and between the remaining houses there were patches of waste ground blackened by fire. Many small cities still had log houses in the old Slavic style, with thatched or shingled roofs, patched up shabbily from time to time. In a few decades the Prussians removed the traces not only of former devastations, but also of the recent Seven Years' War. Frederick laid out several hundred new villages, had fifteen good-sized towns rebuilt in regular streets--largely with funds from the royal treasury--and had compelled the landed proprietors to restore several thousand farms which they had abolished as individual holdings, and install upon them tenants with rights of succession. Under the Empire the taxes had been lower, but they had been unfairly distributed and had fallen chiefly upon the poor, the nobility being exempt from the greater part of them. The collection was imperfect, much was embezzled or poorly applied; relatively little came into the imperial treasury. The Prussians, on the contrary, divided the country into small districts, appraised every acre of land, and in a few years abolished almost all exemptions. The outlying country now paid its land taxes and the cities their excise duties. So the province bore the double burden with greater ease, and no one but the privileged classes grumbled; and with all this, it could maintain forty thousand soldiers, whereas formerly there had been in the province only about two thousand. Before 1740 the nobility had lived _en grand seigneur_. All who were Catholic and rich lived in Vienna. Everybody else who could raise enough money betook himself to Breslau. Now the majority of landholders lived on their estates, the poverty-stricken nobles disappeared, the nobility knew that the King honored them if they looked after the cultivation of the land, and that the new master showed cold contempt to those who neither managed their estates nor filled civil or military positions. Formerly lawsuits had been endless and expensive, hardly to be carried through without bribery and sacrifice of money. Now it was observed that the number of lawyers decreased, so quickly came the decisions. Under the Austrians, to be sure, the caravan trade with the East had been greater; the people of the Bukowina and Hungary, and also the Poles, turned elsewhere and were already looking toward Trieste; but in place of this, new manufacturing industries arose; wool and textiles, and in the mountain valleys a flourishing linen industry. Many found the new era uncomfortable, many were really incommoded by its severity; but few dared to deny that on the whole things had been greatly improved.

But another thing in the Prussian system was astonishing to the Silesians, and soon gained a secret power over their minds. This was the Spartan spirit of devotion on the part of the King's servants, which appeared so frequently even among the humblest officials; for instance, the revenue collectors, never popular even before the introduction of the French system. In this case they were retired subaltern officers, veteran soldiers of the King, who had won his battles for him and grown gray in powder smoke. They sat now by the gates smoking their pipes; with their very small pay they could indulge in no luxuries; but they were on the spot from early morning until late at night, doing their duty skilfully, precisely and quickly, as old soldiers are wont to do. Their minds were always on their service; it was their honor and their pride. For years to come old Silesians from the time of the great King used to tell their grandchildren how the punctuality, strictness, and honesty of the Prussian officials had astonished them. In every district headquarters, for instance, there was a tax collector. He lived in his little office, which was perhaps also his bedroom, and collected in a great wooden bowl the land taxes, which the village officials brought into his room monthly on an appointed day. Many thousand thalers were entered on the lists, and were delivered, to the last penny, to the great main treasuries. The pay too of such a man was small. He sat and collected and stowed in purses until his hair became white and his trembling hands were no longer able to manage the two-groschen pieces. And it was the pride of his life that the King knew him personally, and if he ever drove through the place would silently look at him from his great eyes, while the horses were being changed, or, if he was very gracious, give him a slight nod. With respect and a certain awe the people looked upon even these subordinate servants of the new principle, and the Silesians were not alone in this. Something new had come into the world in general. It was not a mere figure of speech when Frederick called himself the foremost servant of his State. As he had taught his wild nobility on the battlefield that it was the highest honor to die for the Fatherland, so his untiring, faithful care forced upon the soul of the least of his servants in the distant border towns the great idea of the duty of living and working first of all for the good of his King and his country.

When the province of Prussia was forced, in the Seven Years' War, to do homage to Empress Elizabeth, and remained for several years incorporated in the Russian Empire, the officers of the district found means nevertheless to raise money and grain for their King in secret, and in spite of a foreign army and government. Great skill was used to accomplish the transportation. There were many in the secret, but not a traitor among them. In disguise they stole through the Russian lines at the risk of their lives, although they knew that they would reap small thanks from the King, who did not care for his East Prussians at all. He spoke contemptuously of them, and showed them unwillingly the favors which he bestowed on the other provinces. His face turned to stone whenever he learned that one of his young officers was born between the Memel and the Vistula, and after the war he never trod on East Prussian soil. But this conduct did not disturb the East Prussians in their admiration. They clung with faithful love to their ungracious lord, and his best and most enthusiastic eulogist was Emanuel Kant.

Life in the King's service was serious, often hard--work and deprivation without end. It was difficult even for the best to satisfy the strict master; and the greatest devotion received but curt thanks. If a man was worn out he was likely to be coldly cast aside. There was work without end everywhere: something new, something beginning, some scaffolding of an unfinished structure. To a foreign visitor this life did not seem at all graceful; it was austere, monotonous, and rude, with little beauty or carefree cheerfulness. And as the King's bachelor household, his taciturn servants, and the submissive intimates under the trees of the quiet garden, gave a foreign guest the impression of a monastery, so in all Prussian institutions he found something of the renunciation and the discipline of a great busy monastic brotherhood.

For something of this spirit had been transmitted even to the people themselves. Today we honor in this an undying merit of Frederick II., for this spirit of abnegation is still the secret of the greatness of the Prussian State, and the final and best guarantee of its permanence. The artfully constructed machine which the great King had set up with so much intelligence and effectiveness was not to last forever; twenty years after his death it broke down; but in the fact that the State did not perish with it, that the intelligence and patriotism of the citizens were able of their own accord to establish under his successors a new life on a new basis, we see the secret of Frederick's greatness.

Nine years after the close of the last war which was fought for the possession of Silesia, Frederick increased his domain by a new acquisition, not much less in area, but thinly populated--the Polish districts which have since become German territory under the name of West Prussia.

If the King's claims to Silesia had been doubtful, all the acumen of his officials was now needed to make a show of some uncertain right to portions of the new acquisition. About this the King himself was little concerned. He had defended before the world with almost superhuman heroism the occupation of Silesia. This province was united to Prussia by streams of blood. In the case of West Prussia the craft of the politician did the work almost alone, and for a long time the conqueror lacked in public opinion that justification for his action which, as it seems, is given by the horrors of war and the capricious fortune of the battlefield. But this last acquisition of the King's, though wanting in the thunder of guns and the trumpets of victory, was yet, of all the great gifts which the German people owe to Frederick II., the greatest and most abounding in fortunate consequences. Through several hundred years the Germans had been divided and hemmed in and encroached upon by neighbors greedy for conquest; the great King was the first conqueror who again pushed the German boundaries toward the east. A hundred years after his great ancestor had in vain defended the fortresses of the Rhine against Louis XIV., Frederick gave the Germans again the explicit admonition that it was their duty to carry law, education, liberty, culture, and industry into the east of Europe. His whole territory, with the exception of a few Old Saxon districts, had been originally German, then Slavic, then again won from the Slavs by fierce wars or colonization; never since the migrations of the Middle Ages had the struggle ceased for the broad plains east of the Oder; never since the conquest of Brandenburg had this house forgotten that it was the warden of the German border. Whenever wars ceased the politicians were busy. The Elector Frederick William had freed Prussia, the territory of the Teutonic Knights, from feudal allegiance to Poland. Frederick I. had boldly raised this isolated colony to a kingdom. But the possession of East Prussia was insecure. It was not the corrupt republic of Poland which threatened danger, but the rising power of Russia. Frederick had learned to respect the Russians as enemies; he knew the soaring ambition of Empress Catherine, and as a prudent prince seized the right moment. The new territory--Pomerelia, the _voivodeship_ (administrative province) of Kulm and Marienburg, the bishopric of Ermeland, the city of Elbing, a portion of Cujavia, a portion of Posen--united East Prussia with Pomerania and Brandenburg. It had always been a border land. Since the early times people of different races had crowded into the coasts of the Baltic: Germans, Slavs, Lithuanians, and Finns. From the thirteenth century the Germans had made their way into this Vistula country as founders of cities and agriculturists: Teutonic Knights, merchants, pious monks, German noblemen and peasants. On both sides of the Vistula arose the towers and boundary stones of German colonies--supreme among them the magnificent city of Danzig, the Venice of the Baltic, the great seaport of the Slavic countries, with its rich St. Mary's Church and the palaces of its merchant princes; and beyond it on another arm of the Vistula, its modest rival, Elbing: farther up, the stately towers and broad avenues of Marienburg; near it the great princely castle of the Teutonic order, the most beautiful architectural monument of Northern Germany; and in the Vistula valley, on a rich alluvial soil, the old prosperous colonial estates: one of the most productive countries of the world, protected against the devastations of the Slavic stream by massive dikes dating back to the days of the Knights. Still farther up were Marienwerder, Graudenz, Kulm, and in the low lands of the Netze, Bromberg, the centre of the German border colonies among a Polish population. Smaller German towns and village communities were scattered through the whole territory, and the rich Cistercian monasteries of Oliva and Peplin had been zealous colonizers. But in the fifteenth century the tyrannical severity of the Teutonic order had driven the German cities and landowners of West Prussia to an alliance with Poland.

The Reformation of the sixteenth century won the submission not only of the German colonists but of three-quarters of the nobility in the great republic of Poland; and toward 1590 about seventy out of a hundred parishes in the Slavic district of Pomerelia were Protestant. It seemed for a short time as if a new commonwealth and a new culture were about to develop in the Slavic East--a great Polish State with German elements in the cities. But the introduction of the Jesuits brought an unsalutary change. The Polish nobility returned to the Catholic Church: in the Jesuit schools their sons were trained to proselytizing fanaticism, and from that time on the Polish State declined, conditions becoming worse and worse.

The attitude of the Germans in West Prussia was not uniform toward the proselytizing Jesuits and Slavic tyranny. A large proportion of the immigrant German nobles became Catholic and Polish; the townsmen and peasants remained for the most part obstinately Protestant. So there was added to the conflict in language conflict in religious creed, and to race hatred a religious frenzy. In this century of enlightenment the persecution of Germans in these districts became fanatical. One church after another was torn down, the wooden ones set on fire, and after the church was burned the village had lost its right to a parish: German preachers and school teachers were driven out and disgracefully maltreated. "_Vexa Lutheranum dabit thalerum_" ("harry a Lutheran and he will give up a thaler") was the usual motto of the Poles against the Germans. One of the greatest landowners in the country, a certain Unruh of the Birnbaum family, the starost of Gnesen, was sentenced to die, after having his tongue pulled out and his hands chopped off, because he had copied from German books into a notebook sarcastic remarks about the Jesuits. There was no more justice, no more safety. The national party of the Polish nobility, in alliance with fanatic priests, persecuted most passionately those whom they hated as Germans and Protestants. All sorts of plunder-loving rabble collected on the side of the "patriots" or "confederates." They collected into bands, overran the country in search of plunder, and fell upon the smaller towns and German villages, not only from religious zeal, but still more from the greed of booty. The Polish nobleman Roskowsky wore boots of different colors, a red one to indicate fire, and a black one for death. Thus he rode, levying blackmail, from one place to another, and in Jastrow he had the hands, the feet, and finally the head of the Protestant preacher Willich cut off and thrown into a swamp. This happened in 1768.

Such was the condition of the country just before the Prussian occupation. It was a state of things that might perhaps be found now in Bosnia, but would be unheard of in the most wretched corner of Christian Europe.

While still only a boy of twelve in the palace in Berlin, Frederick the Great had been reminded by his father's anger and sorrow that the kings of Prussia had a duty as protectors toward the German colonies on the Vistula. For in 1724 a loud call from that quarter for help had rung through Germany, and the bloody tragedy at Thorn became an important subject of public interest and of diplomacy. During a procession which the Jesuits were conducting through the city, some Polish nobles of the Jesuit college had insulted some citizens and schoolboys, and the angered populace had broken into the Jesuit school and college and inflicted damage. This petty street-riot had been brought up in the Polish parliament, sitting as a trial court, and the parliament, after a passionate speech by the leader of the Jesuits, had condemned to death the two burgomasters of the city and sixteen citizens; whereupon the Jesuit party hastened to put to death the head burgomaster, Rössner, and nine citizens, in some cases with barbarous cruelty. The church of St. Mary was taken from the Protestants, the clergymen driven out, and the school closed. King Frederick William had tried in vain at the time to help the unfortunate city. He had prevailed upon all the neighboring powers to send stern notes, and had felt himself bitterly grieved and humiliated when all his representations were disregarded; now after fifty years his son came to put an end to this barbarous disorder, and to unite again with Prussia this land which before the Polish sovereignty had belonged to the Teutonic order.

Danzig, to be sure, indispensable to the Poles, maintained itself through these decades of disorder in aristocratic seclusion. It remained a free city under Slavic protection, for a long time suspicious of the great King and not well disposed toward him. Thorn also had to wait twenty years longer in oppression, separated from the other German colonies, as a Polish border city. But the energetic assistance of the King saved the country and most of the German towns from destruction. The Prussian officials who were sent into the country were astonished at the desolation of the unheard-of situation which existed but a few days' journey from their capital. Only certain larger towns, in which the German life had been protected by strong walls and the old market traffic, and some sheltered country districts, inhabited exclusively by Germans (such as the lowlands near Danzig, the villages under the mild rule of the Cistercians of Oliva, and the prosperous German places of the Catholic Ermeland), were left in tolerable condition. Other towns lay in ruins, as did most of the farmsteads of the open country. The Prussians found Bromberg, a German colonial city, in ruins; and it is even yet impossible to determine exactly how the city came into that condition. In fact, the vicissitudes which the whole Netze district had undergone in the last nine years before the Prussian occupation are completely unknown. No historian, no document, no chronicle, gives reports of the destruction and the slaughter which must have raged there. Evidently the Polish factions fought between themselves, and crop failures and pestilence may have done the rest. Kulm had preserved from an earlier time its well-built walls and stately churches, but in the streets the foundation walls of the cellars stood out of the decaying wood and broken tiles of the crumbled buildings. There were whole streets of nothing but such cellar rooms in which wretched people lived. Of the forty houses of the main market-place twenty-eight had no doors, no roofs, no windows, and no owners. Other cities were in a similar condition.

The majority of the country people also lived in circumstances which seemed pitiable to the King's officers, especially on the borders of Pomerania, where the Wendish Cassubians dwelt. Whoever approached a village there saw gray huts with ragged thatch on a bare plain without a tree, without a garden--only the wild cherry-trees were indigenous. The houses were built of poles daubed with clay. The entrance door opened into a room with a great fireplace and no chimney; heating stoves were unknown. Seldom was a candle lighted, only pineknots brightened the darkness of the long winter evenings. The chief article of the wretched furniture was a crucifix with a holy water basin below. The filthy and uncouth people lived on rye porridge, often on herbs which they cooked like cabbage in a soup, on herrings, and on brandy, to which women as well as men were addicted. Bread was baked only by the richest. Many had never in their lives tasted such a delicacy; few villages had an oven. If the people ever kept bees they sold the honey to the city dwellers, they also trafficked in carved spoons and stolen bark; in exchange for these they got at the fairs their coarse blue cloth coats, black fur caps, and bright red kerchiefs for the women. Looms were rare and spinning-wheels were unknown. The Prussians heard there no popular songs, no dances, no music--pleasures which even the most wretched Pole does not give up; stupid and clumsy, the people drank their wretched brandy, fought, and fell into the corners. And the country nobility were hardly different from the peasants; they drove their own primitive plows and clattered about in wooden shoes on the earthen floors of their cottages. It was difficult even for the King of Prussia to help these people. Only the potato spread quickly; but for a long time the fruit-trees which had been planted by order were destroyed by the people, and all other attempts at promoting agriculture met with opposition.

Just as poverty-stricken and ruined were the border districts with a Polish population. But the Polish peasant in all his poverty and disorder at least kept the greater vivacity of his race. Even on the estates of the higher nobility, of the starosts, and of the crown, all the farm buildings were dilapidated and useless. Any one who wished to send a letter must employ a special messenger, for there was no post in the country. To be sure, no need was felt of one in the villages, for most of the nobility knew no more of reading and writing than the peasants. If any one fell ill, he found no help but the secret remedies of some old village crone, for there was not an apothecary in the whole country. If any one needed a coat he could do no better than take needle in hand himself--for many miles there was no tailor, unless one of the trade made a trip through the country on the chances of finding work. If any one wished to build a house he must provide for artisans from the West as best he could. The country people were still living in a hopeless struggle with the packs of wolves, and there were few villages in which every winter men and animals were not decimated. If the smallpox broke out, or any other contagious disease came upon the country, the people saw the white image of pestilence flying through the air and alighting upon their cottages; they knew what such an apparition meant: it was the desolation of their homes, the wiping out of whole communities; and with gloomy resignation they awaited their fate. There was hardly anything like justice in the country. Only the larger cities maintained powerless courts. The noblemen and the starosts inflicted their punishments with unrestrained caprice. They habitually beat and threw into horrible dungeons not only the peasants but the citizens of the country towns who were ruled by them or fell into their hands. In the quarrels which they had with one another, they fought by bribery in the few courts which had jurisdiction over them. In later years that too had almost ceased. They sought vengeance with their own resources, by sudden onslaughts and bloody sword-play.

It was in reality an abandoned country without discipline, without law, without masters. It was a desert; on about 13,000 square miles 500,000 people lived, less than forty to a square mile. And the Prussian King treated his acquisition like an uninhabited prairie. He located boundary stones almost at his pleasure, then moved them some miles farther again. Up to the present time the tradition remains in Ermeland, the district around Heilberg and Braunsberg, with twelve towns and a hundred villages, that two Prussian drummers with twelve men conquered all Ermeland with four drumsticks. And then the King in his magnificent manner began to build up the country. He was attracted by precisely these run-down conditions, and West Prussia henceforth became, as Silesia had been before, his favorite child, which with infinite care, like a dutiful mother, he washed and brushed, provided with new clothes, forced into school and good behavior, and never let out of his sight. The diplomatic negotiations about the conquest were still going on when he sent a troop of his best officials into the wilderness. The territory was subdivided into small districts, in the shortest possible time the whole land area was appraised and equitably taxed, each district provided with a provincial magistrate, with a court, and with post-offices and sanitary police. New parishes were called into life as if by magic, a company of 187 school teachers was brought into the country--the worthy Semler had chosen and drilled part of them--and squads of German artisans were got together, from the machinist down to the brickmaker. Everywhere was heard the bustle of digging, hammering, building. The cities were filled with colonists, street after street rose from the ruins, the estates of the starosts were changed into crown estates, new villages of colonists were laid out, new agricultural enterprises ordered. In the first year after the occupation the great canal was dug, which in a course of a dozen miles or so unites the Vistula by way of the Netze with the Oder and the Elbe. A year after the King issued the order for the canal he saw with his own eyes laden Oder barges 120 feet long enter the Vistula, bound east. Through the new waterway broad stretches of land were drained and immediately filled with German colonists. Incessantly the King urged on, praised, and censured. However great the zeal of his officials was, it was seldom able to satisfy him. In this way, in a few years, the wild Slavic weeds which had sprung up here and there even over the German fields were brought under control, and the Polish districts, too, got used to the orderliness of the new life; and West Prussia showed itself, in the wars after 1806, almost as stoutly Prussian as the old provinces.

While the gray-haired King planned and created, year after year passed over his thoughtful head. His surroundings became stiller and more solitary; the circle of men whom he took into his confidence became smaller. He had laid aside his flute, and the new French literature appeared to him shallow and tedious. Sometimes it seemed to him as if a new life were budding under him in Germany, but he was a stranger to it. He worked untiringly for his army and for the prosperity of his people; the instruments he used were of less and less importance to him, while his feeling for the great duties of his crown became ever loftier and more passionate.

But just as his seven years' struggle in war may be called superhuman, so now there was in his work something tremendous, which appeared to his contemporaries sometimes more than earthly and sometimes inhuman. It was great, but it was also terrible, that for him the prosperity of the whole was at any moment the highest thing, and the comfort of the individual so utterly nothing. When he drove out of the service with bitter censure, in the presence of his men, a colonel whose regiment had made a vexatious mistake on review; when in the swamp land of the Netze he counted more the strokes of the 10,000 spades than the sufferings of the workmen who lay ill with malarial fever in the hospitals he had erected for them; when he anticipated with his restless demands the most rapid execution, there was, though united with the deepest respect and devotion, a feeling of awe among his people, as before one whose being is moved by some unearthly power. He appeared to the Prussians as the fate of the State, unaccountable, inexorable, omniscient, comprehending the greatest as well as the smallest. And when they told each other that he had also tried to overcome Nature, and that yet his orange trees had perished in the last frosts of spring, then they quietly rejoiced that there was a limit for their King after all, but still more that he had submitted to it with such good-humor and had taken off his hat to the cold days of May.

With touching sympathy the people collected all the incidents of the King's life which showed human feeling, and thus gave an intimate picture of him. Lonesome as his house and garden were, the imagination of his Prussians hovered incessantly around the consecrated place. If any one on a warm moonlight night succeeded in getting into the vicinity of the palace, he found the doors open, perhaps without a guard, and he could see the great King sleeping in his room on a camp bed. The fragrance of the flowers, the song of the night birds, the quiet moonlight, were the only guards, almost the only courtiers of the lonely man. Fourteen times the oranges bloomed at Sans Souci after the acquisition of West Prussia--then Nature asserted her rights over the great King. He died alone, with but his servants about him.

He had set out in his prime with an ambitious spirit and had wrested from fate all the great and magnificent prizes of life. A prince of poets and philosophers, a historian and general, no triumph which he had won had satisfied him. All earthly glory had become to him fortuitous, uncertain and worthless, and he had kept only his iron sense of duty incessantly active. His soul had grown up and out of the dangerous habit of alternating between warm enthusiasm and sober keenness of perception. Once he had idealized with poetic caprice some individuals, and despised the masses that surrounded him. But in the struggles of his life he lost all selfishness, he lost almost everything which was personally dear to him; and at last came to set little value upon the individual, while the need of living for the whole grew stronger and stronger in him. With the most refined selfishness he had desired the greatest things for himself, and unselfishly at last he gave himself for the common good and the happiness of the humble people. He had entered upon life as an idealist, and even the most terrible experiences had not destroyed these ideals but ennobled and purified them. He had sacrificed many men for his State, but no one so completely as himself.

Such a phenomenon appeared unusual and great to his contemporaries; it seems still greater to us who can trace even today in the character of our people, in our political life, and in our art and literature, the influence of his activities.

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THE LIFE OF THEODOR FONTANE

By WILLIAM A. COOPER, A.M.

Associate Professor of German, Leland Stanford Jr. University

Theodor Fontane was by both his parents a descendant of French Huguenots. His grandfather Fontane, while teaching the princes of Prussia the art of drawing, won the friendship of Queen Luise, who later appointed him her private secretary. Our poet's father, Louis Fontane, served his apprenticeship as an apothecary in Berlin. In 1818 the stately Gascon married Emilie Labry, whose ancestors had come from the Cevennes, not far from the region whence the Fontanes had emigrated to Germany. The young couple moved to Neu-Ruppin, where they bought an apothecary's shop. Here Theodor was born on the thirtieth of December, 1819.

Louis Fontane was irresponsible and fantastic, full of _bonhomie_, and an engaging story teller. He possessed a "stupendous" fund of anecdotes of Napoleon and his marshals, and told them with such charm that his son acquired an unusual fondness for anecdotes, which he indulges extensively in some of his writings, particularly the autobiographical works and books of travel. The problem of making both ends meet seems to have occupied the father less than the gratification of his "noble passions," chief among which was card playing. He gambled away so much money that in eight years he was forced to sell his business and move to other parts. He purposely continued the search for a new business as long as possible, but finally bought an apothecary's shop in Swinemünde.

His young wife was passionate and independent, energetic and practical, but unselfish. To her husband's democratic tendency she opposed a strong aristocratic leaning. Their ill fortune in Neu-Ruppin affected her nerves so seriously that she went to Berlin for treatment while the family was moving.

In Swinemünde the father put the children in the public school, but when the aristocratic mother arrived from Berlin she took them out, and for a time the little ones were taught at home. The unindustrious father was prevailed upon to divide with the mother the burden of teaching them and undertook the task with a mild protest, employing what he humorously designated the "Socratic method." He taught geography and history together, chiefly by means of anecdotes, with little regard for accuracy or thoroughness. Though his method was far from Socratic, it interested young Theodor and left an impression on him for life. His mother confined her efforts mainly to the cultivation of a good appearance and gentle manners, for, as one might perhaps expect of the daughter of a French silk merchant, she valued outward graces above inward culture, and she avowedly had little respect for the authority of scholars and books.

After a while an arrangement was made whereby Theodor shared for two years the private lessons given by a Dr. Lau to the children of a neighbor, and "whatever backbone his knowledge possessed" he owed to this instruction. A similar arrangement was made with the private tutor who succeeded Dr. Lau. He had the children learn the most of Schiller's ballads by heart. Fontane always remained grateful for this, probably because it was as a writer of ballads that he first won recognition. If we look upon the ballad as a poetically heightened form of anecdote we discover an element of unity in his early education, and that will help us to understand why the technique of his novels shows such a marked influence of the ballad.

"How were we children trained?" asks Fontane in _My Childhood Years_. "Not at all, and excellently," is his answer, referring to the lack of strict parental discipline in the home and to the quiet influence of his mother's example.

Among the notable events of the five years Theodor spent in Swinemünde, were the liberation of Greece, the war between Russia and Turkey, the conquest of Algiers, the revolution in France, the separation of Belgium from Holland, and the Polish insurrection. Little wonder that the lad watched eagerly for the arrival of the newspapers and quickly devoured their contents.

In Swinemünde the family again lived beyond their means. The father's extravagance and his passion for gambling showed no signs of abatement. The mother was very generous in the giving of presents, for she said that what money they had would be spent anyhow and it might as well go for some useful purpose. The city being a popular summer resort, they had a great many guests from Berlin during the season, and in the winter they frequently entertained Swinemünde friends.

Theodor left home at the age of twelve to begin his preparation for life. The first year he spent at the gymnasium in Neu-Ruppin. The following year (1833) he was sent to an industrial school in Berlin. There he lived with his uncle August, whose character and financial management remind one of our poet's father. Theodor was irregular in his attendance at school and showed more interest in the newspapers and magazines than in his studies. At the age of sixteen he became the apprentice of a Berlin apothecary with the expectation of eventually succeeding his father in business. After serving his apprenticeship he was employed as assistant dispenser by apothecaries in Berlin, Burg, Leipzig, and Dresden. When he reached the age of thirty he became a full-fledged dispenser and was in a position to manage the business of his father, but the latter had long ago retired and moved to the village of Letschin. The Fontane home was later broken up by the mutual agreement of the parents to dissolve their unhappy union. The father went first to Eberswalde and then to Schiffmühle, where he died in 1867; the mother returned to Neu-Ruppin and died there in 1869.

The beginning of Theodor's first published story appeared in the _Berliner Figaro_ a few days before he was twenty years of age. The same organ had previously contained some of his lyrics and ballads. The budding poet had belonged to a Lenau Club and the fondness he had there acquired for Lenau's poetry remained unchanged throughout his long life, which is more than can be said of many literary products that won his admiration in youth. He also joined a Platen Club, which afforded him less literary stimulus, but far more social pleasure. During his year in Leipzig he brought himself to the notice of literary circles by the publication, in the _Tageblatt_, of a satirical poem entitled _Shakespeare's Stocking_. As a result he was made a member of the Herwegh Club, where he met, among others, the celebrated Max Müller, who remained his life-long friend. After a year in Dresden Fontane returned to Leipzig, hoping to be able to support himself there by his writings. He made the venture too soon. When he ran short of funds he visited his parents for a while and then went to Berlin to serve his year in the army (1844). He was granted a furlough of two weeks for a trip to London at the expense of a friend. In Berlin he joined a Sunday Club, humorously called the "Tunnel over the Spree," at the meetings of which original literary productions were read and frankly criticised. During the middle of the nineteenth century almost all the poetic lights of Berlin were members of the "Tunnel." Heyse, Storm, and Dahn were on the roll, and Fontane came into touch with them; he and Storm remained friends in spite of the fact that Storm once called him "frivolous." Fontane later evened the score by classing Storm among the "sacred kiss monopolists." The most productive members of the Club during this period (1844-54) were Fontane, Scherenberg, Hesekiel, and Heinrich Smidt. Smidt, sometimes called the Marryat of Germany, was a prolific spinner of yarns, which were interesting, though of a low quality. He employed, however, many of the same motives that Fontane later put to better use. Hesekiel was a voluminous writer of light fiction. From him Fontane learned to discard high-sounding phrases and to cultivate the true-to-life tone of spoken speech. Scherenberg, enthusiastically heralded as the founder of a new epic style, confined himself largely to poetic descriptions of battles.

When Fontane joined the "Tunnel" the particular _genre_ of poetry in vogue at the meetings was the ballad, due to Strachwitz's clever imitations of Scottish models. Fontane's lyrics were too much like Herwegh's to win applause, but his ballads were enthusiastically received. One, in celebration of Derfflinger, established his standing in the Club, and one in honor of Zieten brought him permanently into favor with a wider public; these poems were composed in 1846. Two years later he read two books that for a long time determined his literary trend--Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ and Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. He began to write ballads on English subjects and one of them, _Archibald Douglas_, created a great sensation at the "Tunnel" meeting and has ever since maintained its place among the best German poems. Its popularity is partly due to the fact that it was so appropriately set to music by Carl Löwe. When Fontane returned to Berlin in 1852, after a summer's absence in England, he felt estranged from the "Tunnel" and ceased attending the meetings. Two noblemen members, von Lepel and von Merckel, who had become his friends, introduced him to the country nobility of the Mark of Brandenburg, which enabled him to make valuable additions to his portfolio of studies later drawn upon for his novels, among others, _Effi Briest_.

In 1847 Fontane passed the apothecary's examination by a "hair's breadth" and soon found employment in Berlin. In the March Revolution (1848) he played a comical rôle, but was subsequently elected a delegate to the first convention to choose a representative. For a year and a quarter he taught two deaconesses pharmacy at an institution called "Bethany." When that employment came to an end he decided that the hoped-for time had finally arrived to give up the dispensing of medicines and earn his living by his pen. Some of his new ballads were accepted by the _Morgenblatt_, and a volume of verses, dedicated to his fiancée, found a publisher. When news arrived of the victory of Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein at Idstedt (1850) he set out for Kiel to enlist in the army. In Altona he received a letter offering him a position in the press department of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. He accepted immediately and at the same time wrote to Emilie Kummer, to whom he had been engaged for five years, proposing that they should be married in October. She hastened to secure an apartment in Berlin and furnish it, and the wedding was celebrated on the sixteenth of October. Fontane thought he had entered the harbor of success, but he lost his ministerial position in six weeks and was again at sea. He had, however, a companion ready to share his trials and triumphs, and their union proved to be very happy.

In the summer of 1852 he was sent by the Prussian Ministry to London to study English conditions and write reports for the government journals, _Preussische Zeitung_ and _Die Zeit_. In 1855 he was again sent to England, and this time his journalistic engagement lasted for four years. Accounts of his experiences are contained in _A Summer in London_ (1854) and _Beyond the Tweed_ (1860). From 1860 to 1870 he was on the staff of the _Kreuzzeitung_ and during this time served as a war correspondent in the campaigns of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71. While accompanying the army in France he was seized with a desire to visit the home of Joan of Arc at Domrémy, and was captured, taken for a spy, and imprisoned for a time on the island of Oléron in the Atlantic Ocean. An interesting account of his experiences is given in _Prisoner of War_ (1871). During his years in England he had taken advantage of the opportunity to visit Scotland and familiarize himself with its picturesque beauties and its wealth of historical and literary associations. In the midst of these travels the thought had occurred to him that his own Mark of Brandenburg had its beauties, too, and its wealth of associations. On returning to Berlin he began his long series of journeyings through his native province, making a thorough study of both country and people, particularly the Junkers, for which his trained powers of observation, combined with warm patriotism and true love of historical research, eminently fitted him. His published records of these travels, _Rambles through the Mark of Brandenburg_ (1862-81) and _Five Castles_ (1889), won for him the title of the interpreter of the Mark. His right to this distinction was further established by the novels in which he later employed the fruits of these studies.

Fontane is equally celebrated as an interpreter of Berlin, where he lived for over fifty years, being the one prominent German writer to identify himself with a great city. His two autobiographical works, _From Twenty to Thirty_ and _C.F. Scherenberg_, tell of his early experiences in the Prussian capital. From 1870 to 1889 he was dramatic critic for the _Vossische Zeitung_, for which he reviewed the performances at the Royal Theatre. In one of his last criticisms he hailed Hauptmann as a dramatist of promise. In 1876 he was elected secretary of the Berlin Academy of Arts, but served only a brief time. In 1891 the Emperor made him a present of three thousand marks for his services to German literature. In 1894 the University of Berlin bestowed upon him the honorary title of doctor of philosophy. He died on the twentieth day of September, 1898.

Fontane's lyric poetry in the narrower sense is not of a high order; in fact almost none of his writings show the true lyric quality. There is also a striking lack of the dramatic element in his works, and he seems to have felt this limitation of his genius, for he studiously avoided the portrayal of scenes that might prove intensely dramatic. As a writer of ballads he excelled and ranks among the foremost of Germany. The British subjects he treated were impressed upon him during his travels in England and his study of English history. His German themes were taken largely from Prussian history, particularly the period of Frederick the Great. His permanent place in the history of German literature is due, however, not so much to his verse as to his prose writings. He is best known as a novelist, and in the field of the modern novel he is one of the most conspicuous figures.

German novels of the older school were usually too long for a single volume. Fontane's first important work of fiction, _Before the Storm_, filled four volumes; but he had so much trouble in finding a publisher for it that he began to write one-volume novels, introducing a practice which has since become the common tradition. He employed in them a typical feature of the technique of the ballad, which leaps from one situation to another, leaving gaps to be filled by the fancy of the reader. He says himself, in _Before the Storm_: "I have always observed that the leaping action of the ballad is one of the chief characteristics and beauties of this branch of poetry. All that is necessary is that fancy be given the right kind of a stimulus. When that end is attained, one may boldly assert, the less told the better."

At the beginning of Fontane's career the Berlin novelists were disciples of Scott, but the only one to survive was Alexis, who adapted Scott's method to the Mark of Brandenburg. Fontane imitated him in _Before the Storm_ (1878), which deals with conditions in the Mark before the wars of liberation. _Schach von Wuthenow_ (1883), a sort of prelude to _Before the Storm_, was far superior as a novel and helped to establish Fontane's supremacy among his contemporaries, for he had become the leader of the younger generation after the publication of two stories of crimes, _Grete Minde_ (1880) and _Ellernklipp_ (1881), and the creation of the modern Berlin novel, in _L'Adultera_ (1882). _L'Adultera_ unfolds the history of a marriage of reason between a young wife and a considerably older husband, a situation which Fontane later treated, with important variations and ever increasing skill, in _Count Petöfi_ (1884), _Cécile_ (1887), and _Effi Briest_ (1895). With his inexhaustible fund of observation to draw upon he could make the action of his novels a minor consideration and concentrate his rare psychological powers upon realistic conversations in which characters reveal themselves and incidentally acquaint us intimately with others. We see and hear what the world ordinarily sees and hears. A past master in the art of suggestion, which he acquired in his ballad period, Fontane omits many scenes that others would elaborate with minute detail, such as love scenes and passionate crises, and contents himself with bringing vividly before us his true-to-life figures in their historical and social environments. As a conservative Prussian he believed in the supremacy of the law and the punishment of transgression, and his works reflect this belief.

_Trials and Tribulations_ (1887) and _Stine_ (1890) were the first German novels absolutely to avoid the introduction of exciting scenes merely for effect. These histories of mismated couples from different social strata are recounted with hearty simplicity, deep understanding of life, and frank recognition of human weakness, but without condemnation, tears, or pointing a moral. They made Fontane famous. _Frau Jenny Treibel_ (1892), an exquisitely humorous picture of the Berlin _bourgeoisie_, and _Effi Briest_ "the most profound miracle of Fontane's youthful art," added considerably to the fame of the gray-haired "modern," while _The Poggenpuhls_ (1896) and _Stechlin_ (1898) won him further laurels at a time when most writers would long ago have been resting on those they had already achieved. If a line were drawn to represent graphically his productivity from his sixtieth year on, it would take the form of a gradually rising curve.

His career as a novelist began so late in life that when he once discovered his particular field he cultivated it with persistent diligence and would not allow himself to be drawn away by enthusiasts into other fields. Strength of character was not, however, a new phenomenon in his life, for as long ago as the days when he was an active member of the "Tunnel" he had come in close contact with the Kugler coterie in Berlin, where the so-called Munich school originated, and yet he did not follow his friends in that eclectic movement. So when the naturalistic school of writers began to win enthusiastic support, even though he found himself in the main in sympathy with their announced creed, he did not join them in practice. He felt that what the literature of the Fatherland needed was "originality," and he sought to attain it in his own way, apart from storm and stress. As his mind matured through accumulated knowledge of the world, and his heart mellowed through years of experience and observation, he rose to a point of view above sentiment and prejudice, where the fogs of passion melt away and the light of kindly wisdom shines.

* * * * *

_THEODOR FONTANE_

* * * * *

EFFI BRIEST (1895)

TRANSLATED AND ABRIDGED BY WILLIAM A. COOPER, A.M.

Associate Professor of German, Leland Stanford Jr. University