ortance, that these years might be called the industrious sixth-form
period of the German people. Eagerly did they learn, and everywhere did
active spontaneous labour take the place of the old mechanism.
Philanthropically did the learned strive to create educational
establishments for every class of the people, and to invent new methods
of instruction by which the greatest results could be obtained from
those who had least powers of learning. To instruct, to educate, and to
raise people from a state of ignorance, was the general desire; not
that this was useful to the nation in general, for the lower classes
could not enter into the exalted feelings which gave to the literary
such enjoyment and elevation of mind.

It is true they themselves felt an inward dissatisfaction. The facts of
life which surrounded them were often in cutting contrast to their
ideal requirements. When the peasant worked like a beast of burden, and
the soldier ran the gauntlet before their windows, nothing seemed to
remain to them but to shut themselves up in their studies, and to
occupy their eyes and mind with times in which they were not wounded by
such barbarities. For it had not yet been tried, what the union of men
of similar views in a great association would accomplish, in bringing
about changes in the State and every sphere of practical interest.

Thus, with all their philanthropy, there arose a quiet despondency even
among the best. They had more soundness and strength of mind than their
fathers, the source of their morality was purer, and they were more
conscientious. But they were still private men. Interest in their
State, in the highest affairs of their nation, had not yet been
developed. They had learnt to perform their duties as men in a noble
spirit, and they contrasted, sometimes hypercritically, the natural
rights of men in a State with the condition under which they lived.
They had become honourable and strictly moral men, and endeavoured to
cast off everything mean with an anxiety which is really touching; but
they were deficient in the power which is developed by the co-operation
of men of like views, under the influence of great practical questions.
The noblest of them were in danger, when they could not withdraw into
themselves, of becoming victims rather than heroes, in the political
and social struggle. This quality was very striking in the construction
of their poetry. Almost all the characters which the greatest poets