ep in human nature and the period he
represents. The tragical complications and consequences resulting even
from errors which never took shape in evil deeds could not in the
highest tragedy be represented more purely and strikingly than here. The
stain of impurity rests upon the soul of him who thinks that he detects
it, not in the book itself. Ottilie is as pure and immortal a creation
of genius as Mignon.

As novel-literature has developed itself in Europe, an attempt has been
made to employ it as a mirror of the past, into which mankind shall love
to look, and thereby ascertain whether civilization has advanced or
retrograded with the lapse of time. This is a reaction against the
eighteenth century, and it appears under two forms--the
idealistic-sentimental and the strongly realistic-social. The earliest
instance in Germany of the romantic school, _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_,
is the apotheosis of the art and literature of the Middle Ages. The
writings of Walter Scott put an end to this sentimentalism, and this is
indeed their highest merit. Those of his works will continue to maintain
the most prominent place, standing forth as true and living
representations of character, which deal with the events of Scottish
history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Still more the work
of genius, however, and of deeper worth, Hope's _Anastasius_ must be
admitted to be--that marvelous picture of life in the Levant, and in the
whole Turkish Empire, as far as Arabia, as it was about the end of the
last and the beginning of the present century. In this work truth and
fiction are most happily blended; the episodes, especially that of
Euphrosyne, may be placed, without disparagement, beside the novels of
Cervantes, and strike far deeper chords in the human heart than the
creations of Walter Scott. Kingsley's _Hypatia_, alone of modern works,
is worthy to be named along with it. That, indeed, is a marvelous and
daring composition, with a still higher aim and still deeper
soul-pictures. Both of them will live forever as examples of union of
the idealistic and the realistic schools, poetic evocations of a by-gone
reality, with all the truth and poetry of new creations. In reading
either of them we forget that the work is as instructive as it is
imaginative.

The most vehement longing of our times, however, is manifestly after a
faithful mirror of the present; that is to say, after a life-picture of
the social relations and the