ly. We do not speak enough to the
broad comprehension of mankind; we are forever making abstract qualities
of flesh and blood. Our critics have turned your 'Hamlet' into an
allegory; they will not even allow Shakspeare to paint mankind, but
insist on his embodying qualities. They turn poetry into metaphysics,
and truth seems to them shallow, unless an allegory, which is false, can
be seen at the bottom. Again, too, with our most imaginative works
we mix a homeliness that we fancy touching, but which in reality is
ludicrous. We eternally step from the sublime to the ridiculous; we want
taste."

"But not, I hope, French taste. Do not govern a Goethe, or even a
Richter, by a Boileau!" said Trevylyan.

"No; but Boileau's taste was false. Men who have the reputation for good
taste often acquire it solely because of the want of genius. By taste I
mean a quick tact into the harmony of composition, the art of making the
whole consistent with its parts, the _concinnitas_. Schiller alone of
our authors has it. But we are fast mending; and by following shadows so
long we have been led at last to the substance. Our past literature
is to us what astrology was to science,--false but ennobling, and
conducting us to the true language of the intellectual heaven."

Another time the scenes they passed, interspersed with the ruins of
frequent monasteries, leading them to converse on the monastic life, and
the various additions time makes to religion, the German said: "Perhaps
one of the works most wanted in the world is the history of Religion. We
have several books, it is true, on the subject, but none that supply the
want I allude to. A German ought to write it; for it is, probably, only
a German that would have the requisite learning. A German only, too,
is likely to treat the mighty subject with boldness, and yet with
veneration; without the shallow flippancy of the Frenchman, without the
timid sectarianism of the English. It would be a noble task, to
trace the winding mazes of antique falsehood; to clear up the first
glimmerings of divine truth; to separate Jehovah's word from man's
invention; to vindicate the All-merciful from the dread creeds of
bloodshed and of fear: and, watching in the great Heaven of Truth the
dawning of the True Star, follow it--like the Magi of the East--till
it rested above the real God. Not indeed presuming to such a task,"
continued the German, with a slight blush, "I have about me a humble
essay, which