spiritual life, rejoicing in the
geniality of the climate and the tranquillity of the country, reposing
proudly on his ancestral dignity. This conception--and not alone the
pure and lofty nature of the crazy besieger of wind-mills, who, in spite
of all, stands forth as at once the worthiest, and fundamentally the
wisest character in the book--constitutes the poetic background, and the
twilight glimmer amid the prevailing darkness in the life of the higher
classes. We feel that there is assuredly something deeply human and of
living power in these elements, and this reality will one day obtain the
victory over all opponents.

By what an entirely different atmosphere do we feel ourselves to be
surrounded in _Gil Blas_, where the highest poetry, the cunning
dexterity of the modern Spanish Figaro, is manifested in the midst of a
depraved nobility, and a priesthood alive only to their own material
interests. It is only the most perfect art that could have retained for
this novel readers in every quarter of the world. The _denouement_ is as
perfect as with such materials it can be; and we feel that, instead of
Voltaire's withering and satiric contempt of all humanity, an element
of unfeigned good-humor lies in the background of the picture. How far
inferior is Swift! and how utterly horrible is the abandoned humor of a
despair that leaves all in flames behind it, which breathes upon us from
the pages of the unhappy _Rabelais_!

Fielding's novels, _Tom Jones_ in particular, bear the same resemblance
to the composition of Cervantes that the paintings of Murillo bear to
those of Rembrandt. The peculiarity of _Wilhelm Meister_ as a novel is
more difficult of apprehension, if one does not seek the novel where in
truth it lies--in the story of Mignon and the Harper, and only sees in
the remainder the certainly somewhat diffuse but deeply-thought and
classically-delineated picture of the earnest striving after culture of
a German in the end of the eighteenth century. It would argue, however,
as it appears to me, much prejudice, and an utterly unreasonable temper,
not to recognize a perfect novel in the _Wahlverwandschaften_, however
absolutely one may deny the propriety of thus tampering with and
endangering the holiest family relationships, or thus making them the
subjects of a work of fiction. Goethe, however, has here placed before
us, and that with the most noble seriousness and the most artistic
skill, a reality which lies de